Former President William J. “Bill” Clinton will visit Santa Barbara this week to participate in a public dialogue on global issues that will help inaugurate UC Santa Barbara’s Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies and the university’s new master’s degree program in that field.

Sponsored by the Orfalea foundations, the program will be held at the Arlington Theatre on Friday, Oct. 13, from 1:15 to 2:15 p.m., with the doors opening at 12:15 p.m.

Titled “Leadership for the Global Future,” the event will be structured as a conversation between President Clinton and Paul Orfalea, the entrepreneur and business leader who founded the Kinko’s chain of copy stores (now known as FedEx Kinko’s).

General admission tickets are $75 and $45 and are currently on sale at the Arlington Theatre Ticket Office. A portion of the proceeds from ticket sales will go to support the center and the M.A. program. A total of 600 free tickets for UCSB students will be available from the Associated Students box office.

The event will also include an announcement of a commitment by the Orfalea foundations to the Clinton Foundation’s Global Initiative, which was the focus of a major international conference in New York last month. The Orfalea commitment includes support for all four focus areas of the initiative: poverty alleviation, energy and climate change, global health, and mitigating religious and ethnic conflict.

“The Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies provides an opportunity to impact management practices internationally,” said Natalie Orfalea, chairperson of the Orfalea Fund and the Orfalea Family Foundation.

Paul Orfalea is a distinguished visiting lecturer in the Global and International Studies Program at UCSB, where he teaches a popular course in global business. The center and the new graduate program are focused on the preparation of professionals to work in the global non-profit sector as well as in multinational business.