By JAMES BELL
Hays Post
Fort Hays State University recently celebrated its expanded partnerships in China with visits to commencement ceremonies as students wrapped up their academic year.
The four-stop tour also marked the first trip to the partner schools since 2019.
The FHSU delegation included President Tisa Mason and Provost Jill Arensdorf along with Joe Bain, FHSU general council, Phil Whittkorn, academic partnership director, Haley Williams, global affairs operations director, and Jing Wang, Sias-FHSU presidential scholar.
“We were able to visit our two longest and largest partnership schools there, which is where we held the commencements at Sias University and Shenyang Normal University,” Williams said.
They also made a stop at a brand-new partner school, Wuxi University.
Altogether Williams said the Chinese partnership programs serve about 4,000 students in various fields.
“Many of them are business majors,” she said. “We also have Organizational Leadership, Health Studies and Global Business English. (They) were primarily the ones that we saw graduate when we were there this spring.”
The majority of those students at Sias and Shenyang University receive lessons from FHSU instructors in person for a third of their academic journey while at their home university.
“I think something else that's really profound and is a kind of a trademark thing for Fort Hays is we send about 40 faculty to live and teach in China every year,” Williams said. “And so that's a huge part of what our office does in supporting them just through the visa process and integrating into living in teaching in China.”
“Of course, their academic department plays a huge role as well as in supporting them. It is a really unique model that we have, and it's had a huge impact.”
“That's all by design,” said FHSU chief communications officer Scott Cason. “Since the inception of this program, what they have wanted was American-style education in the classroom.”
“So our model, when it was developed, was pretty unique. It's still kind of, I think, the standard model for how you deliver courses in a country like China. These are not courses out of a box. This is an emulation of the FHSU experience that they would get on our campus here.”
“Really, the vision of that…was East Meets West education,” Williams said. “It's fulfilling the Fort Hays mission statement to develop, engage global citizen leaders. And so, we're doing that in a very unique way.”
FHSU’s partnerships in China date back 23 years with Sias University.
The partnership with Wuxi University is just getting started with 73 students with recruitment for next year underway.
Students from that program will spend their fourth year on the FHSU campus.
“Hays is such a wonderful, small, safe community that a lot of times when Chinese students come here, they really find Hays to bring a new sense of home for them,” Williams said. “And they really enjoy their experience of living and learning in our community and on our campus.
Along with the universities, the delegation met with Educare International Incorporated.
“This partnership began about five years ago and is really a unique model that has been just a wonderful working relationship and partnership for Fort Hays,” Williams said.
Their model is non-degree seeking and helps expedite degrees from other English-speaking universities around the world.
“They recruit these students to Fort Hays to take a couple of courses to help save money,” Williams said.
During the trip, the delegation also attended a residential life conference and visited the Soybean Innovation Center, which receives soybeans directly from Kansas.
“It was cool to be able to support what the commerce in Kansas is doing there,” Williams said.
