Bryant forging economic, educational ties to China

LOOKING EASTWARD: Bryant University President Ronald K. Machtley with a delegation of Chinese officials led by Ping Hao, vice minister of education for the People’s Republic of China, center, wearing glasses, on April 7. / PBN PHOTO/RUPERT WHITELEY
LOOKING EASTWARD: Bryant University President Ronald K. Machtley with a delegation of Chinese officials led by Ping Hao, vice minister of education for the People’s Republic of China, center, wearing glasses, on April 7. / PBN PHOTO/RUPERT WHITELEY

Ronald K. Machtley, president of Bryant University, raised his glass of baijiu, a Chinese white liquor, and toasted the signing of two new educational partnership agreements with the People’s Republic of China, paraphrasing a Chinese saying popularized by Mao Zedong: “Each new partnership begins with a single step.”
The signing ceremony took place at the president’s residence on April 7, featuring a delegation of Chinese officials led by Ping Hao, the vice minister of education for the People’s Republic of China, the equivalent of U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.
Under the first new partnership agreement, Bryant would create its own campus in southern China at the Beijing Institute of Technology in Zhuhai.
“We will have our own campus in southern China, teaching Chinese, American and Southeast Asian students,” Machtley told Providence Business News.
“We hope to start this fall,” he continued, saying that Duke University and New York University already have received their temporary approvals. “We hope to be the next approval,” he said.
Though Bryant has a signed document, it is still awaiting an official temporary approval, the next step in the process. Hao has the authority to grant that but did not do so at the ceremony. All such approvals must come from the Chinese government, and Bryant expects that to happen.
The first agreement was signed by Machtley and Taoguang Wang, chairman of the board of the Beijing Institute of Technology in Zhuhai, where the new Bryant campus will be located.
The second partnership agreement creates a new home for the U.S.-China Institute and the Confucius Institute on the Bryant campus, a building that will be a reconstruction of a section of the Forbidden City, or Shu Fang Zhai, the only such replica in the world, according to Machtley.
Under the agreement, Chinese students will come to study at Bryant to earn their master’s degrees in environmental management.
Machtley likened the new agreements to building two ends of a bridge, with Bryant’s school in China as one end, and the replica of the Forbidden City [on the Bryant campus] as the other end.
Machtley said the new joint educational partnerships will open doors for small businesses in Rhode Island to expand operations and markets to China, and for Chinese investors to connect with Rhode Island companies. “We could be the catalyst to help jump-start the Rhode Island economy,” he said. The groundwork for the new partnerships was developed as part of Bryant’s Vision 2020 planning, which targeted global engagement as a way to expand the world of opportunity, according to Elizabeth O’Neil, executive director of university relations at Bryant. The goal is to build “a powerful network of strategic outposts and international collaborations,” she said.
Two building blocks of Bryant’s strategic educational partnership with China were the establishment of the U.S.-China Institute in 2005 on the Bryant campus, to forge academic, business and cultural partnerships with higher-learning institutions, business enterprises and governmental offices in China, and the Confucius Institute, established in October 2006, to promote exchanges for K-12 schools and communities in New England.
In 2012, to help cement Bryant’s emergence as a leader in international education, the university established the position of vice president of international affairs and appointed Hong Yang, professor of science and technology and director of Bryant’s U.S. China Institute and Confucius Institute, to this post.
Yang has been a member of the Bryant community since 1996 and is the founding director of the U.S.-China Institute.
Another important hallmark of Bryant’s collaboration with China has been Machtley’s personal involvement. He has traveled to China once or more each year for more than a decade to enhance Bryant’s relationship, according to O’Neil. The “unprecedented reconstruction of a section of the Shu Fang Zhai, the first and only replica of the Forbidden City to be built outside of China,” O’Neil said, is the result of several years’ effort to develop a working relationship with the Chinese government and the Palace Museum.
Chinese culture was in the forefront at the signing ceremony, with green tea imported from China served to guests, and Chinese music played during the event. Kati Machtley, the wife of the Bryant president, wore a special Chinese silk jacket she said she had purchased in China, and she exchanged friendship pins with members of the delegation, including a Rhode Island-China pin, a pin commemorating Bryant’s 150 anniversary, and a Confucius Institute pin.
A traditional dragon team dance, featuring Bryant students, was performed following the signing ceremony. Lt. Gov. Elizabeth H. Roberts, who attended the ceremony to represent Rhode Island at the behest of Gov. Lincoln D. Chafee, said the new partnerships will strengthen Bryant’s relationship with China.
“What it means is that Bryant University will have strengthened its relationship to China, as well as strengthening links with the Chinese economy to the business school, building a bilateral connection,” Roberts said.
Lisa Churchville, a member of the Bryant University board of directors, called the new partnership an important component of building an educational program for students of the 21st century.
“The influence will be both ways,” she said. “China is very important to the U.S. economy’s supply chain. It’s important to open a two-way street so that everyone is aware of the power and the value of the relationship. We’ll be bringing students over here, as well as sending students to China.”
Xiquin Zhang, director of International Cooperation and Exchanges with the Chinese Ministry of Education, said that China was very excited about the new partnerships with Bryant. She said that China has been very forward about setting up joint academic degree programs with educational partners here in the United States, with more than 1,000 such programs.
In China, however, Bryant would be joining a select group of about 70 programs with campuses in China. She said that there were very competitive entrance tests to enable Chinese students to enter the university.
Yun Xiao, who directs the language program at Bryant University, which offers four languages to students – French, Italian, Spanish and Chinese, said that the new partnership would help to keep “the language of business connected.”
Business students at Bryant, as part of their educational curriculum, need to take a minor in a language, she explained. “A lot of students go to China twice,” Xiao said. “We help to prepare those students.”
For Rhode Island, the new partnerships were as much economic in nature as they were cultural, according to Machtley. “Our companies will be able to grow in China, and we’ll be able to serve as a conduit to help [Rhode Island companies] find Chinese partners.” While many large Rhode Island companies have already made that transition, he continued, “there is still room for many smaller companies.” •

No posts to display