Agreements foster exchanges with China

Recent agreements between UD and two Chinese universities will promote teaching, research and faculty and student exchanges in the fields of fashion and apparel studies and marine science.
Building on relationships with faculty from its College of Marine and Earth Studies (CMES), UD in December signed a collaborative agreement with China’s Xiamen University (XMU) to support existing collaborations and open the door for new ones. In January, the Department of Fashion and Apparel Studies and Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) entered into an agreement to establish student and faculty exchanges and collaborate on research programs.

Through the agreement with PolyU, each institution will send two students to the other for up to one academic year, as well as exchange researchers, arrange short-term collaborative visits and jointly organize conferences and other research programs and agendas that they have in common.

Two students from Hong Kong are studying on UD’s Newark campus this spring, and Cody Higgins, a UD junior fashion merchandising major from Bayport, N.Y., has been taking classes at PolyU.
“Hong Kong and China are of critical importance to the apparel industry,” says Marsha Dickson, chairperson of fashion and apparel studies. “More than 25 percent of the clothing Americans buy is imported from China, often through intermediary agents and buying offices located in Hong Kong.

“Providing students with the opportunity to experience the culture and industry in advance of graduation provides them a distinctive credential that will benefit their future careers.”
Marine and Earth Studies Dean Nancy Targett says the college is “thrilled to formalize our partnership with Xiamen, a pre-eminent environmental and oceanographic institution.”

Student exchanges are expected to be a highlight of the agreement. CMES already is hosting XMU postdoctoral researchers, and there are plans to begin sending UD students to Xiamen to gather data and collaborate on research this year.

Several CMES faculty members have ties with XMU that helped jumpstart the universities’ formal relationship. Those include David Kirchman, professor of marine biosciences; Tom Church, E.I duPont Professor of Marine Studies; Biliana Cicin-Sain, director of UD’s Gerard J. Mangone Center for Marine Policy and Professor of Marine Policy; and Xiao-Hai Yan, Mary A.S. Lighthipe Professor of Oceanography, who has visited Xiamen several times. They point out that XMU’s College of Oceanography and Environmental Science has strengths in biogeochemistry, chemical oceanography, biological oceanography and coastal oceanography and developed China’s first doctoral program in oceanography.

“We’re both leaders in ocean science,” Yan says of the two colleges.