Contact Infomation:
Professor James Fairweather, Director,
Center for Higher and Adult Education,
416 Erickson,
Michigan State University,
East Lansing, MI 48824-1034
517-353-3387
fairwea4@msu.edu

CURRENT PROJECTS

An Exploration of Opportunities for HALE and for the Center for Higher and Adult Education

Dr. James Fairweather

MSU Participants: Jim Fairweather (Visiting Team Chair), Marilyn Amey (EAD Chair), Roger Baldwin (HALE Director), Kris Renn (Student Affairs Administration Program), Matt Wawrzynski (Student Affairs Administration Program), Korine Steinke (Representative of the Provost’s office of Undergraduate Student Research), Kang Li (HALE Ph.D. Student).

Dates: May 15-June 2 (Matt and Kris and Korine went first, followed by Jim and then by Marilyn and Roger).

Funding: Primary funding for the trip came from the China University of Geosciences and Harbin Institute of Technology. The Center supplemented the core funding from these two institutions.

Purposes:

1. To explore potential links with Chinese universities, including academic program links, research cooperation, etc. We explored opportunities both for HALE faculty and for HALE graduate students.
2. Approach: To take a large team of HALE folks to assess the usefulness of potential cooperative efforts, translation/language issues, etc. firsthand.
3. To kick start the new HALE Center as an active enterprise rather than as a paper one.
4. To enable HALE to demonstrate our efforts to explore working relationships with China and to add our expertise to the university effort to globalize faculty work and graduate student learning experiences.
5. To enable Student Affairs faculty members as well as those who did not see a place for themselves in a international program to make the assessment on site rather than from East Lansing.

The Itinerary:

1. Attend the regional (and to some extent national) conference on Student Affairs at the China University of Geosciences, located in Wuhan (a city of 7 or 8 million). Kris and Matt gave keynote speeches, Jim gave a short one. Our host was Peng Tao who has been at MSU previously and is anxious to have a formal working relationship with HALE. Matt and Kris also visited several Student Affairs offices. We also got to meet several people from other universities from Southeast Asia. We had a bit of time to visit two shrines in town but not much else. Throughout our hosts were cordial and desiring to please. We worked 15-16 hour days, gave speeches and presentation almost every day, ate regional “specialties” (those who love hot food will want to go to Wuhan), and earned substantial good will.
2. Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST) (in Wuhan). Here we gave presentations and met students and faculty in one of the elite higher education programs in China. Professor Shen Hong received her degree at SUNY-Buffalo with Bruce Johnstone. Most Higher Education and/or Student Affairs in China do not offer the doctorate; HUST is one that does. One of HUST’s doctoral students if doing dissertation work at U of M this fall and will stop by East Lansing. HUST is also interested in building a Student Affairs program.
3. Wuhan University. One of the top 5 or 6 universities in China, Wuhan University was interested in forming a 1-1 bridge program at the master’s level with HALE. Drawing on their experience with (formerly East) Germany, the university leaders seemed most interested in this particular type of arrangement.
4. Huazhong Normal University. A strong regional educational institution, the faculty members here understood higher education research and were very interested in sending their junior faculty to learn more about American higher education.
5. Huazhong Agricultural University (in Wuhan). Kang Li’s former university, where he was a faculty member. The Higher Education program offered a master’s degree.
6. Three Gorges University (Yichang City, 4 or 5 hours from Wuhan). On an unexpected stop, the HALE team gave a presentation and had an open discussion on student affairs and student development at this regional university.
7. Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT). Harbin is in Manchuria. Our host was professor Jing Hua who along with several colleagues visited us in East Lansing. HIT is a university given relatively high status in recent government funding programs. Their primary goal is to obtain a formal working relationship with a top American higher education program to assist them in obtaining government permission to offer a Ph.D. in higher education. On the plus side, several of their faculty members have been to and worked at MSU; one was a Humphrey Fellow.
8. Renmin University of China. Renmin was built by the Soviets in the 1950s. It is one of the top four universities in China. We met with folks with the Education Policy Center, which has an emphasis on higher education law and policy. It is likely than one of their doctoral students, Ben Free, will spend his year-long Fulbright Fellowship working with us in HALE (August 2008-Spring 2009).
9. Bejing Normal University. A very strong higher education program with faculty who carry out research as we know it. Their top professor (Zhou) is visiting UCLA this year. We will likely name him a Center Fellow and host a visit in February 2008.
10. Tsinghua University. Tsinghua and Peking University are the top two higher education institutions in China. We were warmly received and gave talks and met with doctoral students and faculty members. Similar to Bejing Normal, the quality of research on higher education here is high. There is also a strong interest in engineering and science education at the post-secondary level.
11. Peking University. Ma Wanhua was our host here. She knows Reitu Mabokela (HALE) and Seppo Holtta (University of Tampere) and is a member of their Fulbright New Century Scholar class. Mun Tsang, a former faculty member in EAD, runs the joint master’s program between Columbia Teacher’s College and Peking University. He offered to help us with any type of arrangement we’d like to set up. The faculty members have a strong interest in governance and finance.

Assessment:

1. China has a major interest in and need for Student Affairs. This need includes the training of administrators, developing academic programs, and working with students. Ironically this need is not limited to regional universities; it includes most of the national ones too. The market is large and HALE can choose from among many roles, including providing international experiences for students and faculty, developing exchange programs, and doing research.
2. Except for the top universities and academic programs, research in Student Affairs and in Post-secondary Education is descriptive and not as advanced as in the U.S. Nevertheless, the ongoing reform efforts in China present major research opportunities for HALE faculty and students interested in studying institutional reform.
3. At two or three of the top universities—Peking University especially—language in instruction (English) would not be a problem. In most other circumstances we needed translators (Kang Li was excellent). Language fluency varied by both institution and by role group. In some cases faculty members and students were fluent in English. In other cases, younger students were more fluent than faculty members.
4. China is heavily oriented toward status. One contribution we can make to Chinese higher education is to assist their leaders in focusing on improving program quality and other actions that improve quality rather than seeking to boost status by forming liaisons with other institutions.
5. Chinese universities are relatively new. Although the country is quite old, the primary form of higher education for centuries was one student working with one faculty member. The Chinese followed this Socratic model instead of building universities as complex organizations. The oldest modern Chinese university dates from the early 1900s.
6. All of the Chinese universities we visited were open to forming working relationships with HALE and the Center for Higher and Adult Education.