Wake Forest University in Shanghai--the WFU CHINA INITIATIVE

As we begin this inaugural journey to China this week, I want to document some thoughts about higher education, Wake Forest University, and China. 

This is a most unusual moment in higher education.  I know that every generation feels unique and special. This particular moment in time, however, truly seems monumental.  At this moment, the international opportunities now available to USA higher education are enormous--especially between China and the USA.  Right now, this moment, the potential for shared educational experiences seems limitless.   The opportunity to share our American culture, our way of thinking, our way of teaching and learning, our way of being in this world is truly now!  And the opportunity to learn from the Chinese culture, their way of thinking, their way of teaching and learning, their way of being in this world is truly now! 

Wake Forest University has invited 39 undergraduate students from China to join our Deacon Family for this fall entering class 2012.   Our responsibility is huge as we seek to provide an opportunity for this mutual exchange of  Sino-American intellectual life and social exchange to take place on our campus.  The benefits for all of us are tremendous.  We will learn; they will learn.  And we will all improve our very own culture, our way of thinking, our way of teaching and learning, our way of being in this world. 

Our WFU Creative Services team, led by creative designer Hayes Henderson and project manager Gretta Kohler, designed the above banner.  The icon, shaped in the form of an ancient Chinese seal, symbolizes this historic educational  exchange with two hands, or two cultures, positioned side by side.  We reach our hands to new students and families and new partners in educational collaborations in China.  In turn, these new students, some with parents who will never have the opportunity to visit us here in North Carolina, reach their hands to us by being willing to travel far away to study on our campus and join our Deacon family.   

The design team also captured the art of  Chinese paper design and intricate ornamentation in the design of the delicate header that surrounds the icon of hands.  While China and the USA may differ in styles of teaching and learning, classroom presentations, and innovation and creativity in education, the love of beauty remains a common expression for both cultures.  The mutual love for art, for nature, for music, for beauty powerfully transcends any cultural barriers.  For this reason, Wake Forest University travels to China, for our very first visit, with music, lots of it----featuring Dr. Peter Kairoff and his wonderful artistry at the classical piano.  

Represented here in this delicate design is the color red, symbolizing the joyful and happy educational collaborations that await for us in the future.  Red, a color symbolizing great joy and happiness in both Chinese and American cultures, aptly describes our long-awaited ,joyful anticipation of this exchange between Wake Forest University and China.  

We eagerly await this trip!

100,000 Strong Initiative: US and China Study Abroad

In 2009 President Obama announced that we would have 100,000 students from the USA studying in China in the next four years. Secretary Clinton announced the program directed by the State Department --"100,000 Strong"-- in Shanghai last December. This program is now moving forward at slow but steady speed. No money is available from Congress and this program will move forward by private donors only. With over 7 million dollars already pledged since January of this year toward a goal of almost $70 million, the idea is gaining momentum from both United States and China. I learned today that the Chinese government has promised 30,000 full scholarships to USA students for short term study abroad experiences, full master, and doctoral level degree programs for US students willing to study in China. Chinese universities are building new dorms and expanding English language programs to accomodate newly arriving American students. This new goal will be a challenge for us. Traditionally, we have had more Chinese students studying here in the USA than American students studying in China. More Chinese can speak English than Americans can speak Chinese. But this goal is an important one for us at this moment. Our knowledge of China needs to increase. Our US students need to learn to speak more than one language and Mandarin is the language spoken by over a billion people around the world. In addition, Secretary Clinton underscores the point that the US/China relationship is the most important relationship that we have at the moment because any issue moving forward will require that US and China sit down and talk together as the top two powerful countries in the world. http://www.state.gov/p/eap/regional/100000_strong/c40115.htm In other words, we need to make friends with China. And students can do that better than any other population. Every friendship we make, said Michele Obama, makes our country stronger.

And so we all work to help make this happen for the sake of our great grandchildren! Wake Forest University, let us consider China!

Education in a Global World

I am in Vancouver, BC, Canada for the NAFSA Conference: An Association of International Educators. WOW! This is a huge industry, evidenced by the size of this conference. With over 9000 registered attendees from all over the world and hundreds of exhibitors in the expo hall hawking everything from on-line applications software to Chinese recruiters, I am in a high learning curve!

I spent yesterday afternoon with 30 educators/recruiter types from China, England, Ireland, Netherlands, India. We were spending four hours together thinking about the international opportunities in the U. S. Higher Education, sponsored by Institute for International Education. We are still the best--for right now--for this moment--for now. With our 4,633 colleges and universities (1, 705 public, 1,713 private, not-for profit, and 1,215 private, for profit) we still have some of the best colleges and universities in the world. Our belief in limited government (a Jeffersonian democracy), capitalism, equal opportunity, and firm belief in the value of liberal arts undergraduate foundation have created schools of unparalleled reputation and influence. I would also add that our most noble notion of higher education, which assumes that education serves to benefit not only individuals and families, but also our country, contributes to our success (stated best in the reverential terms of Wake Forest University motto---Pro Humanitate--for the benefit of humankind). In addition, the early notion of our nascent republic was that education was a God-given opportunity--that to educate a mind was to deepen a heart in preparation for service to others--still stands as a guidepost for our most noble institutions of higher learning. In more pragmatic terms, US Higher Education is a $200 billion enterprise, whose employees comprise about 2% of our national workforce. We must stay strong, even with budgetary constraints of this moment in time. Sharing with the world our noble aspirational vision of higher education may be our best export yet. Nike, McDonalds, Starbucks worked internationally with solid business plans, but the exporting and importing of higher education might just exceed the international influence of things you can wear and eat! And we just might be able to create a better world for all of us in the meantime.

To cherish these values of American higher education, however, is to be willing to share them with the world. And we are. International students come here; American students go there. The Institute of International Education (IIE) has been keeping stats on international education since its founding in 1919. The Open Doors Report (since 1954) produces an annual census. The most amazing fact is that one generation we have seen a 120% increase of students of American students studying abroad. We are going there! Non-traditional places, like China, Argentina, South Africa, Denmark, Peru, South Korea, are replacing the traditional places of study abroad, such as UK, Italy, and Spain. They are coming here! In 2009/10 the number of international students in the US increased 2.9% from the previous year to 690,923 students. Of that number 52% of the degree seeking students are from China, India, and South Korea.

This is a new world. And I am glad to be alive at this particular moment in time to see it unfold and to be a small part of this large movement of global education.

Sputnik, Chinese education, and us!

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/16/opinion/16kristof.html


Nicholas D. Kristoff said it so well in today's NY Times. Read it! It is not the Chinese stealth bomber that we should be so concerned, it is China's desire for educational reform! We have no Confucius here in the USA undergirding our educational reform; but we do have lots of talent and we still have some of the best schools in the world--thus far. We have a lot of work to do--both countries. And here's hoping that we can do it together as two of the worlds great superpowers. Here's hoping that if we do this together both China and USA will be stronger. Smart power--smart educational reform!

The Courage to Learn!

I believe that education is one of the most important gifts that we can give the next generation. But for many people, that gift has been given with a tremendous sacrifice. I carry in my mind and heart so many stories of education and sacrifice that I heard while traveling in China this month.

I remember the student who told me about how his grandparents, both honored scholars and teachers, suffered greatly during the Cultural Revolution. His grandfather, a Chinese scholar, was killed by young soldiers--students of his grandmother. When the young student soldiers realized that they had killed the husband of their esteemed and honored teacher, they begged for her forgiveness, weeping and falling prostrate in front of her house in deep sorrow for what they had done. This grieving widow, an esteemed Chinese teacher, had a choice as she faced her own students, the murderers of her husband, at the front door of her house. She could choose to resent them forever and not forgive them for their actions, choosing to live the rest of her days in anger and resentment, or to forgive them and keep open the path of acceptance open for the generations to follow. She forgave them. She survived this difficult time in China's history by forgiving her own students who had murdered her own husband. What courage! Although her own children would not have access to the educational opportunities that she had in her own generation, her grandchildren would. And she would make sure that it happened. And now, her grandson who tells me this story is preparing to come to the USA to study to honor his grandparents and their love for education.

His grandmother, still active in the leading the family, organizes her family members, gathers all of the family financial resources, prepares her family to make additional sacrifices in order to educate the next generation. This family now is preparing to send the third generation, her bright young grandson, who brings such great honor to the family by choosing the scholarly profession of the family, to the United States to study.

Education takes courage! The opportunity to study is not to be taken for granted. May we remember the sacrifices others have made for us so that we could have the opportunity to study and learn.