Nurturing a partnership with new Chinese liberal arts college
The path Bill Frame walked each day between his Zhuhai apartment and the UIC campus
After a six week-stint in Hong Kong and southern China, Bill Frame has seen Chinese higher education in much greater detail. The former president of Augsburg College has had a hand in nurturing the development of United International College (UIC) — a new liberal arts college in Zhuhai, China. "This is a unique and exciting opportunity that can advance the capacity and readiness of both of our countries to embrace the global society in which we now find ourselves," Frame says. He consulted with faculty and staff to identify and begin developing the details of the partnership agreement the Minnesota Private College Council (MPCC) signed earlier this year with UIC. The partnership will foster staff, faculty and student exchanges between UIC and interested members of the Minnesota Private College Council.
"Here's a college that needs us, and the six members of the Council that are initially collaborating in the partnership acknowledge that we need UIC," Frame says. "Of the three distinguishing elements of UIC's identity — English-speaking, international and liberal arts — the one we can really help with is liberal education. After all, our faculties and leadership share the relatively new conviction that the humanities as well as the other liberal arts and sciences must be constantly present ingredients in the teaching of the professional arts — not merely a preparation for professional training."
Frame states that China has had great success in graduating specialists in science and math, but it hasn't cultivated the skills that produce leaders. UIC intends to graduate men and women who are capable of leadership by means of mission and strategy. Its education features critical thinking and deliberative conversation, and supposes that "an open mind,” as Frame puts it, "helps liberate imagination and ingenuity."
Re-introducing liberal arts
The agreement with the Minnesota Private College Council is the first UIC has reached with an American college or group of colleges. UIC itself is the product of a partnership between Beijing Normal and Hong Kong Baptist Universities. It is the first fully sanctioned liberal arts college to be created in China since the early 20th century.
UIC opened in fall 2005 and currently has 1,200 students and 11 majors. The eventual target enrollment is 4,000-4,500 with half of the enrollment places filled by students from abroad. The expectation is that UIC graduates will be bi-lingual and combine professional competency with broad cultural literacy.
Visits by UIC leader and students
This summer, 30 UIC students will visit six MPCC members, spending one week on each campus. They will earn academic credit from UIC by writing about the role of Minnesota's private liberal arts colleges in preparing immigrant and native populations for life in a free society. The hosting institutions include Augsburg College, Bethany Lutheran College, Concordia College, Gustavus Adolphus College, Hamline University and the College of St. Scholastica. To help prepare for student visits, Dr. Edmund Kwok, executive vice president of UIC, visited each campus during a 10-day trip May 17-27. As part of his trip, Kwok promoted new ideas for connecting Minnesota and China; his meetings included business leaders as well as directors Tony Lorusso from the Department of Trade and Susan Heegaard of the Minnesota Office of Higher Education.
Frame anticipates that the collaboration will also include semester or yearlong teaching stints by MPCC faculty and teaching assistants starting this fall. "This is an opulent opportunity to get a big taste of China at a critical moment in history and in the Pearl River Delta — China's manufacturing and export center,” Frame says. The first MPCC student exchange with UIC is planned for next spring.
A mutual benefit
The collaboration among MPCC colleges to accommodate the partnership is a healthy development and the exchange can help bring Chinese and U.S. higher education into a regular dialogue. "We need to understand each other's national educational objectives,” Frame says. "And we each may find things in the other's traditions that help us practice the collaboration required in the new global society that we share.”