The 2ndboard meeting ofNanjing Tech University-University of JohannesburgConfucius Institute (UJCI) was held on December 21, Wednesday at NanjingTech. The meeting also witnessed the launch of the Joint Center on Sustainable Materials and Manufacturing.
UJCI was put into operation in January 2015. Under joint efforts, it significantly improved its Mandarin-teaching competitiveness, being the only qualified institute in Johannesburg to hold HSK tests, tied the university to local community and business and facilitated cultural exchange between China and South Africa. Today, UJCI precedes its peers (there are five Confucius Institutes altogether in South Africa) in building its own research center.
The board gave high praise to the progress made over the past two years and agreed on that the role of UJCI should not be confined to a language teaching institute, but an institute with its own characteristics, ie, a Confucius Institute focusing on both cultural exchange and research collaborations. It could also be a platform for all-round cooperation between the two universities in various fields, for which the joint research center is a good case in point. In the future, the two universities expect more researchers exchange, joint publication and joint postgraduate programs to follow.
Delegates at the boarding meeting include UJ delegation headed by Prof. Tshilidzi Marwala, Deputy Vice Chancellor for Research and Internationalization, Prof. Qiao Xu, NanjingTech Vice-president (research), Prof. Jiang Juncheng, Vice-president (international), directors and deans of related offices and schools.
