Making Inroads Into China

Professor Henry Wang has been the leader in these initiatives within our department, establishing partnerships with a number of Chinese universities. Two of our undergraduate students participated in the UM-SJTU Joint Institute Summer Program in 2006, taking courses taught by U–M engineering faculty alongside Chinese students, as well as taking Chinese culture courses. Thanks to Henry Wang and Michael Colarossi (BSE ’98) two of our students, one of whom participated in the UM-SJTU program, had extensive internships at Akzo Nobel Coatings–Industrial Finishes China. In establishing these internships, Michael returned to Ann Arbor to discuss such opportunities with our students, share his experiences living in China, and interview applicants. “I was extremely impressed with the quality, enthusiasm and practicality of the candidates I met,” he mentioned after the latest interview trip, “that attitude is the true value of a Michigan Engineering education.” In addition to a challenging and rewarding experience, Akzo Nobel provided them with visa assistance, a monthly stipend, and housing. Student David Carpenter remarked “I had a wonderful time in China and enjoyed every minute of it. In addition to the work, I was able to travel to many nearby tourist attractions. The experience gained will certainly have an influence on my future studies and career.” Akzo Nobel is expanding the initiative to other areas of the University, and Mike has made permanent positions available to a number of our alumni.

Tianjin University, whose chemical engineering department is ranked number one in China and has one of the largest enrollments, at 1600 undergraduate students, is another school with which we are building significant collaborations. Several faculty members, including Levi Thompson, Phil Savage, Ron Larson, and Henry Wang, taught or co-taught courses at Tianjin University in Summer 2006. Phil Savage (with graduate students at Great Wall in photo above) in taught about half of our graduate reaction engineering course to a class of 100 students.  “In some ways, Tianjin’s campus is like Michigan’s,” he reports. “There are diag-like open spaces, sculptures, and public art, and lots of buildings. It definitely feels like a University campus. The course was two weeks long, with one lecture in the morning and a second in the afternoon. For most of the students, it was the first time they had a course in English by a native speaker. The students were very attentive, respectful, and polite.”

Research relations have been the key focus of our interactions with Tianjin University. Henry Wang developed a proposal with Professor Yinjin Yuan of STJU to allow for such interactions, and professors Ralph Yang, Bob Ziff, and Nick Kotov have visited and given seminars there in the past year, initiating fruitful research relationships. Ralph Yang, for example, gave a seminar on his team’s work developing new materials for hydrogen storage, and began a research collaboration with Professor Chang-Jun Liu on novel ways to treat catalysts for enhanced hydrogen storage capacity. They have been exchanging samples, with delivery taking 4 or 5 days from door to door. “Aided by email communication,” states Ralph, “the world has become so small.”

SJTU and Tianjin are not the only universities our department is interacting with. Ralph Yang, among others, has also visited several other Chinese universities. “Their governments, both central and local, are very willing to invest in research and education, and their system is more or less modeled after ours,” he reports.

Our students also benefit from having SJTU and Tianjin University students participating in courses here in Ann Arbor. One hundred and thirty- one SJTU students have transferred to the College of Engineering to pursue degrees. The UM-SJTU Joint Institute enrolled the first class of incoming freshmen in fall of 2006 in Shanghai, and it is expected that we’ll see up to a dozen of them in our chemical engineering courses starting Fall 2008. This will create invaluable opportunities for our students to broaden their understanding of intercultural issues and prepare for global opportunities.

“For someone who was born in China but had been away for more than 38 years, the changes in China are astounding,” says Henry Wang, “I am also impressed with the changes in their universities even though we are still far ahead in our education and research programs. Our faculty and particularly our students must learn how to engage them now and in the future. I do encounter many cultural differences when dealing with the faculty and the students in Tianjin and SJTU. I can now appreciate the root causes of some of the frictions in trade and politics discussed in the popular press. The only way to reduce these is for us to go there and learn more about this country and surrounding ones.”

Article from the 2007 Chemical Engineering Newsletter.