In early September I traveled to China, surprisingly, for the first time. A portion of my visit was dedicated to meeting with some of my colleagues at Wuhan University in Hubei Province, one of the top 10 universities in China and an institution which has had ties to Ohio State for close to 30 years. I also had an opportunity to become better acquainted with Qingdao, situated along the eastern coast of the Shandong Peninsula, a location which welcomes an Ohio State study abroad program every year and is the second home to Galal Walker, a professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures, and director of OSU’s National East Asian Languages Resource Center and the Chinese Flagship Program.

At Wuhan, I met with university leadership to reaffirm Ohio State’s commitment to working cooperatively with them in a wide variety of fields including research, undergraduate education, law, physics and technology, chemistry and international programs. Currently, we are involved in a myriad of collaborative projects with Wuhan from language and cultural exchanges to faculty research to teaching Chinese as a second language.

We discussed new ideas for engagement including student exchanges, initiating programs for English as a Second Language, research exchanges for graduate students in chemistry and physics as well as finding ways to alleviate barriers, including financial, to enable highly qualified students from Wuhan to attend Ohio State for their graduate degrees.

In Qingdao, we partner with both Ocean University of China and Qingdao University. At Qingdao, our students attend an intensive Chinese language program for our students where they partner with Chinese students, stay with host families and/or with roommates in nearby dormitories, and interact in a wide range of Chinese cultural contexts with the vibrant local community.

Ohio State has worked hard to build one of the finest and well respected Chinese Flagship Programs in the United States, which also has instituted a strong internship program in China. Students have an opportunity to experience what it is like to work in international banking, grain distribution and wind turbines, among many other professions – in China and speaking Mandarin Chinese.

From my brief visit, it is clear that our partnerships with universities in China are flourishing and can only grow and prosper in the future. These types of engagements and collaborations are an essential part of what it means to be a global university. Our students and our faculty are experiencing it firsthand.