April 28, 2010|By Kristen Mack, Tribune reporter
The University of Chicago announced Monday in Beijing that it will open a center there this fall, serving as a base for programs in business, medicine and culture for American and Chinese students.
Robert Zimmer, the university's president, said the Center in Beijing represents the university's long-term commitment to build relationships in China, to foster research and education, and to exchange ideas.
"The Center in Beijing will be an intellectual destination and a permanent base for University of Chicago scholarship in China," Zimmer said. "After more than a century of significant research collaborations between China and Chicago, the center will provide a focus for building upon that legacy."
The broad areas of study will include business, economics and policy; science, medicine and public health; and culture, society and the arts. It will house the university's civilization abroad program and will offer an extensive language program. The center will not grant degrees.
In the Haidian District of Beijing, the 23,000-square-foot center will provide space for seminars and conferences, as well as faculty offices and study areas. It is scheduled to open on Sept. 15.
"Given the transformations happening in China, we want to elevate the level of engagement," said Dali Yang, the faculty director of the center who is a political science professor with an expertise in China's economy. "People in China don't feel comfortable picking up the phone and dialing the United States or sending an e-mail. It's too important not to have a presence there."
Beyond being the capital of China, Beijing also has 750,000 college students, Yang said, who essentially make it the world's largest college town.
"The intellectual ecology is right," Yang said. Erecting a building there will signal, in concrete terms, that the university plans to capitalize on collaborations already under way in China.
Yang chaired a faculty committee that recommended forming the center in 2008 after it cataloged dozens of research partnerships between Chicago scholars and their Chinese counterparts. Examples range from work on leukemia with leading Chinese hospitals to partnerships with Chinese paleontologists studying dinosaurs. University trustees approved forming the center last year.
In 2004, the university opened its Center in Paris, which takes Chicago faculty overseas to teach U. of C. curriculum across disciplines. The university's Booth School of Business has campuses in London and Singapore.
kmack@tribune.com
