International Education

Vanier's Director General, Gilbert Héroux and colleagues Nita Cheong, Director of Financial Services and Continuing Education, and Chris Hall, Language School, traveled to China from April 10-17 to explore opportunities for partnership with schools in Shanghai and Hangzhou.

Vanier's delegation had the opportunity to meet with individuals from four very different institutions.  The first visit was with the Continuing Education department at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, a "small city" of three million, 140km from Shanghai.

The delegation traveled back to Shanghai to meet with the International Training Center (ITC) in Shanghai.  ITC provides support for foreigners that want to work in China by providing internships, Mandarin lessons and a cultural immersion.

From there, they went to a Vocational College in Shanghai called Xingjiang College and were taken on an amazing tour of the College's Early Childhood Education facilities.  Their competency based curriculum and brand new facilities felt both very similar and quite different at the same time. Discussion centered around their ECE program and possibilities for partnership in this area.

The last visit was to Shanghai Maritime University.  The University arranged for students to show the delegation around and to describe the university from a student's point of view.  The delegation saw interesting cultural differences when the students brought the delegation to the sports field and explained that every undergraduate student comes to the field to do calisthenics each and every morning -- at 7am!  They explained that the students did not have to go but that it would look bad if they didn't.

Vanier College recently received information about full government scholarships to this University.  Part of the challenge is that students must speak fluent Mandarin to apply but, considering the number of Chinese speaking students at Vanier, the scholarship will be advertised to the student body.

Another potential result of this visit is that the university is interested in arranging a student exchange with Vanier College.  International Education at Vanier will follow up in order to assess this possibility and, if feasible, organize the exchange.