A Faculty Meeting in China

Warning:  Only faculty members are likely to find this post remotely interesting.

So, it’s the beginning of the new school year.  Time for a meeting of the faculty of the School of Government (which includes the Political Science and Public Administration departments).  

To commence the meeting, the School of Government’s Communist Party chief gives a short welcome speech.  He appears to be at the same level of authority as the School’s Dean, the amazing and ridiculously hard-working Ma Jun (Dean Ma).  

In my experience, ALL deans are amazing and hard working.  No surprise there….but I don’t understand yet the authority boundaries of the School’s CCP chief.  And that’s where the dissimilarities end.  (Note:  I didn’t understand much of the Chinese, but Jane was sitting next to me and whispering the Cliff Notes version.)

First, Dean Ma welcomed the new faculty and we stood up for perfunctory applause.  Then he encouraged everyone to work hard this new year.  Topics included:

* The move to the new campus and space concerns…”we are working on getting your new offices on the East campus ready for you…very sorry for the delay.”

* Encouragement for the faculty to do more collaborative research projects.  Go overseas.  Invite scholars here to Zhongshan Univ for more research projects, not just lecturing. 

* Qinghua University (a noted competitor) has established a center for case studies.  Here at Zhongshan University, we are about to launch a new archives for government documents at our library…

* We are publishing a newsletter to inform people about the School of Government faculty accomplishments, but we need your help, faculty — please tell us about your accomplishments so we can put it in the newsletter.

* We are also updating the brochure this year, and the website is in the process of being updated.

Then a talk by the Graduate Program director:

**We have X full time Masters students, Y part time Masters students and Z doctoral students.  The large number of students in their final year means that a huge number of students need thesis advising.  Please note that students need to graduate, and your service on thesis committees is important.

**We need to work harder on our graduate recruitment.

**And now for the budget update…

Etc.  I had to suppress a smile when they started talking about “faculty, tell us about your accomplishments so we can fill out the newsletter”, but when it came to the brochure and website update….well, I could be 6000 miles away attending the same meeting in the U.S.