On 12th April, the delegation from Duke University, led by Dr. Sally Kornbluth, the provost, visited WHU to meet President Dou Xiankang and the academic and staff representative of WHU. Several meetings were held in the WHU Administration Building that afternoon during which the undergoing project and new proposals between two universities were discussed.
Delegations of Duke University and Wuhan University
Hosted by the vice-president of WHU, professor Li Fei, the meeting was divided into three parts: the speeches of President Dou and Dr. Provost Kornbluth, the free discussion session, and the gift-exchanging session. Executive President Feng Youmei, Academician Liu Jingnan,,and Cheng Xuemeng, Head of the Office of International affairs attended the meeting.
In the beginning, President Dou made a brief introduction of the history and the achievements of WHU and congratulated on the success of the first-stage collaboration between the two universities: the construction of Duke Kushan University. Via the platform of Duke Kushan University, WHU and Duke University are more closely bound. As for the plan for the next stage, President Dou presented several proposals: In the future, WHU will open all English taught classes to students from Duke University, and Duke will provide more opportunities for WHU students in their summer courses. Duke professors are encouraged to teach classes in WHU, and WHU faculty are supported to receive short-term trainings in Duke.
Delegates discussing the cooperative programs
Dr. Sally Kornbluth then expressed her gratitude to the host of WHU. She and the delegation held a very positive attitude towards President Dou’s proposals, and will follow up after they went back. She mentioned that more assistance was needed form WHU for the newly started recruitment of undergraduate students in DKU. A new proposal was made by Dr. Kornbluth: to establish a WHU-Duke Research Day, which has already been successfully practiced in top Chinese universities like Tsinghua University and Peking University.
In the later part of the conference, delegations from two universities further discussed the implementation of the proposals. They also mentioned the highly-achieved precedent example of the joint training between the two physics departments. A mutual agreement is reached in regard of the student and faculty exchange programs, as well as the joint training and assistance to DKU. After the gift exchange between Principle Dou and Provost Kornbluth, the conference ended in a pleasant atmosphere.
Edited by Tang Yedan, Liu Li & Hu Sijia
