Columbia Brings Students to China Over the Summer

Editor's note:

The summer of 2014 was exciting and eventful at Columbia Global Centers | Beijing. While continuing student projects such as Global Scholars Program with Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia Experience Overseas internship program with the Center for Career Education, the literature humanities reading salon Symposium China Project with a group of Columbia student. The Center also organized and launched a wide variety of new programs to further Columbia’s approach to global education.

September 25, 2014

The summer of 2014 was exciting and eventful at Columbia Global Centers | East Asia. While continuing student projects such as Global Scholars Program with Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia Experience Overseas internship program with the Center for Career Education, the literature humanities reading salon Symposium China Project with a group of Columbia student, The Center also organized and launched a wide variety of new programs to further Columbia’s approach to global education. Working with the Office of International Programs, the Center hosted three Columbia undergraduates as part of the new Columbia Presidential Global Fellowship program. The Center also launched a Social Science Summer Program at Columbiain partnership with the Interdisciplinary Center for Innovative Theory and Empirics. This summer, Studio-X Beijing hosted China Megacities Lab Summer Workshop for a group of GSAPP students.

This year’s Global Scholars Program (GSP) entitled, “Contemporary Cities of Eurasia: Berlin, Moscow, Ulan Bator, Beijing”, involved 14 undergraduates led by faculty members Charles Armstrong (Professor of History and Director of the Center for Korean Studies) and Catharine Nepomnyashchy (Professor of Russian Literature and Culture and Chair of the Department of Slavic Studies). The group traveled in part on the Trans-Siberian railway. The Center supported the group in Beijing for organizing lectures, events, site visits, and logistics.

In addition to research workshops, the Center also provides on the ground support to Columbia’s internship programs in China, such Columbia Experience Overseas. Working with Center for Career Education, this is the third year for our Center to support the program in China. Ten undergraduate students from Columbia College and School of Engineering and Applied Science participated in the program in mainland China for the summer, two in Beijing and eight in Shanghai at various organizations.

The Center also co-hosted Symposium China Project, a non-profit reading salon project initiated by a group of Columbia undergraduate students to introduce a part of Columbia's Core Curriculum courses, Literature Humanities, to Chinese high school and college students. This summer, the program took place in Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong. Co-organized by the Center, A public seminar on the topic of "Decipher Columbia’s Core Curriculum" featuring Columbia Professor Richard Billows and scholars from universities in China was held in July 2014 in Beijing.

This summer, twelve first-year students in Columbia College, The Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science, and General Studies have received 2014 Presidential Global Fellowships. Three fellows came to China (Wina Huang, Neha Jain, and Andres Soto.) To read one of the Fellow in Shanghai Wina Huang's reflection on the experience, please go here.

Additionally, in June 2014, Columbia University’s Interdisciplinary Center for Innovative Theory and Empirics (INCITE) launched a Social Science Summer Program at Columbia, in partnership with our Center and the Teenager Innovation and Challenge Projects (ICProjects). Around 20 Chinese students from different cities participated in the two-week courses from late July to early August on campus.

Meanwhile, Studio-X Beijing hosted a group of Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation (GSAPP) students for a “China Megacities Lab Summer Workshop 2014: Future of Museum in China”, led by Professor Jeffrey Johnson, Director of China Megacities Lab at GSAPP. During the three-week workshop (August 4-24), students compiled research documenting and cataloguing a general history of the museum in China, identifying museum missions, roles, characteristics, and architectural typologies.