KU News Release

KU’s Confucius Institute celebrates first year, plans for future

LAWRENCE — After a successful first year offering classes in Chinese language and culture for regional schools and businesses, the University of Kansas’ Confucius Institute will expand its offerings in the coming year and double the number of its Chinese language instructors.

Bill Tsutsui, executive director of the Confucius Institute, said increased support from the Chinese education ministry will allow the institute to fund four visiting instructors from Huazhong Normal University and build a cutting-edge distance learning facility at KU’s Edwards Campus in Overland Park to offer Chinese language courses to regional high schools.

The institute also will provide scholarships to recruit students to earn teaching certificates in Mandarin from the KU School of Education. There is currently only one certified K-12 Chinese language teacher in Kansas. Other scholarship funds will go toward sending KU students to study abroad at Huazhong Normal.

“China’s role in the world is growing rapidly, from economics, trade and politics to hosting the 2008 Olympics,” said Tsutsui, who also is a KU professor of history. “Understanding China, its language and culture is more important than ever, especially in Kansas.”

China has rapidly risen up the ranks in the past few years to become the third leading buyer of Kansas products, purchasing more than $300 million in Kansas goods and services per year, according to the state Department of Commerce. The state also opened its first office in Beijing in 2006 during Gov. Kathleen Sebelius’ trade mission to China.

In the past year, with two instructors from China, the Confucius Institute offered language and culture courses for area businesses such as engineering giant Black & Veatch, for high school students in seven districts across Kansas via distance learning and for hundreds of area residents in community-based settings in Lawrence and Overland Park. The institute also is offering a summer camp for kids in grades three through nine. In addition, the institute hosted visits by dignitaries, including the Chinese ambassador to the United States, and sponsored a Chinese broadcast of a KU men’s basketball game, the first time in Big 12 history that a game has been broadcast in Chinese.

KU’s Confucius Institute was the fourth such institute to open in the United States when it was dedicated in May 2006. The first three were located in Washington, D.C., Chicago and New York. China has a long-term goal of establishing more than 100 Confucius Institutes and projects so that by 2010, nearly 100 million people worldwide will have learned Chinese as a foreign language.

The institute is a cooperative project of KU, the Office of Chinese Language Council International of the Chinese Ministry of Education and Huazhong Normal University.

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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.