For students interested in spending time in China to further their studies or to make a few dollars as an English teacher, some new agreements between Miami University and a few top universities in China will make that a possibility.
Quanyu Huang, director of Miami University's Confucius Institute, has announced an agreement signed Saturday with Sun Wat-Sen University in China to send five students to China as part of an exchange program.
Sun Wat-Sen, a top university located near Hong Kong according to Huang, will also be sending five students to Miami studying German in the fall.
An additional component to this agreement, completed through the College of the Arts and Sciences and the German Russian and East Asian Languages (GREAL) Department with the help of Huang, is the opportunity for Miami graduates to teach English at Sun Wat-Sen for a year and be paid 6,000 yuan per month. According to The Economist, this would be equivalent to approximately $850 at the current exchange rate. The issue of paying for room and board is to yet to be determined.
"If you can study at a top 10 university it's already great, but if you can be a teacher at a top 10 university it's even better," Huang said. "It's a very valuable experience which will be very good for you to have on your resume."
Unlike the exchange program with Sun Wat-Sen, the teaching aspect of the agreement is only open to Miami graduates with a bachelor's degree.
Furthermore, Sun Wat-Sen will be buying housing on a beach by its Zhuhai campus for up to 24 Miami faculty to live while visiting China, calling the housing 'Miami Family.' This housing, exclusively for Miami faculty, enables teachers to also come and teach within an exchange program at Sen Wat-Sen.
"The city of Zhuhai is very beautiful," Huang said. "Zhuhai is the only city in China with no industrial pollution. They tried to make this city clean, as you know how serious pollution is, but this city is beautiful. They tried to make it only for tourists and the campus is very beautiful."
The second agreement announced by Huang was done with Liaoning Normal University in Dalian Monday. Liaoning, a school Huang described as a 'partner school' with Miami dating back to August 2007, is offering a full scholarship to two students each year in conjunction with the Chinese government's China Scholarship Council.
This agreement covers the full tuition of the students selected, including room and board and all students, undergraduates or graduates, at Miami can apply.
The scholarship will cover a maximum of four years for undergraduates and up to three years for graduate students looking to pursue their master's degrees.
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Senior Lisa Armour was happy that Miami could help her find a teaching job in China and said she was interested in applying.
"I'm really excited about it because I really wanted to go to China to teach English and I was really having a hard time finding a place to go," Armour said. "I was just going to go to China and find a job when I got there, but then I talked to Dr. Huang and he told me about this whole program."
With the agreements being made at a time where many students have already planned what they will be doing for fall semester, Director of International Education David Keitges said it wasn't much of a concern if Miami was not able to send five students to China this fall.
"Usually the way things work out, (two exchange schools) don't always start out both sides in the same year," Keitges said. "We don't always send them the same semester. Sometimes they might start in one year and we might start the next year. Every exchange is different, it just depends on how the university wants to operate it."
Keitges also added that having these agreements and academic opportunities in place signifies a strong commitment to China by Miami.
"This means that a strong focus at Miami is China, and that is entirely appropriate given the rising of China as a world power and the effect it will have on the global economy and careers of our students," Keitges said. "It also indicates that more of our students are studying Chinese, of which there are now 300 at Miami, with half of those being business majors who don't even have language requirements."
GREAL chair Robert DiDonato also noted the agreements extend beyond just the student body.
"The opportunity for faculty is to go there (China) and give short courses and a series of lectures," DiDonato said. "These courses can be on all different topics in liberal education. Chinese faculty will also have the opportunity to come teach here. We have a woman coming to teach a course in the school of education and one in Chinese in 2009."
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