On April 13, Professor Minghai Wei, President of Guangzhou University, attended the 2022 QS(Quacquarelli Symonds) China Summit as one of the major speakers for its roundtable panel section and addressed the audience via the virtual conference platform.
The Summit aimed to gather local and international Chinese Higher Education experts to provide a roadmap to China’s success and explore Knowledge Environments: Expanding Education During and After the Pandemic.
The panel saw Professor Wei Minghai presenting Why Internationalization is Relevant to include the Alliance of Guangzhou International Sister-City Universities (GISU) and its goal of creating an ideal model of international collaboration among universities serving their communities.
President Wei mentioned that as a future-oriented innovative university, Guangzhou University will keep pace with the growth of our city and the Greater Bay Area’s role in internationalization. The University’s special geographical advantages, distinctive educational models, notable comprehensive strength for development as an innovative university place the university’s advanced academic programs in the world’s top 1%. Both Guangzhou University’s vision and mission statements specifically include the term international and our internationalization is evidenced in the establishment of exchange and cooperative relationships with more than 230 universities and institutions from 35 countries and regions throughout the world.
He introduced that GISU was initially founded with seven members and today represents 18 members, 15 countries, 17 cities with a combined population of over 40 million and over half a million students with 44,000 faculty and staff. He expected this number of members to continue to quickly expand as the Alliance targeted establishing university partnerships in all 101 sister-cities and friendly-cities. He also expected the Alliance to further increase benefits among other cities throughout the world. President Wei said that “If you shoot for the stars, you will at least hit the moon.” The Alliance reaches for a higher goal which is to become an ideal model of international collaboration among universities serving their communities.
The panel also covered:
· International Student Welfare During COVID and the Post-Pandemic Recovery in International Student Mobility–presented by Professor Barney Glover Ao, Vice-Chancellor and President, Western Sydney University
· Research Continuity During COVID19 – presented by Professor Kevin Dunn, Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research), Western Sydney University
· Pursuing New Paradigms for International Collaboration After the Onset of the Pandemic – presented by Professor Denis Bastieri, Professor of Physics and Astronomy, Guangzhou University
The session was moderated by Steve Farr, Director of International Programs for the Alliance of Guangzhou International Sister-City Universities, and Professor Yi-Chen Lan, Western Sydney University Pro-Vice Chancellor of Global Development and Provost of the Viet Nam campus.
Chinese