UMaine Offers New China Travel-Study Course
Contact: Tai Cheng, 581-3155
George Manlove, 581-3756
ORONO — The University of Maine is offering a unique travel-study course this spring on China, a 6,000-year-old country of 1.3 billion people that has transformed itself in less than 30 years from a third world communist nation to an increasingly capitalistic superpower.
The course, available to current college students and also members of the public, is offered through the UMaine Continuing and Distance Education Division. It includes two Saturday classes, April 21 and 28, and a 10-day trip to China, May 15-25. It is expected to be an annual course, offering students an examination of one of the world’s most intriguing countries. The focus of the China travel-study course will change each year.
In this first year, students taking “Business/Agribusiness in China” will see three major cities, Beijing, Shanghai and Suzhou. The class will concentrate on visiting multinational companies, industrial areas and key cultural and historical sites. Students also will study China’s growing political, business, academic and cultural frameworks.
Three professors are leading the course: Hsiang-Tai Cheng, professor of resource economics and policy, Donglin Zhang, professor of plant, soil and environmental sciences, and Vivian Chi-Hua Wu, professor of microbiology and food safety. Academic credit will be awarded in any one of four academic disciplines: business; resource economics and policy; economics; or food science and human nutrition.
Hsiang-Tai Cheng says the course will provide a view of China that clarifies Western perceptions about the massive country, which had been off-limits to Westerners until the early 1970s.
“Almost every day we hear news about China, about either people’s lives or economics,” says Cheng. “You can read all about how to do business in China, but when you get there and experience it and see it with your own eyes, you can add some substance to your perceptions.”
For Westerners planning business careers that most likely will involve China, it is essential to understand cultural nuances that influence business relationships, Cheng says.
China currently produces the majority of household and other items found in homes around the world and, at current growth rates, it is expected to have the world’s largest economy within just a few decades. Western businesses are looking to balance lop-sided trade scales through increased access to a burgeoning Chinese consumer base. China’s population grows by about 12 million people per year.
“Students will have first-hand experience of China and can see how fast it is growing and how China is managing this,” says Donglin Zhang, who also is a guest professor at Central South Forestry University in Changsha, Hunan, China.
In spite of its isolationist past, China more recently has realized that it must open its doors to global trade to sustain itself economically. The country now welcomes tourism and business opportunities, particularly as it prepares for the Beijing-based 2008 summer Olympics.
The UMaine travel-study course will include visits to famous sites including the Great Wall, Beijing’s Forbidden City and celebrated gardens and temples. It also will include conversations with students at Beijing University of Technology’s School of Economics and Management, a tour of the city of Suzhou’s industrial park and a visit to the Beijing Botanical Garden and Conservatory, Asia’s largest botanical garden research center.
Robert White, dean of the Division of Lifelong Learning, which oversees the university’s continuing and distance education programs, says the addition of China to the existing international travel-study courses reflects the institution’s ability to develop curricula in response to new global opportunities. The division also has travel-study courses scheduled in 2007 that involve visits to Alaska, Panama, Europe, Quebec and Greece.
The cost of the China travel-study course is $2,500 for travel and accommodations, plus tuition and fees, as well as the textbook, Harvard Business Review on Doing Business in China. Information about the China course and others is available on the Continuing and Distance Education website or by calling (207) 581-3414.