On April 20, Paul Johnson, Vice Chancellor of the University of Western Australia (UWA), and Iain Watt, Deputy Vice Chancellor led a delegation to visit SDU. President Zhang Rong met with the delegation, and Vice President Han Shenghao attended related events.

President ZhangRong and presidentPaul Johnson at the meeting

At the meeting, Zhang reviewed his own experience of taking part in the “Shadow Prof. Program” in UWA in 2011 and previous cooperation between the two universities. He then mentioned that SDU and UWA are both comprehensive universities with balanced development of humanities, science, engineering and medicine, which promises a lot of possibilities for more extensive cooperation between the two universities, especially in science. Zhang said, bio-science, environmental science, medicine and mathematics are leading disciplines of both universities and he hoped, on the basis of such good cooperation at present, to conduct deeper cooperation in natural science. SDU, with a unique advantage in traditional Chinese education, welcomes students from UWA to come and study traditional Chinese culture. In addition, the “2025 Innovation and Entrepreneurship Alliance” initiated by SDU will provide UWA students with a wide scope of internship choices.

Johnson said that UWA is encouraging students to study and conduct science researches (funded by UWA) abroad in Asian countries. On account of SDU’s status as an important partner of UWA, there will be more student exchanges between both. Meanwhile, UWA is looking for a well matched partner in bio-science, medicine, environmental science and agriculture, etc., for more joint seminars and scientific researches. He expected that by doing so, plus the cooperation between the leading disciplines of the two universities, more fruitful research findings could be achieved.

Prof.Paul Johnson and vice president Han Shenghaosigning the agreement between SDUW and UWA

A remote meeting with SDUW students involved in this joint program

After the meeting, Han, on behalf of SDU (Weihai), signed the “Agreement of 2+2+1 Bachelor-Master Package Program in Law between SDU (Weihai) and UWA” with Johnson, and they had a remote meeting with SDUW students involved in this joint program. Besides, the delegation had discussion with representatives from the School of Environmental Science and Engineering and the School of Life Science. Representatives from the Faculty of Science of UWA, the Department of International Affairs of SDU and the International Office of SDUW attended relevant events.

Established in 1911, the UWA is one of the oldest, most representative and most competitive universities in Australia, and is now a member of the Group of Eight. There are 9 schools with 24,000 students, including 5,000 international students from 109 countries and regions. In 2015, it was placed by Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) at No. 87 in the world, No. 4 in Australia, and No. 1 in agriculture science and bio-science in Australia. In 2012, SDUW and the UWA started the “2+2 Double Bachelor Program” in finance and accounting, and the number of the students of this joint program reached 104 in total, including 24 students now studying in UWA. The undergraduate education program in finance, a joint project of the two universities, was approved by the Ministry of Education in September, 2014, and 99 students are now engaged in this program.

Source: view.sdu.edu.cn

Translated by: Liu Huan and Li Ao

Edited by: Lang Cuicui

Photo by: Liu Mengdong