Leavenworth ? A new institute headed by a man who spent 30 years in foreign service with the State Department is part of a small university’s strategy for giving it a higher profile.

The University of St. Mary, which has 900 students at its campuses in three Kansas City area counties, launches its Global Studies Institute with a forum at 7 p.m. Tuesday. The session in Mabee Auditorium on the main campus in Leavenworth will feature a panel discussing principles and priorities to guide American foreign policy in the next three to five years.

“We’re very much a startup organization, but we’re planning to have monthly lectures, conferences and so forth,” said institute director Nick Reigg. “We want to make this a center within the Midwest with a focus on global diplomacy, global studies.”

Reigg, 61, retired this summer after a State Department career in which he lived in seven countries and visited 54. Most recently he worked as a diplomat in residence and teacher at Fort Leavenworth’s Command and General Staff College.

Reigg envisions future institute sessions featuring dialogue and debate on everything from world trade to the environment to international health.

He said the immediate focus would be presenting educational forums and discussions for people from Leavenworth and the greater Kansas City area. But Reigg also plans to eventually forge partnerships with universities overseas so that the schools can work together to organize international seminars.

By next year, Reigg hopes to broaden the institute’s audience to the national and international spotlight. He hopes to have a major conference in September that will bring together proponents and opponents to discuss one global topic.

“It’s ambitious, but we feel that the greater Kansas City region, being right in the middle of America, is a great place to have conferences and have people located,” Reigg said.

With campuses in Wyandotte and Johnson counties as well as the one in Leavenworth, St. Mary’s name recognition is increasing slowly, but President Diane Steele said the university needed to sharpen its international programs.

“We have reworked our mission, and part of our mission is to prepare our students for a global world,” she said. “We found that many of our students are greatly lacking that.”