Brown president in China to explore collaboration opportunities

BROWN UNIVERSITY President Christina H. Paxson arrived in Beijing on Sunday as part of a weeklong visit to explore opportunities for collaboration and to create awareness about the university. / PBN FILE PHOTO/TRACY JENKINS
BROWN UNIVERSITY President Christina H. Paxson arrived in Beijing on Sunday as part of a weeklong visit to explore opportunities for collaboration and to create awareness about the university. / PBN FILE PHOTO/TRACY JENKINS

PROVIDENCE – Brown University President Christina H. Paxson arrived in Beijing on Sunday as part of a weeklong visit to explore opportunities for collaboration and to create awareness of the Ivy League university’s commitment to addressing pressing world challenges through integrative scholarship.

Paxson will meet with education leaders and government officials during the trip.
On Monday, she presented “Knowledge Without Borders: University Collaboration in a Global Era” as part of Tsinghua University’s Global Vision Lecture Series. She said that to make progress toward solving complex global challenges, such as climate change and public health issues, international partnerships are vital.

“Today, we find ourselves at a pivotal moment in time, in the sense that the welfare of all nations and peoples truly hangs in the balance,” Paxson said in a statement. “It is a moment that calls for collaboration around knowledge keyed to the global good and directed at solutions to climate change, population health, alternative energy and so many other complex challenges. It is my hope that such collaboration is part of the ‘Chinese Dream.’ I can promise you that it is part of Brown’s dream. And without question, it is part of a global dream.”

On April 1, Paxson will visit Fudan University in Shanghai to speak about global university engagement. Her presentation at Fudan is called “Universities: Pathways to Knowledge and Our Global Future.”

- Advertisement -

Paxson will also meet with Brown University alumni/ae and parents in Beijing and Shanghai, including Dr. Yang Wei, a 1985 graduate of Brown’s Ph.D. program in engineering, who leads the National Natural Science Foundation of China.

Brown, according to the university, has strong academic ties to China, many of which are now coordinated through the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, and specifically its China Initiative.
This trip marks Paxson’s third to China as president. She was accompanied on the trip by by Edward Steinfeld, who directs the China Initiative, and serves as the Howard R. Swearer director of the Watson Institute.

According to information from Brown, several efforts are bringing together researchers across the globe through the China Initiative. For example:

  • Faculty member Gregory Wellenius of Brown’s School of Public Health is working with Steinfeld and the Chinese government on a research program studying the health consequences of airborne environmental pollutants.
  • Brown sociology professor John Logan co-directs the Urban China Research Network – a collaboration of academic institutions across mainland China, Hong Kong, the United States and the United Kingdom that studies China’s contemporary experience of urbanization.
  • Faculty members in political science are researching the rapid industrialization and urbanization in contemporary China and India in comparison with the Gilded Age in the late 19th century United States.
  • Steinfeld and postdoctoral fellow Jonas Nahm are collaborating with colleagues to study the role Chinese companies play in creating global innovation in renewable energy systems.

The university said Paxson’s visit also offers the opportunity to “raise Brown’s profile in a country that already comprises the greatest share of the university’s international students.” Nearly 29 percent – or 447 students – of the university’s 1,587 international student population hail from China.
Brown students also organize an annual Brown-China Summit on the university’s campus, which will take place this year on April 23.

No posts to display