Diary of a China visit
By: Communications
UEA Pro-Vice-Chancellor for International, Prof Steven McGuire, has visited China to develop the University's relationship and collaboration in arts and humanities with other Chinese institutions. Here, he keeps a daily record of his trip, and some of the exciting opportunities developing for UEA in Asia.
We are at the Communications University of China, Nanjing (CUCN) to build on what is already a strong relationship with UEA in the arts and humanities. I was joined in the UEA delegation by Tom Roebuck, Karen Blackney, Tim Hubbard and Jeremy Qian. We met Prof Emma Chen, Ms Betty Shang, Ms Yifei Yang and Ms Elsa Shen.
UEA and CUCN are now working on a proposal for a joint institute to be housed on the Nanjing campus. The institute plans to offer a range of undergraduate courses across media, film, communication, and creative arts, with the potential for exciting trans-disciplinary collaborations across the university.
In addition, both institutions see the collaboration as a way of enriching the research environment at both universities, building on the success of CreativeUEA; joint funding applications, and publications firmly are on the agenda.
CUCN is also keen to welcome our home undergraduates as visiting students. Interest in the creative industries is growing in countries like China, so we hope this collaboration grows strongly over the coming years.
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Several of us travelled to Wenzhou - a medium-sized Chinese city of 10 million people - located south of Shanghai. Our China office has been working hard on concluding a novel, collaborative programme with Wenzhou Business College, a young university focused on the professions and now home to some 20,000 students.
The Wenzhou delegation was led by the Vice-Chancellor, Tang Ruo, and the Dean of International Faculty, Professor Cao Jiang. The session included a large number of students who plan to enrol on the UEA-Wenzhou partnership.
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A day of meetings in Shanghai that perfectly illustrated the importance of UEA's broad subject offer. The morning was given over to a visit to the Shanghai International Fashion Education Centre (SIFEC). Located in a bustling neighbourhood in central Shanghai, SIFEC has developed exceptionally strong links with the significant arts, fashion and creative sector in the city.
SIFEC and UEA plan to work together to develop students' knowledge of business and management, notably marketing and branding through Norwich Business School. We also discussed ways that our complementary strengths across arts and media could be used in new projects.
The afternoon was an opportunity to visit Renji Hospital, a major medical school associated with Shanghai Jiao'Tong University. Renji is a vast and impressive operation, which utilises digital technologies to facilitate delivery of its services - everything from prescriptions to surgery - at scale and remotely. We talked about opportunities for collaboration on nursing education and on continuing professional development for their clinicians.