KU News Release

Chinese official to visit KU’s Confucius Institute during visit to United States

LAWRENCE — A top Chinese official who oversees the development of Confucius Institutes worldwide will visit KU’s institute and stop by Black & Veatch Corp. in Overland Park, where the KU institute is offering employee training in Chinese language, culture and business etiquette.

Director General Xu Lin will meet Wednesday morning with KU Chancellor Robert Hemenway and Diana Carlin, dean of the Graduate School and International Programs. The chancellor will introduce Xu to Jonathan Yi, who teaches mandarin Chinese to high school students across Kansas via real-time video conferencing.

Before arriving at the Confucius Institute at KU’s Edwards Campus, Xu and her delegation will stop at Black & Veatch Corp. where she will visit with CEO Len Rodman and learn more about the recent partnership between KU and one of the nation’s top engineering companies.

Bill Tsutsui, director of the Confucius Institute at KU, said the visit is a great honor and further affirmation of the good work the institute is doing to provide Kansans with high quality training in Chinese language and culture.

“Director General Xu is one of the leading figures in Chinese education and especially in the development of programs to support the teaching of Chinese as a second language,” Tsutsui said. “Ours is the only operating Confucius Institute she will visit on this trip, and we’re thrilled that she’s coming here only six months after we opened.”

KU’s Confucius Institute was the fourth such institute to open in the United States. Other institutes are operated by University of Maryland, Chicago Public Schools and New York’s China Institute. During her visit to the United States, Xu will participate in the opening of Confucius Institutes in North Carolina and Massachusetts.

China has a long-term goal of establishing more than 100 Confucius Institutes and projects that by 2010, nearly 100 million people worldwide will have learned Chinese as a foreign language.

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The University of Kansas is a major comprehensive research and teaching university. University Relations is the central public relations office for KU's Lawrence campus.