President's trip to China last October

President visits China to open new opportunities

BY CHRIS HOGAN

Managing News Editor

            Since the University of Bridgeport is continuing to prosper, President Neil Salonen is looking at new ways of enhancing the quality of students that are brought to campus. Recently, he went on trip to China in order to help recruit students to come to UB in the near future.

            Salonen, who is finishing up his 11^th year as UB president, went on a weeklong excursion from Oct. 19 (2010 and returned Oct. 26 (2010) after visiting two different parts of China. He visited Shanghai and with two universities in the Shandong Province which is located an hour and half north of Shanghai and introduced a presentation of the UB campus and community to them. Salonen, along with Murray State University (KY) President Dr. Randy Dunn were invited as the guests of honor by Ludong University, who were celebrating their 80^th anniversary as an institution, to share ideas about collaboration. Salonen informed the university about different opportunities to in students in Graphic Design and Engineering. 

            “The Chinese have more students than they have places in their colleges”, Salonen said. “They need to send students to different countries and they want to do it in places where they will have the best international exposure.”

            Another great interest that will allow more of those students to come to UB is the great opportunity of gaining one year internships in the Fairfield country according to Salonen. Nearby companies including Sikrosky Aircraft Cooperation (Bridgeport), Pitney Bowes (Stamford) and Xerox will allow these to students to gain valuable familiarity working with these companies.

            “Everything on the east coast between Boston and New York is a great interest to them, Salonen said. “These are great places for students to get internships after they graduate and so when they go home, they have international experience.”

            The other university that he visited was in Shanghai entitled Shanghai University of Electric Power. During the visit, Salonen discussed a variety of opportunities for the Chinese students to come to UB and study computer engineering and were told graduate degrees in that program could be offered down the line. Several faculty members were very accommodating when it came to connecting with these colleges including  Dr. Yamnin Yu, Director of the Mass Communication program (assisted with Shanghai University of Economics and Finance), Professor Xinlong Weng, of the Math department (assisted with Ludong University) and International Finance professor Congsheng Wu.

            “That (support from faculty) is very important because in Asia they need to know they can trust you, Salonen said. “By making these relationships, I could tell the guy from the Murray State (Dr. Randy Dunn) was amazed and they treated me like someone they knew for a long time.”

            Brian Lim, Special Assistant to the President, acknowledges that UB has enhanced its ways when comes to recruiting international students in the future.

            “UB has a really long tradition of international growth ranges, therefore more international students coming here, doesn’t really mean the under the leadership of president Salonen that we are initiating different ways,” Lim said.”In the past, we just went to the fairs and with the international counselors that recruited the student and since last year, we are actively involved with more schools in different countries.”

            In the near future, Salonen has more goals to evolve that quality of students being brought in. He would like to see more students from South America and Italy to come to UB and also offer internship opportunities for design students in Japan.

            “The most important thing is the dimension of the experience you can have here is beyond the classroom because the classroom experience is probably going to be similar anywhere,” Salonen said. “Since we are a pretty diverse community, one of the things we have available is that you can meet people from all around the world with different cultural backgrounds and it reflects the world.”