Leebron participates in 4th Chinese-Foreign University Presidents Forum in Nanjing

FROM RICE NEWS STAFF REPORTS

Rice President David Leebron was one of six presidents of American universities who participated in the Fourth Chinese-Foreign University Presidents Forum in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, by invitation of the Chinese Ministry of Education.

	DAVID LEEBRON

The three-day forum May 2-4 explored the theme of improving educational quality of universities and enhancing their development of human talent and potential.

In his remarks titled “Educating Creative Leaders: An Integrated Approach to Undergraduate Education,” Leebron told the forum participants that higher education today involves much more than conveying knowledge — it involves the students so that they experience firsthand how knowledge is learned and applied. Universities today must take responsibility for cultivating not only substantive knowledge in their students, but also skills and personal qualities that will lead them to assume leadership in their future professions, Leebron said.

The Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China began hosting these biennial forums in 2002 to facilitate exchanges between foreign university presidents and their Chinese counterparts and to showcase the achievements of Chinese higher education reform and development. The forum was not held in 2008 because of the Olympics, which took place in Beijing. Instead, the Ministry of Education invited a small number of foreign university presidents, including Leebron, to attend the opening ceremony for the Olympics.

About 20 foreign university presidents attended the 2010 forum in Nanjing, including representatives of University of Cambridge, University of Oxford, Technical University of Munich, Kyoto University and Korea University. In addition to Rice, the American universities represented were Yale, Stanford, Chicago, UCLA and Duke. Presidents from about 120 Chinese universities were there, including Peking University, Tsinghua University and virtually all the other top Chinese institutions of higher education.

The Ministry of Education also invited the foreign university presidents participating in the forum to attend the opening ceremonies of the Shanghai Expo 2010 on April 30. China’s president, Hu Jintao, presided over the ceremonies.

While in Nanjing, Leebron and Y. Ping Sun reunited with several of the presidents of universities who participated in the China-Rice Leadership Forum held at Rice in 2007. Rice was chosen by the Chinese Ministry of Education and the State Administration of Foreign Expert Affairs of China to host that event.

After the forum in Nanjing concluded, Leebron and Sun held additional meetings with university leaders in Nanjing, Shanghai and Beijing to discuss Rice’s ongoing collaborations with leading Chinese universities.