Educational Partnership With Chinese University Offers

A new partnership between Concordia University, St. Paul and Guizhous University for Nationalities in China will provide opportunities for students and faculty at both institutions to enhance relations between the two universities and to develop academic and cultural exchanges in the areas of education, research and other activities.

“This relationship is extremely important as China becomes one of the largest economies in the world,” said Dr. Robert DeWerff, vice president for Academic Affairs at Concordia. “We want to be able to offer our students and faculty the opportunity to be engaged in this emerging market in a variety of ways.”

After several previous visits, a six-member delegation arrived on the Concordia campus last fall to finalize arrangements for the Agreement of Cooperation, which both universities signed on Nov.15, 2006.

“With more than 4 million Hmong people in Guizhou Province, Concordia University also has much to gain from this relationship,” said Lee Pao Xiong, director of the Center for Hmong Studies at Concordia.

The Center for Hmong Studies, which has quickly established itself as an international scholarly resource for information on Hmong culture, history and language, also plans to work with Guizhou University to make the work of Hmong scholars in China accessible to English-speakers.

“There are many Hmong scholars in Guizhou and much scholarly work relating to the Hmong being conducted there,” Xiong said. “In 2005, I had the opportunity to visit Guizhou University for Nationalities. I was amazed at the number of Hmong professors and researchers there,many of whom have had a significant amount of work published relating to the Hmong. Unfortunately, the majority of these publications are in Chinese. The Center for Hmong Studies hopes to work with these scholars to translate their work into English.”

This summer, Concordia University will lead a similar delegation to Guizhou University for Nationalities to further refine the agreement and explore opportunities for collaborations in a variety of areas, including: faculty and/or student exchanges and faculty development, joint research projects, joint cultural programs, educational technology training, cooperative degree programs, certificate or professional training programs, and more.

To learn more about the Concordia/Guizhou partnership or Center for Hmong Studies, visit www.csp.edu/hmongcenter.

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