VC leads University delegation to China
Friday, 27 September 2019
Vice-Chancellor Robert Van de Noort led a University of Reading delegation to China recently. The objective of this visit was to strengthen relationships with major institutional partners and to meet past and present students of our University.
This was Robert’s first visit to China and among the cities he visited were Beijing and Nanjing.
In Beijing, he visited the Beijing Institute of Technology (BIT) and the Capital Normal University. Reading runs a joint BA Accounting programme with BIT, which currently has around 550 students on it. Robert spoke with the senior leadership at BIT about the continued success of the partnership. Capital Normal is one of the leading institutions in the field of education, and the University signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Capital Normal on behalf of the Institute of Education.
Robert also met with the University of Reading’s Beijing Alumni Committee, whose members had graduated from Henley Business School and School of Politics, Economics and International Relations. Many of them now have senior positions in the financial services industry and are eager to use their expertise and links to assist other Chinese alumni with their career goals.
NUIST-Reading Academy
The Vice-Chancellor also visited Nanjing, the location of our joint Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology (NUIST)-Reading Academy. As well as meeting the President of NUIST and other senior staff members, he gave well-received speeches at the opening ceremonies of NUIST and the Academy.
The NUIST-Reading Academy now has nearly 850 students across six undergraduate programmes: Applied Chemistry, Business Economics and Trade, Mathematics and Applied Mathematics, Environmental Engineering, Atmospheric Sciences and Law.
Our partnership with NUIST started in 2009 and developed considerably in 2015 with the establishment of the NUIST-Reading Academy. The partnership reached a significant milestone in 2018 as students enrolling in the Academy became Reading students from their first day. This allows them to use Reading curricula, materials, assessment and quality assurance procedures from the beginning of their degrees. Following recent successful evaluation of the Academy by the Ministry of Education, there are plans to further expand the Academy by adding more undergraduate programmes, developing postgraduate programmes and research collaborations.
In September, we welcomed the first full cohort of environmental science students from NUIST-Reading Academy – who are in Reading to complete the final year of their degrees.