Friday, May 7, 2010
China and International Education
By Dr. Dave Dooley, President of University of Rhode Island
I began this post while sitting in a 777 on my way back from China, and bound for Detroit, then Providence. It was a pleasure to travel with Dr. Sigrid Berka (Associate Director of the International Engineering Program), Professor Zongqin Zhang of Mechanical Engineering, Michael Byrnes (a member of the IEP Advisory Board) and Erin Papa (Coordinator of the Flagship Program in Chinese at URI). We were in China to visit our university partners here associated with our IEP program and the Flagship program, and to meet with companies where URI students may be provided internship opportunities while studying in China.
I think our meetings, visits, and discussions went extremely well. Both senior administrators and faculty at Zhejiang University, Nanjing University, and Southeastern University appeared to be impressed and pleased by the nature of our International Engineering Program and by the commitment of the students involved to study and work in a Chinese language environment.
Moreover, they appeared to be uniformly enthusiastic about developing broader and deeper relationships with URI, encompassing student mobility between institutions certainly, but also faculty visits and exchanges, cooperative academic programs, and research collaborations.
The companies we visited, all of whom were affiliated with or components of global corporations, were equally enthusiastic about working with URI. All the companies agreed to create paid internships for URI students that would engage our students in projects directly related to the goals and priorities of the companies. This is exactly the kind of experience that is so valuable educationally and that I believe should become a distinguishing feature of undergraduate education at URI.
Without any doubt, there are numerous and appealing opportunities for the University of Rhode Island in China. Most importantly, our students who gain the capability to engage China, and understand its language and culture, will be exceptionally well prepared to succeed in a global economy, in a global society, where China will play an increasingly important role. Some pictures, taken during our visits to universities and companies, are below.
Our visit to China, while rewarding, was also sobering. If the United States truly wishes to retain its current position of global leadership, we need to increase our investments in education. Each of the universities we visited has been designated a key national university by the Chinese government. All of them are among the top universities in China. All of them are benefiting from substantial, sustained government and private sector investments designed to dramatically improve their international educational impact and their research capabilities.
In contrast, all of us here have witnessed the systematic and systemic disinvestment in public higher education in the U.S. If we are to build a sustainable knowledge-based economy in Rhode Island and the United States, then we must invest in building knowledge. China is.
Download
• IEP Facts & Figures Report 2009 (pdf)
More Information
For more information regarding the IEP please contact:
International Engineering Program
University of Rhode Island
Heidi Kirk Duffy Center
61 - 67 Upper College Road
Kingston, RI 02881
p: 401.874.4283
f: 401.874.7008
iep@etal.uri.edu
