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GFU will host Chinese students |
By David Sale, Newberg Graphic reporter
E-mail David at dsale@eaglenewspapers.com |
George Fox University
will welcome about 20 Chinese exchange students to Newberg this fall
as part of an agreement with the Hunan Institute of Science and
Technology, located in the Hunan province of south central China.
“It will be a long-term involvement, building a community that’s
part of the George Fox campus,” admissions director Dale Sipe said
of the exchange program. “It’s an opportunity to give our students —
and also the Chinese students — an experience in keeping with the
school’s philosophy of globalization.”
The agreement was organized by GFU professor Thomas Peng, himself a
Fox alum, who has helped create similar exchange programs for other
schools.
“It was the right idea at the right time,” Sipe said.
Sipe and Peng, along with former college president Dr. David
Brandt, traveled to China for 10 days in April, meeting with college
administrators in Hunan province and U.S. embassy officials to work
out the details of the exchange.
“The campus is located in Yuyang City, which has a population of
about four million,” Sipe said. “It’s comparable to a large public
university in the United States. China has a very competitive
application system — students sit for a national exam to determine
which schools they’re eligible to attend. There’s a multi-tier
system, with schools ranked at the national and provincial levels.”
“This school has a concentration of engineering majors, but not all
the students that are coming to Fox are engineering majors. There
are several business and psychology students, a music major — it’s a
wide range.”
Visas have already been issued for 12 of the students, who will
arrive Aug. 21 in Oregon.
“We actually met with most of the initial group for short
interviews,” Sipe said. “We wanted to be sure the students had some
level of conversational English and would be able to follow their
course work in that language.”
The exchange students will also assist Peng in holding
Chinese-language workshops for other Fox students, with an eye
toward a reciprocal exchange.
“Ultimately, our goal is to send students from this campus to visit
China,” Sipe said. “A group of business majors went in May and we’re
hoping to expand on that.”
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Published
July 7, 2007, Newberg Graphic
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