ACES Signs agreement with Jilin University, China
UI COLLEGE OF ACES SIGNS AGREEMENT WITH UNIVERSITY IN CHINA’S LARGEST AGRICULTURAL PROVINCE
URBANA, IL – Dean of the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES) Robert Easter and President of Jilin University Han Wenyu sat together to sign an agreement solidifying a partnership between universities situated in two of the largest agricultural production regions in the world. The agreement was signed during a ceremony held June 24, 2009 on UI’s Urbana campus as a part of a Jilin University delegation visit to campus.
“Jilin’s role as a university in one of the largest agricultural production regions of the country are key for developing future research collaborations between these two key agricultural producing regions of the world. We are hopeful to increase the number of faculty who are moving between our two campuses for research and teaching assignments, research data sharing and collaboration, and graduate student exchange” said Dr. Robert Hauser, Interim Director of ACES Global Connect, the college’s international office.
The relationship between the two universities began through a series of meetings with the Jilin delegation on campus this week and will be strengthened with a faculty visit to Jilin in September, 2009.
ACES Global Connect, the international arm of the College of ACES, is dedicated to enhancing the College’s mission of global preeminence through development of research, teaching and extension programs internationally. The College of ACES holds more than 40 international agreements with foreign institutions in more than 15 countries, and has more than ½ of its 250 faculty engaged in some program internationally.
Story from Inside Illinois week of July 13:
Unique international agricultural partnership to aid in collaborative research, teaching By Sharita Forrest Assistant Editor Universities in two of the world’s largest agricultural regions will collaborate on research and teaching. The UI’s College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences and Jilin University’s Heping Campus, located in northeastern China, signed a memorandum of understanding to develop research collaborations. The universities plan to facilitate the movement of faculty members and graduate students between them for collaborative research and teaching, and the sharing of research data. Robert Easter, dean of ACES and interim provost, and Wenyu Han, president of the Heping Campus, signed the agreement – four copies in Chinese and four copies in English –in a ceremony at the UI National Soybean Research Laboratory on June 24. Jilin University is located in Changchun, the capital city of Jilin Province, which has a population of about 3 million people. The university has eight campuses in five districts, which are home to 39 colleges that span 11 academic disciplines. One of the key research universities under China’s Ministry of Education, Jilin has an enrollment of about 63,000 full-time students, including 17,000 graduate students, and has 5,700 faculty members. A delegation of several officials from Jilin University visited the UI campus for two days for the signing of the agreement, which is expected to initiate research activities in areas of mutual interest, such as crop sciences, human nutrition and biotechnology. Easter said that he had observed the “vast capacity of that area to produce agricultural products, especially corn” during a trip to the Jilin Province in 1988, and that he is impressed with the progress that the region has made since. “It is truly unfortunate that it has taken us this long to find each other,” Easter added. Han, speaking through a translator, emphasized the shared teaching and research interests that Jilin and the UI share, and said that the formal agreement would make existing collaborations more practical and broaden them to many other areas. “We continue to recognize our global role in learning from international partner universities and hope that this signing will strengthen the movement of information to solve research problems facing Illinois stakeholders and residents of the Jilin Province in China,” said Robert Hauser, interim director of ACES Global Connect. ACES Global Connect is an engagement initiative established in 2001 that promotes the international dimension of research, teaching and outreach activities in the college. Among other initiatives, such as sponsoring seminars and speakers, ACES Global Connect has been helping rebuild the agricultural industry in Afghanistan by training Afghani researchers, faculty members and aid workers in the latest agricultural practices. The UI, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale and The North-West Frontier Province Agricultural University in Peshawar, Pakistan, are partners in the program. ACES Global Connect also sponsors a program for UI faculty members called ACES Academy for Global Engagement, which provides seven or eight faculty members with a yearlong series of scholarly and experiential activities in the global arena. The types of programs to be developed with Jilin University are yet to be decided, Hauser said. ACES has a faculty member who is an alumnus of Jilin University, and a graduate student from Jilin University is expected to enter the UI in the fall.