March 19, 2008

I am on the plane flying back to Beijing, with two and a half hours to mull over what we’ve achieved on this trip. The seats are very crammed and the laptop is difficult to read as the guy in front of me has his seat back down into my lap. We’ve just been served some mushrooms and rice for lunch, together with a foil packet of something cold and squelchy made by the Chongqing Fish Well Preserved Vegetable (Group) Company … I’m not sure I want to know what’s in it!

We’ve spent the last two days in Shantou, finalizing the details for a group study abroad program with a difference. Our two universities are collaborating on a Global Leadership Innovation Program. Up to 15 U of C students are coming in May for a month of classes attended together with 15 Shantou students, and co-instructed by professors from both institutions.

The planning for this program has been going on for months, mainly by e-mail. Our last two days have shown the importance of face to face meetings. We have been able to answer questions posed by our own staff – What are residences like? Do students have to pay for internet access in the library? Is there a meal plan? – as well as those from the Shantou professors – How much student work is required for a credit hour? Although the teaching will be in English, do any of your students speak Mandarin? Are there bilingual textbooks available? We were also able to reassure ourselves about the classroom facilities, and confirm that the group will be arriving on 11 May. I think our partners were reassured as well, and are now confident that we are really coming!

It is this mutual reassurance which has proven to be the major benefit of this trip, I think. At the nine universities we have visited – with another scheduled for tomorrow morning – there has been an appreciation that we have bothered to make such a journey. There has been the opportunity to drink tea together, to consider the current state of our partnerships, and to discuss the possibilities of academic and scholarly exchanges. The most important thing, though, has been simply getting to put faces on to names and to start the building of personal relationships. In China, as in many other cultures, the personal relationship is an important part of any business partnership.

We built on the groundwork established by our various Chinese partners in their visits to Calgary, and by other University of Calgary visits to China. It is important, now, to build further by focusing our efforts on a few universities in this country. Multiple connections by different faculties will bring synergy far beyond anything a series of individual relationship can achieve.

In reflecting on the tangible outcomes from this trip, I can identify a number. These include:

• Detailed planning for a successful study abroad experience for University of Calgary students at Shantou University

• Agreement over an English language training program to be delivered to young professors at SouthWest Xiaotong Univeristy

• The possibility of a major program for the training of higher education administrators in Szechuan province • Identification and preliminary negotiation around two new potential placement sites for the Teaching Across Borders program of the Faculty of Education at the University of Calgary

• An opportunity for Vet. Science and Medicine researchers to collaborate in a major consortium examining Avian Influenza

• Enhanced access to a pool of graduate student applicants (Masters and Doctoral) in the fields of Engineering, Law and Social Work • Identification and preliminary discussions related to Group Study Programs and student exchanges in the areas of Asian history, archaeology, urban planning, comparative religious studies, world literature, and so forth.

Other lessons have been learned on this trip:

• We need much better communication and tighter coordination in Calgary.

- We arrived in one institution and were greeted by three University of Calgary students who were there on a practicum placement – we had no idea they were there!

- We arrived in a second institution and discovered that an Associate Dean from the University of Calgary was visiting the campus two days after we had left.

- We have no single “University of Calgary” publication that presents an overview of our university in a crisp, clean and reader-friendly style.

• We need to be more selective in whom we invite to visit to the University of Calgary, and to invest more in those visits

- People are busy, and meetings take time. We should only meet with those whose institutions are important to our strategic plan. However, we should be more generous of our time and hospitality for those whom we do welcome.

- If we are truly going to Internationalize our university, then we need to significantly and strategically invest resources in that process o We need a proper room to meet and greet important delegations.

- We need to publicize our key partners better, and be more welcoming of their visits.

The plane is coming in to land. It is time to close down the computer, and to get ready for a last night in Beijing. I’ve not tried Peking Duck yet …..

Shantou food: I don't think I've eaten those yet!