Bulletin No. 2, 2013

18 Chinese University Bulletin No. 2, 2013 Our American Friends Two American organizations—the United Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia (UB) and the Yale-China Association, have been influential in providing support to the founding Colleges and later collaborating with the University in bringing about cultural exchange. Chung Chi College still hosts the United Board’s office in Asia, and New Asia College hosts Yale-China’s. United Board In its early years, Chung Chi College was backed by major funding support from the United Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia. An American organization founded in 1922, the UB’s work in its first three decades revolved around 13 Christian colleges and universities in China. Unable to continue its work in China after 1951, it shifted its efforts to other regions in Asia, including Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea and the Philippines. Today, the UB works in partnership with over 80 institutions of higher education, both Christian and secular, across 13 countries and regions in Asia, including the Chinese University. President of the UB, Dr. Nancy Chapman , believes that Hong Kong’s colonial legacy and its early role in global trade had helped to ensure an international outlook at the University long before this was common at most other universities throughout the world. The UB has helped to reinforce this outlook through support for academic exchanges, overseas study for faculty, and visiting professorships, and through support of Chung Chi College in its early years. Being part of the network of 80 colleges and universities has also meant, she believes, that ‘people at CUHK have been exposed to a culturally diverse constellation of institutions seeking to go beyond mere job training to deliver broad education to students as whole and complex persons.’ The UB jointly runs a United Board Fellows Programme with CUHK which aims at grooming promising mid-level faculty and administrators into leaders. During the two-year programme, fellows spend one semester at an Asian host university and one at a US institution. ‘Former fellows attest to the often transformative impact of the opportunities the programme affords for travel, exposure to new ideas, and time for reflection on the leadership roles that they might play at their institutions and in their communities,’ observed Dr. Chapman. The UB also collaborates with the Divinity School of Chung Chi College to organize the Institute for Advanced Study of Asian Cultures and Theologies each summer, a five-week programme that brings together scholars of theology and the social sciences from throughout Asia for research, writing, and in-depth exchange of ideas. Participants in the Asian University Leaders Programme of the United Board