On April 25th, a 10-member delegation of university senior executives visited BJUT, led by Wallace Boston, President of American Public University System (APUS) and Overseer of University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education (Penn GSE). Delegates came from nine colleges and universities in the US, including the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Kansas and the University of Maryland, Baltimore. Li Siping, Deputy Party Committee Secretary and Head of the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Law, met with the delegation on behalf of BJUT. Directors of BJUT’s International Office, Human Affairs Office, Faculty of Liberal Arts and Law and International College also attended the meeting.
Deputy Secretary Li extended a friendly welcome to the delegation and gave a brief overview of BJUT and its international exchanges, underlying its progress under the “Double First Class” plan, reform of management structure (introduction of “faculty”) and the overall development of the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Law. He illustrated that opening up, attracting talents and highlighting characteristics were BJUT’s three paramount strategies. The university sought to improve its strength and international reputation via extensive and productive international exchanges, in order to build a “world-famous high-level research university with distinct characteristics”. BJUT demonstrated keen willingness to collaborate with the visiting universities in staff/student exchange, research cooperation, etc.
President Boston extended his gratitude to Mr. Li for his hospitality and briefly introduced the delegates and their universities, with emphasis on developments in American higher education over the past two decades. He said BJUT was a pacesetter among local universities in China. It was a great pleasure to visit BJUT and learn about the experience and cases in Chinese local universities’ administration and management.
Attendees held a seminar on the administration and management of Chinese local universities. Directors of the Human Affairs Office, the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Law and the International College delivered reports on “circumstances, troubleshooting and planning regarding BJUT’s building of talent teams”, “BJUT’s introduction of ‘faculty’ and modern university administration” and “development and plan of BJUT’s international education” respectively. The parties had extensive and in-depth exchange on BJUT’s administration system, student training, curricula, programs with international certification, international student admission, capacity-building for teaching staff, etc., and had preliminary discussion on areas of potential cooperation.
After the seminar, the delegation visited BJUT’s Olympic gymnasium and the Folk Arts Museum of BJUT College of Art and Design.
