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FARMINGTON – An exchange student partnership forged 20 years ago between Beijing University of Technology in Beijing, China and the University of Maine at Farmington will not only continue but will be expanded following a recent trip there by UMF’s president Theodora Kalikow.
Kalikow returned to China for two weeks in October that included a speaking engagement at a forum celebrating BJUT’s 50th anniversary. She spoke about the many benefits of the exchange program that provides UMF students with an opportunity to study Chinese language and culture at BJUT in Beijing and BJUT student-teachers a semester of English Language and western Maine culture at UMF.
“Our relationship over two decades has provided knowledge, mutual understanding and academic and economic opportunities for students, faculty and community members in both Maine and China,” Kalikow said.
Much has changed since her first trip to China on the occasion of the 10th anniversary in 1999 of the BJUT and UMF partnership.
“Bicycles have been replaced by cars,” Kalikow said, “and now there are traffic jams you would not believe.” Evidence of huge infrastructure investment, from highways to high rise buildings, is everywhere. Several new 20,000-student university campuses have been built in the last decade. BJUT, with new multi-story buildings, resident halls, and a new gymnasium thanks to the recent Beijing Olympics, now has 20,000 students attending, up 8,000 from a decade ago when she last visited.
The accommodations improved dramatically too. Staying in western style, five-star hotels thanks to all-expense paid trip by BJUT, Kalikow said English language was commonly heard wherever they went, including Fudan University in Shanghai and Hangzhou Normal University in Hangzhou.
“It was unbelievable,” she said of the changes she saw wherever they went. “It’s as if they’re trying to catch up with the rest of the world.” Traveling with her were Allen Berger, UMF’s provost and vice president for academic affairs; Marilyn Shea, UMF professor of psychology and community members John Rosenwald and Ann Arbor of Farmington, who all have extensive teaching experience in China.
With this latest venture to China, an agreement with Guangxi Medical University in Nanning City to bring 20 students to UMF in 2012 to take rehabilitation services program courses was accomplished. These students will undertake their first two years of study in China and complete their undergraduate studies at UMF.
In addition, in a partnership between Ann Lynch, UMF’s director of field studies, and Lee Academy in Lee, Maine, five UMF students in the teacher education program will be doing their student teaching in South Korea in 2010-11, with hopes to expand the program to China in 2011-12.
As the University of Maine System’s only campus that teaches Mandarin Chinese language for credit, Kalikow wants to expand Chinese language courses to be a standard part of business education at both the K-12 public school and college level.
Students on exchange from China are currently offered the opportunity to engage with the wider community through internships with small businesses and service learning projects with various agencies.
For years, the program has provided UMF students on exchange to BJUT a pretty good view of a different world at the 20,000-student campus in a city of 18.5 million in a country of 1 billion people. Conversely, the BJUT students who come here live at UMF’s 2,000-student campus in a quiet small western Maine town of 7,400 people.
“It’s the big difference in scale that’s so interesting,” Kalikow said. “The human capacity for adaptation is amazing. It’s a valuable experience and they have fun doing it.”
Read more about UMF’s exchange program to Chine here.
