Enrolment in the department of development studies’ work/study abroad program with the University of Fudan in Shanghai, China is lower than expected this year.
David McDonald, development studies director, said this could be due to a lack of awareness.
“A lot of the students at Queen’s just don’t know that Queen’s has these programs,” he said.
The department has extended the application deadline to Feb. 9 from the original date of Jan. 31, and will be conducting a campaign to try and attract more students, McDonald said, adding that he’s optimistic that enough students will sign up so that the program will be able to continue.
“Generally speaking, there is a real appetite at Queen’s for these programs,” he said. “We expect a real demand in the future.” McDonald said there are between six and 10 people enrolled in the program right now.
“Ideally, we’d like, say, between 12 and 15,” he said.
McDonald said the department isn’t sure yet what would happen if not enough people sign up by Feb. 9.
“At that point, we’ll make a decision about what actually constitutes enough; at this point, I can’t really say,” he said. “I’m quite optimistic we’re going to have enough people, but at this point it’s quite uncertain.”
McDonald said he doesn’t think a low turnout this year will affect the exchange in future years.
“I don’t think so–I think we’re certainly committed to running this program in the future.”
The exchange program between development studies and Fudan began in 2004.
It consists of a 15-week semester from September to December. Students receive 2.5 to 3.0 Queen’s credits in development studies in courses taught by Chinese instructors in English. McDonald said the most beneficial part of the program is the partnership between Queen’s students and Fudan students in two of the academic courses.
“It’s not just walking around in a Queen’s bubble,” he said. “It’s interacting with Chinese students.
“Fudan is one of the top three universities in all of China. It’s a very prestigious University with top-ranked professors.”
Jessica Nelligan, ArtSci ’07, went on the Fudan exchange last year.
“It’s a wonderful program and I think it’s very different than normal exchange prrgrams … because we were doing placements as well,” she said. “Because we were partnered up with students from Fudan I think we kind of gained an insight into community in Shanghai that you might not always view in a country where you might not speak the language,” she said.
“It’s very easy to just get wrapped up in the foreigner bubble. [But] this really helped us to break out of that, and definitely I think the partnership is quite special.”
Nelligan did her placement interning for the community-level government in Shanghai, doing research into migration within China.
“I was working on a committee that dealt with issues of migrant women who had married men from Shanghai,” she said. “It was really quite interesting and I learned a lot from it.”
Like McDonald, Nelligan said she thinks interest in the program is low because there isn’t enough advertising for it.
“Not a lot of people know about it; it’s not advertised through the international programs office,
it’s through the development studies department, but it’s open to anyone.”
Patrick O’Neill, associate dean (international) for Arts and Science, said student interest in studying abroad in general is, in fact, increasing.
“Last year, 240 applications were picked up and 141 were submitted. This year, 301 applications were picked up and 161 were submitted. That’s an increase of approximately 15 per cent,” he said. “There is considerably more demand at the moment for studying abroad than we can actually offer…I’m planning to double our number of [study abroad] spots in the next 3 years.” For more information about the Fudan Exchange, check out the development studies website: www.queensu.ca/devs/work-study/work-study-china.html
< –With files from Anna Mehler Paperny >
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