Ten Northwestern students will begin their preparation for a new summer study abroad program in China this Friday. The students will travel to China this summer to study sustainable energy as part of the Wanxiang Fellows Program.
The program, created last year as part of President Barack Obama’s 100,000 Strong Initiative, will send students to Beijing for four weeks to take classes at Peking University before they transition to Wanxiang Polytechnic College in Hangzhou, China for an “intensive immersion program,” said Karey Fuhs, assistant director of International Program Development at the NU Study Abroad Office. At Wanxiang, the students will work with local faculty on projects related to environmental sustainability, said Fuhs.
“They’ll have the opportunity to learn about Chinese culture and the history of that region,” Fuhs said. “The primary focus is for students to learn about green technology and the green economy.”
The students in the program will begin a preparatory class with Prof. Mark Petri on campus Friday and will meet three more times throughout May, Fuhs said.
The Wanxiang Fellows Program was announced last August after the November 2009 creation of the national 100,000 Strong Initiative, which aims to build relations between the United States and China by encouraging more American students to study in China.
Petri, who also serves as technology development director in the Energy Sciences and Engineering Directorate at Argonne National Laboratory, said the partnership works well because of China’s role in energy sustainability issues. China is the world’s largest carbon dioxide emitter, he said, but also produces the most solar and wind farms.
“China is a growing consumer of oil and petroleum products, so they’re competing with the U.S. on the world market,” said Petri. “So we’re looking at what should the U.S. be thinking about in those areas in terms of mitigating the vulnerabilities in our energy usage.”
Petri said he made a trip to China to meet with the faculty at Wanxiang in March and will travel with the students for three of the six weeks they are in China.
Maddy Low, a Communication sophomore in the Wanxiang Fellows Program, said the program was the “perfect synthesis” of her interests in the environment and China.
“I’m really hoping to take the environmental technology I learn about in China and bring that back to Evanston,” Low said.
Petri said the ability to bring new ideas back to NU is central to the program. He said he hopes to have students present their projects in some sort of open forum in the fall.
Fuhs said she expects the students to bring back a wide array of experiences and knowledge because of China’s position as a major player in world sustainability issues.
“China in particular is an interesting place to study this given the population issues and climate degradation and the different solutions the Chinese government has come up with,” she said.
The program will run from June 18 to July 29 and will include a Mandarin Chinese language course and classes on politics and public health in China in addition to the environmental sustainability component.
