China Initiative - 2008
December 6-14, I made my first trip outside of the U.S. as dean. With Paul Layer from the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, I traveled to the People's Republic of China and to Taiwan as part of the University of Alaska China initiative.
The trip was arranged and paid for by UA Vice President Affairs Dan Julius who met us in Beijing along with UA President Mark Hamilton.
We met with nine universities in five days, traveling from Beijing to Dalian, Qingdao, Kaohsiung, Taipei and Keelung. The universities with which we signed agreements to cooperate were the Dalian University of Technology, Northeastern University (Shenyang), Dalian Maritime University, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin Engineering University, Ocean University of China (Qingdao), I-Shou University, National Kaohsiung Normal University, and National Taiwan Ocean University. Further discussions will be held to determine the value in student, faculty, and administrator exchanges with these universities and a follow-up meeting in Fairbanks is being organized by VPAA Julius. I will provide a more detailed report on the UA China initiative separately.
At the National Taiwan Ocean University, we had a chance to tour both their facilities and their oceanographic research vessel, Ocean Researcher No. 2. The scientists were about to depart on a cruise to recover some bottom pressure sensors and one of them knew Tom Weingartner.
With this trip to Asia, I have now traveled to six of the seven continents and I hope to make it to Antarctica in the next few years.