The Duke Center for International Development (DCID) hosted 23 officials from Huaqiao University in China’s coastal Fujian province for a two-week program on management and innovation in higher education.
During the program, held Aug. 14-25, participants heard from Duke faculty and staff on best practices for recruiting qualified students and faculty, building community partnerships, increasing post-graduate employment and using modern tools and technology for research. They also heard from Duke University President Richard Brodhead and Provost Sally Kornbluth on the university’s vision, strategic planning process and partnerships around the globe.
In addition to their sessions at Duke, participants visited several local educational institutions, including the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, North Carolina State University and Durham Technical Community College.
“The interactive style of the teachers and administrators, as well as the knowledge they have shared, has made this a very meaningful program,” said Zhang Xiang-Qian, director of development and planning at Huaqiao University. “We hope we can apply what we have learned at Duke to our day-to-day work, and we also hope teachers and administrators at Duke can learn from us and that it leads to further collaboration between faculty and students of both universities.”
Huaqiao University was founded in 1960 to allow students with overseas Chinese backgrounds, such as those from Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau, to pursue higher education in mainland China. It has 24,000 full-time on-campus students, including 3,000 overseas students from 29 countries such as Malaysia, Thailand, Japan, the United States and Argentina.
