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Ask YSU geology professor Ray Beiersdorfer to pick the most spectacular geological environment in the world, and China is sure to be at the top of his list.
He’s made the journey four times in the past two years, twice to lead YSU student groups on study tours of China’s natural and historic wonders.
Associate English professor Linda Strom can’t stay away either.
She’s spending this semester teaching and living at Lunghwa University in Taiwan, China’s neighbor, her second stint there in 18 months. Strom is one of several YSU professors who have participated in a successful, three-year-old faculty exchange program with Lunghwa.
Beiersdorfer and Strom are at the forefront of YSU’s push to create strong academic relationships in China and Taiwan, links that aim to encourage study tours, faculty and student exchanges with the world’s third-largest economy.
“Every university in the U.S. should be doing this,” commented George McCloud, a YSU professor of communications and vice president for University Advancement. “China is a part of the world that we cannot ignore.”
McCloud speaks Chinese and has also made numerous trips to China over the past 22 years, including a three-week art history study tour with 28 students last summer. The trip was co-sponsored by William Paterson University in New Jersey. “Anyone who wants to understand the history of humankind on this planet has to have some understanding of China,” he said, calling China the oldest continuing civilization in human history.
Beiersdorfer was first drawn to China because 60 percent of the country is mountainous, creating a treasure trove of ancient caves, glaciers and other geological wonders, along with renowned sights such as the Great Wall of China and the Terra Cotta Warriors. Tourism is a growing industry in China, he added, so travel is affordable and tourist destinations are generally very accessible and well maintained.
The fact that the nation once known as a “sleeping giant” has become such a global economic powerhouse is another good reason to learn about it, Beiersdorfer maintained. “China is such a big player on the world stage, knowing about it is just as much a necessity as computer literacy.”
Strom said that teaching at Lunghwa has made her a better, more thoughtful professor. She knew only two Chinese phrases when she arrived there last year – hello and thank you - but enrolled in YSU’s Chinese language class in the fall semester to be better able to communicate and understand her students this time around.
She uses every opportunity to encourage students, at both YSU and Lunghwa, to consider study abroad. “Letting our students go to another country, experience another culture, another language, is one of the greatest gifts we can give them,” said Strom. “I tell my students: ‘Leave the country. I want you to go away. This is the time to do it, so go now.’ Once they get out of school, life tends to interfere.” |
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Jef Davis likes to say that he’s in the import-export business.
Director of YSU’s Center for International Studies and Programs, his office “imports” students from other nations and “exports” YSU students for study abroad.
And China is one of his best prospects.
 With a middle-class population that’s outpaced expansion of its educational infrastructure, China’s universities have become extremely elite, especially at the graduate school level. Only the very top students can be admitted.
“Tens of thousands of truly excellent Chinese students are looking to study abroad, and YSU is an ideal place for them to come,” said Davis. “It’s good for them, good for our students, and good for our economy.”
YSU’s strategic plan calls for more than doubling the number of international students on campus by 2013, as well as increasing the number of YSU students who study abroad. For a myriad of reasons, China and Taiwan have emerged as important sites in the university’s effort to expand its global outreach.
Ou Hu, a YSU assistant professor of economics and a native of China’s Sichuan province, said YSU is in a good position to compete for Chinese student enrollment because it offers a combination of high-quality academic programs with affordable tuition. Studies show that most international students pay for their studies through personal and family funds.
 YSU’s tuition is the lowest of all public and private comprehensive universities in Ohio, and out-of-state fees have been drastically reduced for graduate students – a substantial savings for international scholars pursuing advanced degrees.
Hu said Chinese students are generally eager to study in the United States and to improve their English language skills. “Many undergraduates in China can’t find a job,” he said. “Students have to work so much harder to grab a piece of the cake. If their resume shows they have studied in the U.S. and they know English, it will help a lot.”
Hu acknowledged, however, that most Chinese students have never heard of YSU. “When I lived in China, I only heard of the top 50 American colleges,” he said.
That’s where YSU’s partnerships with universities abroad come in, helping to attract students who might otherwise never have considered a state university in Northeast Ohio.
Yifan Yang is a case in point. The 21-year-old business major is spending the 2008-09 academic year at YSU, half a world away from her home in Beijing. She started her undergraduate work at Beijing Technological and Business University and learned about YSU because the two schools have an academic partnership.
 That relationship was so important to her that Yang only considered schools with ties to BTBU, her home university. The same is true of most Chinese and Taiwanese students studying here.
“My school has exchange programs with YSU and three other American schools. I studied all of them online, and then I chose YSU,” Yang said, adding that the Williamson College of Business Administration’s high ranking among business schools also helped to win her over.
YSU has active ties with five universities overseas: BTBU, Lunghwa University of Science and Technology in Taiwan, Yeditepe University in Turkey, Aligarh Muslim University in India, and Winchester University in the United Kingdom, approved just last year.
A delegation of university officials led by President David C. Sweet gave YSU’s partnerships with the Beijing and Lunghwa universities a boost when they toured the region in 2007. The group focused its visit on the Asia Pacific region because of its growing economic and political influence in the global marketplace.
Florence Wang, a native of Taiwan who lives in Youngstown and a longtime leader in the university’s effort to build global relationships, was part of that YSU delegation. She said university partnerships are an increasingly effective tool for building YSU’s credibility in other countries.
“Parents like it. They feel safer sending their students here when we have a partnership with their university at home,” Wang said. “Many parents in China and Taiwan still hope their student can get into an Ivy League school. Our pitch is that YSU has the same things: good education, a safe campus, and the culture you find in a big city: the ballet and the theater and the symphony.”
University partnerships have cleared the way for several YSU professors to change places with professors at Lunghwa over the past three years, and YSU has been successful in attracting students from both BTBU and Lunghwa to spend a semester or two on campus. Ten students, five from Beijing and five from Taipei, are enrolled this year.
Sending YSU students overseas has been more difficult, however, said Annette El-Hayek, YSU’s international programs coordinator. “Study abroad on a student’s resume really makes them stand out in a crowd, and it’s not just for language majors,” she says, adding that she recommends study in China because the cost of living is much lower there than in English-speaking countries such as Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.
But language can be an obstacle.
Even though Chinese begin learning English at an early age, they usually need additional help with the language when they come to YSU. The language challenge is even greater for American students going to China, El-Hayek noted. Few know Chinese, so most require that anything other than Chinese language courses must be taught in English.
This semester YSU sent its first two students to BTBU, which offers more than 50 courses in English; Lunghwa offers fewer courses in English, but YSU expects to send at least two students there in the fall. Intensive Chinese language courses are available at both institutions.
El-Hayek said YSU is getting proactive about the language issue by offering two campus initiatives – a two-semester Chinese language course and a summer English language camp.
Barbara Nykiel-Herbert, assistant English professor, and Cynthia Vigliotti, English instructor, have been coordinators of the three-week Summer English Language Camp for students from Lunghwa since the summer of 2007.
An English Department initiative, the camp is held on the YSU campus and offers students from Taiwan opportunities to improve their English language skills through class sessions taught by YSU English majors and through field trips and activities in the community. The camp also provides the student instructors some practical training for careers in teaching English as a second language.
Shelly Xiaoli Zhu, an electronic services librarian at YSU’s Maag Library and a native of Beijing, is in her second year of teaching a two-semester Chinese language course on campus. She teaches Putonghua, the standard Mandarin dialect used in Chinese television, radio and government communications, and most of her students have a desire to travel, study or do business in China.
Graduate student Tony Angnardo signed up for Zhu’s class after taking a three-week study tour across China co-sponsored by YSU and William Paterson University last summer. A non-traditional student and finance major from Warren, he said the trip convinced him of the importance of learning the language.
“In China, relationships are built over time rather than just finding a link on a search engine and clicking away,” Angnardo said. “I got the sense that taking the time to learn their history and their language would show them that a long-term relationship was sought, not just a single transaction.”
Zhu requires that her students learn to speak, read and write Chinese because she believes studying the language is the best way to understand the Chinese people. “China is such a big market, there are many opportunities there,” she said. “Learning the language is the best way to be ready to take advantage of the opportunities.”
Stories by Cynthia Vinarsky |
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