BOWLING GREEN, Ky. (Nov. 2, 2012) — WKU President Gary Ransdell and the Confucius Institute hosted five delegates from the CI’s sister university, North China Electric Power University, for the second annual executive board meeting Oct. 28-29.
More than a year ago, the Confucius Institute created an executive board that consisted of Dr. Ransdell; Dr. Wei-Ping Pan, director of the Confucius Institute at WKU; LiuJizhen, president of North China Electric Power University; Mary Nixon, vice president of Yum! Brands; Dr. Kechang Xie, vice president and academician of Chinese Academy of Engineering; and Dr. David Lee, dean of WKU’s Potter College of Arts & Letters.
The purpose of the executive board is to help guide the vision for the Confucius Institute at WKU and to enhance cooperation between NCEPU, WKU and Hanban/Confucius Institute headquarters. In addition, the committee reviews and assesses theinstitute in the areas of budgeting, staff management, Hanban Chinese Teacher Program, community events and programming, and publicity, and reviews plans for the following year.
The inaugural meeting took place in December 2011 in Beijing, China. This year’s meeting took at the Martin Regents Room in WKU’s Mass Media and Technology Hall.
This year the CI at WKU reviewed its assessment report for 2012, and the plan to increase the number of Hanban Chinese Teachers for 2013-2014 academic year from 33 to potentially 40, and increase the number of Kentucky certified teachers.
Dr. Ransdell said he is excited about the Symphony at WKU’s trip to China in May 2013, with the support of NCEPU, Hebei University and Hanban. The once-in-a-lifetime excursion to China will include 54 members of the Symphony at WKU, led by Dr. Bill Scott, and more than 40 WKU donors and alumni. While in China, the Symphony will perform at three venues —NCEPU in Beijing, NCEPU in Baoding and Hebei University in China. For information concerning the trip,visit http://alumni.wku.edu/china2013.
“I greatly appreciate Dr. Ransdell’s intentional support for promotion of the Chinese language and culture within WKU and Kentucky,” President Liu Jizhen said.
The WKU-CI and Hanban, China’s Ministry of Education, work to promote understanding of the Chinese language and culture through children’s programming, training courses, cultural workshops and community events. Together, these organizations have introduced fully articulated K-16 instruction in Modern Standard Chinese into local school systems, serve as a regional center for Chinese teacher training and Chinese curriculum development, and build connections and partnerships between Kentucky and China.
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