The University of North Alabama is an accredited state owned and operated University that has been serving the community since 1830. We are one of the oldest institutions of higher learning in the United States. The UNA College of Business operates both undergraduate and graduate level business courses. The MBA program is taught from our campuses in Florence, Alabama, and affiliate offices in Beijing and Taipei.

The UNA Institute of Export Research & Technology Transfer is a non-profit institution owned by the University of North Alabama Foundation and operated by The UNA College of Business. It is staffed by professors, professional staff, and students of the UNA College of Business in our global campuses. Our staff and students are multi-cultural and multi-lingual with extensive international business experience. Due to the presence of our offices in Beijing and Taipei we have a particular emphasis on creating export opportunities to, and doing business in, those jurisdictions.

The UNA Institute of Export Research & Technology Transfer was founded in August of 2011 in direct response to the President of the United States challenge to create public private partnerships to facilitate and grow export opportunities from the United States in the face of economic challenges to our Country. Our position as a regional leader in higher education in the business field, the international expertise of our faculty, our long-standing international campus presence, and our international staff and student body created the foundation needed for supporting United States export initiatives. Since the United States is a global leader in the creation of technology and intellectual property, UNA’s leadership determined that a focal point of our Institute would be promoting and facilitating export in these critical fields.

Many private and public universities in the United States operate “licensing offices” for technology created by professors and students. UNA’s leadership wanted to take this a step further and offer our expertise to private industry, the public sector, the quasi-public sector and the non-profit sector in international trade both regionally and across the United States. The Institute also supports an international Client base seeking to source intellectual property and technology and related products and services from the United States. We work on both a market demand "pull" and export "push" basis supporting such trade from both directions.

Because we are a non-profit institution controlled and operated by a state government university, we are able to enter into partnerships and access other governmental and quasi-governmental organizations, universities, institutes, and companies around the world at a “peer to peer” level. This provides a level of access to opportunity and credibility to the clients we bring to them which is difficult to match in the private sector. This is particularly important in economically developing countries that operate with a degree of government direction which may be unfamiliar to United States businesses. We are, for example, able to receive opportunities from government owned enterprises and organizations that would not be available or accessible to most United States based businesses. Similarly, as a United States based public Institute, we are in an outstanding position to access intellectual property and technology of interest in the United States to international parties that they would find difficult to locate or negotiate through ordinary trade channels