Beginning next summer, Northwestern will send 12 to 20 students anually for five years to study green energy technology in China, as part of the new Wanxiang Fellows Program. The program is sponsored by Wanxiang America Corporation, the Elgin, Ill.-based division of Wanxiang Group Companies China. Wanxiang, a leading manufacturing corporation in China, has committed $1.5 million in support of the program.
President Morton Schapiro and Pin Ni, president of Wanxiang America Corporation, authorized the fellowship program on Aug. 24 at a signing ceremony on campus. Notable attendees included former Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley and Guoqiang Yang, consul general of the People’s Republic of China in Chicago.
Wanxiang approached NU to develop the fellowship in an effort to assist with the “100,000 Strong Initiative,” a national effort launched by President Obama to increase the number of American students studying in China, Study Abroad Coordinator Karey Fuhs said.
The fellowship program incorporates three courses, two of which take place in China. The first part of the fellowship will be taught at NU and will emphasize critical thinking about information on alternative energy sources and technologies, said Mark Petri, Ph.D., curriculum developer and technology development director at Argonne National Laboratory’s Energy Sciences and Engineering Directorate.
“There is a lot of debate for the need for different energy technologies and … the relationship of energy to environmental issues like climate change,” Petri said. “I want the students to be in a position to be discerning about the information they read about or hear about in China.”
Following the course at NU, fellows will spend a month taking courses in intensive Mandarin and history or public health in Beijing. The final two weeks will be spent exploring developments in alternative energy technologies at the Wanxiang Polytechnic College in Hangzhou. Upon return, fellows will have the opportunity to present their research during an open symposium in the fall. Students can anticipate receiving three credits for the fellowship that may be applied towards major and minor requirements.
The fellowship is open to students from a variety of disciplines. The application will not be available until late October, but students have already demonstrated interest in the program.
“Just based on the announcements on the website, a lot of students have expressed initial interest, and I anticipate that we’ll have a good response,” Fuhs said.
According to Bridget Calendo, the director of operation and outreach at the Initiative for Sustainable Energy at Northwestern, the fellowship can provide many ways to strengthen ties with China.
“We have great optimism,” Calendo said. “We are looking not just to foster undergraduate and graduate collaboration, but I’m hoping faculty relationships will grow as a result of this.”
The fellowship also has the potential to enhance cooperation on research and development between the institutions involved, Petri said.
“I am hoping that the students come out of this experience with a much keener awareness of how these issues are affected in their daily lives and the future of the U.S. and the world,” he said. “We are not going to solve energy issues on our own in this country. We are going to have to collaborate, especially with a big country like China, so we better have an awareness of how they feel about these issues and the direction in which they are moving.”
