Wednesday was our big day and the ultimate purpose for the trip: Graduation Day!
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m here in Guangzhou, China for a conference on 1+2+1 college programs where students from China spend 1 year at a Chinese university, 2 years in the United States, and then 1 final year back in China. During the conference we discuss how the programs work and what can be done for them in the future, and then we award the diplomas to the students.
And it is diplomas, plural. Each student earns a dual-degree from both the United States institution and the Chinese one.
Our meetings and ceremonies were held on the campus at Jinan University.
The various delegates to the 1+2+1 conference head in for a morning of meetings before the afternoon graduation.
Following meetings and lunch, it was time to go over to the auditorium for the graduation ceremonies. For as much as is different between the United States and China, there is much that is the same. Parents still crowd in to take pictures of their graduates!
No matter where you go in the world, parents still want pictures of their graduates!
The ceremony itself was held in a big hall flanked with video screens on the sides and giant screen across the back.
This is the stage before the ceremony with one of my Chinese faculty counterparts who will be handing out degrees shortly. I loved the gorgeous Chinese academic robes.
The ceremony itself was lovely, but long, about 3 hours to grant 270 or degrees. It wasn’t that the speeches were overly long, it’s that they all had to be given twice. Why? Because everything except the reading of the names had to be done in both Chinese and English! There was talk that at some point the ceremony might have to go to using simultaneous translation transceivers so that everyone can just hear everything in their own language from translators as it happens, but it was impressive seeing the student speakers giving bilingual speeches so clearly.
As a closing note for today, we were surprised to see that the big statue on campus was of a man with frizzy hair and baggy sweater. I thought it had to be Albert Einstein, but that didn’t seem to quite fit for a Chinese university. I must be mistaken. Then I finally paid attention to the inscription running around the center of the sphere underneath. Yup, that’s Albert!
There is a lovely sculpture of Albert Einstein on the central campus of Jinan University.