School builds international outlook on campus

（来源：《中国日报》2013-8-30 4版）

Education professionals are looking at developing sum­mer school courses to boost internationalization in higher education.

The University of Interna­tional Business and Econom­ics launched a four-week international summer school program in July, which attract­ed more than 2,000 students, including from foreign uni­versities.

Under the program, the university invited 92 scholars and professors from different countries, including the Unit­ed States, Canada, Australia and Germany, to give lessons on economics, management, literature, jurisprudence, lin­guistics and physical educa­tion.

“This is to build an inter­national atmosphere on cam­pus. Through the program, we hope students can improve their individual development and international competitive­ness,” said Zhao Zhongxiu, the university’s vice-president.

“These courses, taught by famous scholars, will help the students to extend their intel­lectual horizon and experience the most advanced research issues. The program not only offers an opportunity for aca­demic enrichment, but also provides a platform for inter­national cultural exchange,” he said.

Summer courses in the university were launched last year. Students from 2010 and 2011 can decide on their own to select summer courses as primary or supplementary courses. The 2012 undergrad­uates have been mandated summer courses as major requirements.

Peng Boyi, 20, a sophomore at the university, selected international finance as his summer course.

The course is an introduc­tion to global financial man­agement, especially to the foreign exchange market, the risks inherent in that market, and the tools used to manage those risks, he said.

“My major is about logis­tics. I have learned about international finance before, but I still learned something new from my foreign profes­sor,” he said.

“For instance, foreign pro­fessors gave examples from other countries to illustrate, creating a kind of global per­spective to think about eco­nomic issues,” he said.

Peng’s class is taught by Ralph Huenemann, profes­sor emeritus at Peter B. Gus­tavson School of Business in the University of Victoria, Canada.

Huenemann simulates for­eign exchange trading in class.

“Students like playing with computers and it is fun. Stu­dents set up their accounts. If it’s fun it’s easier to learn,’’ he said.

The professor spent about 15 years from 1988 working in China for the World Bank.

“It is hard to explain why I am so interested in China. I studied Chinese when I grad­uated from university when I was 20. That was unusual in the US at the time since China was completely unde­veloped,” Huenemann said.

The professor taught a course on the Chinese econ­omy in Tajikistan last sum­mer.

Huenemann said com­pared with regular courses teaching for four months, the one-month summer course is a challenge. “Now I am just thinking about how to make a one-month course a good course.”（By JIN ZHU）

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