(Left to right) Wu Zhu Ming, deputy dean, Northwestern Polytechnic University (NPU); Jim Chen, associate professor and program director, Information Technology, UMUC Graduate School; Zhou Xing She, chair, Department of Computer Science, and dean of the Software College, NPU; and Hu Fei, vice dean of the Software College, NPU, stand in front of the NPU Software College in Xian, China.

UMUC Professor Visits China

By Wil McLean
Special to FYI Online

UMUC and Northwestern Polytechnic University (NPU) in Xian, China, have been international partners since 1983. In that time, UMUC has hosted 23 professors from the Far East. For nine years now, on the other side of the world, NPU has also hosted U.S. faculty, who come to China to teach English conversion courses for a few weeks each summer.

This past summer, NPU hosted Jim Chen, an associate professor in UMUC's Graduate School, for two weeks as he taught a course in information technology.

"I was sent as a visiting scholar to teach a course on data communications and networking," Chen said. "I was delighted to be chosen to teach the course in this pilot program."

Chen gave lectures for four hours each day and provided an hour of office time for the students. Needless to say, this trip constituted a vastly different teaching experience from walking down the hall to teach a class.

"It took about five hours to fly from Washington, D.C. to San Francisco. It took another 11 hours to fly from San Francisco to Shanghai and another hour and a half to fly to Xian," Chen said.

Chen taught 104 undergraduate students in this class, most of them seniors. The students came from varied educational backgrounds, and 10 graduate students had already been working a few years for different companies, Chen said.

The course, "Fundamentals of Data Communications and Networking," was appropriate, because none of the students had taken courses of that type previously. The language barrier proved to be a challenge, however.

"Most students had no problems in understanding the concepts and the technical details. However, some students did have problems in the use of the English language, especially in speaking," Chen said. "At the beginning, most students were not used to asking questions in class, either. However, after I started to assign extra credits for asking questions in class, most students became active in asking questions. I soon got a very active class."

Jim Chen with the terra-cotta warriors in the Museum of Qin Terra-Cotta Figures.

While the trip was a great learning experience, professionally and educationally, Chen also got to have some fun during his stay in China. The college arranged sightseeing trips on the weekends, accompanied by graduate students and faculty members, he said.

"Outside Xian, they took me to see the Museum of Qin Terra-Cotta Figures and Famen Temple, one of the four sacred Buddhist places in China," Chen said. "Inside Xian, they took me to see the Big Wild Goose Pagoda (built in 652 A.D. for Tang master monk Xuan Zang to store and translate the Buddhist scriptures brought back from India), the drum tower, the bell tower, and several other places downtown."