Provost Peter Lange and Blair Sheppard, dean of the Fuqua School of Business, returned to the Gothic Wonderland Monday after a 10-day exploratory trip of China.
Lange and Sheppard surveyed potential programming for all of the University's schools. In particular, they explored plans for the Cross-Continent MBA program's site in Shanghai-one of five Fuqua outposts slated to open overseas in August 2009-though no details were finalized on the trip.
"It was more an information-gathering trip-focusing our options, but not coming down to final decisions," Lange said.
Administrators have not yet determined a location or a partner for the Shanghai program and-unlike Fuqua's future outpost in New Delhi-an internal Duke advisory board has not been named for the site, Lange said. The city of Shanghai houses 42 universities, according to the Shanghai Municipal Education Commission-potential partners with which Duke may collaborate on the Fuqua outpost.
Lange explained that plans for a site in New Delhi, which President Richard Brodhead visited earlier this month, are more developed than those for the Shanghai location "just because you can't be everywhere at once."
"With this trip, we've accelerated the China site a little bit, and that means that it's not as less developed [than the India site] as it was before," he said.
Lange said China's communist government has not hindered the University's plans to establish a presence in Shanghai, noting that each of the five countries targeted for Fuqua expansion has a political climate that administrators must accommodate.
Brodhead visited China about a year and a half ago, and Lange said Duke administrators will travel to Shanghai and New Delhi again before the Cross-Continent MBA sites open. Exploratory visits to other Fuqua sites in St. Petersburg, Dubai and London have not yet been scheduled, Lange said.
Ties between Duke and China have been in place for more than a century. The University's first international student-Charlie Soong, Trinity 1881-was of Chinese descent, and Duke students have studied abroad in China since 1982 through Duke Study in China.
In recent years, Duke has fortified its relationship with China, home to more of its international students than any other nation, through DukeEngage and student-driven philanthropy. Lange and Sheppard's visit also comes on the heels of a Duke publicity blitz in China. Men's basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski brought gold home from the Beijing Olympics, and Duke was a fixture in the Chinese press when some perceived sophomore Grace Wang's attempt to mediate a Tibet-China protest as a gesture of support for Tibet.
Although Lange's visit was noted in China Daily, a nationally circulated newspaper, he explained that he did not aim to make headlines with his visit.
"I wasn't there to generate a lot of publicity... because it was still an exploratory trip," Lange said.
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