Deans' Notes :: Special Edition
Dean Hageman and Assistant Dean Chang with students from
the ICB program.
January 25, 2008
Dear Faculty and Staff,
Welcome back! I hope your break was both restful and rejuvenating and that you have survived your first week back. The day classes began our enrollment was up 7.2%. With this increase in mind, it’s fortunate that our college is in the midst of hiring about 30 new faculty to start next fall. The faculty searches, the new science building breaking ground, the dean search, and ongoing strategic plan initiatives hold promise that the spring semester and coming year will bring much excitement and positive change for CLAS. Other new additions this year are the Economics and Communication undergraduate degree programs in Beijing.
The week before the break, Kuan-Yi (Rose) Chang and I traveled to the International College at Beijing (ICB) to meet with the program's students, faculty and administrators. About an hour’s flight from Beijing, our 747 jetliner was passing over the flat, intensively cultivated farmland fed by an arterial network of canals, evident even from 20,000 feet. Upon leaving customs we were met by the beaming face of Betty, the Dean’s very capable assistant, and our stocky, and as we learned, voluble driver. I made a slight social gaffe--as I learned later in my copy of Chinese for Dummies--in shaking the driver’s hand upon being introduced. Happily, both of us survived this breach of etiquette. The driver led us to our sedan and whisked us down the freeway in the gathering darkness to the Jin Ma Hotel. The smog that enveloped us en route, and seemed to be a pretty constant part of the Beijing atmosphere, reminded me of Los Angeles in the late 1960s. The hotel was located directly on the China Agricultural University campus, the host campus of the ICB, and was well-managed and accustomed to accommodating English speakers.
We were met in the lobby of the hotel by James Wu, who is responsible for working on-site at ICB to manage the daily activities of the students. He coordinates these activities with E.J. Yoder in UCD’s Office of International Education and with CLAS concerning the curricular issues. James was as gracious a host as anyone could wish. He gave us a quick tour of the campus and then took Rose and me to the student dining hall where we had a simple five course meal, including a fish that minutes earlier had been swimming in a tank on the premises. No doubt the students complain about the food not being as good as it is at home!
The next two days were filled with attending classes, meeting with faculty, touring the facilities, and having extensive discussions with Dean Meng and his assistants. Rose and I hosted two lunches for the 108 students in the program, which gave me the opportunity to visit with all of the students. A few impressions were left with me that are worth mentioning. I found the Chinese students extremely deferential and almost excruciatingly polite, so that it was not always easy to determine their level of satisfaction. I do believe that they are generally happy with their program, but I came away thinking that a real challenge for us is to not reduce the intellectual content of any of the courses because of the still growing level of their language skills, especially in the first couple of semesters. These are very bright and eager students who have an enormous drive to succeed.
We must not underestimate their brainpower as they continue to master English. Millions of Chinese citizens are now entering the middle class, and China is re-emerging as a world leader. As I learned when I read Menzies’ 1421, the Chinese not only discovered North and South America 70 years before Columbus, they also left footprints there and in other parts of the world as a part of their amazing explorations. The Chinese culture then and now is truly breathtaking.
The students at ICB also want very much to be connected to the students and the economics and communication departments on this campus. I believe students on both sides of the Pacific will benefit from some innovative thinking and programs in this regard. Not only do the students in Beijing live at 40° north latitude, as do those in Denver, but they are also UCD students majoring in economics and communication.
I would request that we collectively put some effort into achieving positive interactions with our Chinese cohort of students. In seeking to solve global or “glocal” problems, such as poverty, social injustice and pollution, we will likely discover that a broad diversity of viewpoints will accelerate the finding of solutions. How diversity in ethnicity, race and culture necessarily shapes our thinking was brought home to me when I learned that the Chinese character for “peace” was the symbol for a roof over the symbol of a woman. This Chinese ideogram for “peace” is deeply embedded in their cultural consciousness in a way that is very different from our own. I believe that reconciling diverse viewpoints in seeking solutions to common problems very often leads to finding more robust solutions.
I wish all of you a peaceful and happy new year.
Jim Hageman
Interim Dean, CLAS
Dean Hageman listens in as two students work for their TOEFL preparation lab.
Dean Hageman delivers a presentation about
CLAS to the ICB students.
Asst. Dean Xu , Dean Hageman and Dean Meng enjoy
a meal together following meetings at ICB.
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EDITOR:
Katy Brown
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Katy.Brown @cudenver.edu