Professor revives Chinese program

In just a year, Min Wang has helped to reinvigorate the Chinese studies program at the University of North Dakota, boosting enrollment from about five students to 50 in the fall semester.

"I was doing my post-doctorate at Harvard and teaching in the Boston area when I interviewed for the position," she told China Daily in an interview. "I knew it was going to be a one-man show."

UND is a state-supported school with an enrollment of about 15,000, located along the Red River in Grand Forks, the state's third-largest city with a population around 55,000. When Wang arrived last January, there were only about five students enrolled in the Mandarin Chinese program.

"From my experience, people on the East Coast of the US are interested in other languages," the Shanghai native said. "However, people in the Midwest are not that interested."

Wang decided to focus on China's growing importance in the global economy as a selling point for getting students interested in learning about China and studying the language.

"The IMF (International Monetary Fund) had just said that China was about to pass the US as the world's largest economy. So I said wouldn't it be nice to know the language. People are starting to realize that China and its economy are getting to be more important," she said.

Wang took advantage of social media and established a Facebook page and Twitter account for the program. She also utilized special-event programming such as film festivals, a Chinese New Year's celebration last February and a cooking class on Chinese dumplings to draw attention to the program.

About 80 percent of the 50 students in the fall semester were Americans, Wang said. "Another 10 to 15 percent are international students - mainly from South Korea and Japan," she added.

The University of North Dakota has about 1,000 international students, Ray Lagasse, director of international programs, told Dakota Student, the school newspaper. China is the home of the most foreign students on campus with 250 undergraduate and graduate students, while Canada and Saudi Arabia have 180 and 90, respectively.

"UND has a very well-known aviation program and that helps to attract foreign students," Wang said. The school's petroleum engineering program has a rising profile due mainly to the oil-shale drilling boom in the state.

Jeffrey Weatherly, interim chairman of the Department of Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures, told the Forum News Service that UND is the only school in North Dakota offering a Chinese major.

"It's difficult to get Midwestern students to get out of their comfort zone, but globally (Chinese) is becoming a more important culture and language to know," he said.

paulwelitzkin@chinadailyusa.com