The first cohort of 21 Chinese students has graduated from the master of science in Telecommunications Management offered by Stevens Institute of Technology in partnership with the Beijing Institute of Technology (BIT). A commencement ceremony was held in January 2005 in Beijing, with remarks made by Stevens Vice President Maureen Weatherall, Stevens Professor Kevin Ryan, and officials from the Chinese Ministry of Education. The second cohort of 22 students are entering this month.

Overall, this is a successful program from both an academic and a business standpoint, surpassing its break-even analysis for the first cohort, says Stevens Dean of the School of Professional Education Robert Ubell.

All course content and assignments are identical to those delivered at Stevens Howe School of Technology Management, offered both face-to-face on Stevens’ Hoboken, New Jersey campus and online through Stevens’ WebCampus. The difference is that the BIT-based program is taught one third online by Stevens faculty, a third by Chinese instructors in Beijing, and a third by Stevens faculty who travel to Beijing.

A four-course specialty in managing wireless networks was also part of the Telecommunications Management degree program, which made it an attractive alternative for employment prospects in China.

To be admitted into the BIT program, Chinese students must be proficient in English, have achieved a B or better grade-point-average equivalent as undergraduates, and participate in a live interview. A 50 percent scholarship is awarded to those accepted into the program.

"We took the advice of our colleagues at BIT on what would be an appropriate level of tuition and apparently they were correct because we had a good first pilot," says Ubell. Other joint programs, launched by other U.S. institutions, failed because they charged Chinese students the same tuition as students at home.

Telecommunications Management Program Director Audrey Curtis conducted student interviews for both the first and second cohorts. She had to reject 10 applicants in the first cohort primarily because they lacked necessary undergraduate-degree credentials. Curtis says a senior Chinese BIT professor observed the interview process, and she was very impressed with all of the applicants she interviewed.

"They were so fluent in English, even under this pressured interview process," she notes. When she asked one applicant where he had learned how to speak English so well, he explained that, in addition to his English coursework both before and during his undergraduate education, he surfed the Internet frequently, joining English-speaking virtual groups where he could observe and participate in both asynchronous discussions and instant messaging communications. In order to graduate from high school in China, most schools now require that students show proficiency in English.

All Chinese BIT faculty who teach in the program speak fluent English. "We train them the way we train our own faculty, using WebCT software online," adds Ubell. The faculty use WebCT as an ancillary to their face-to-face classes, so BIT had to acquire a WebCT license as part of the final agreement.

Courses taught by Chinese faculty are assigned a Stevens course coordinator, who is a senior faculty member with overall responsibility for the course. In addition to providing the course syllabus, coordinators act as mentors to and collaborators with Chinese faculty through online communications. Some coordinators have also gone to China to teach and meet with their Chinese counterparts.

American-style & Chinese-style

One professor in China (Professor Liu), for instance, invited Stevens Distinguished Associate Professor Kevin Ryan to participate in class discussions asynchronously over one semester. Then, the following semester, Ryan went to China to teach a course in the program himself, and the Chinese professor attended Ryan’s classes.

"Professor Liu sat in on every one of Kevin’s lectures," says Curtis. "He wanted to learn the content of what Kevin was teaching, but, more to his interest, he wanted to see American-style teaching and learning."

Curtis received some interesting feedback concerning the differences between American and Chinese teaching and learning strategies. For example, in the U.S. we tend to give more quizzes and have more learning feedback loops than in traditional Chinese classes. Additionally, "when we [U.S. faculty] grade homework and when we go over homework in class, we spend much more time understanding what students got wrong and then re-teaching to address that," says Curtis. "They [Chinese faculty] use homework as an evaluative tool, and, in their words, right is right and wrong and wrong. There is no such thing as partial credit."

"Asian academics are hierarchical and very lecture oriented, and, I would say, professor centered," says Ubell. "While it is true that if you go into many American engineering and science classes you will find just those attributes in our classrooms, the highest quality of U.S. pedagogy is student-centered, less lecture-oriented as interactive."

Overall, faculty on both sides of the world have been very pleased with the BIT degree program experience. "They continue to collaborate," Curtis says. And Ubell explains that "this [the BIT partnership] has been an extraordinary experience for our faculty. Dealing with these very sophisticated Chinese students and the emotional satisfaction of participating in teaching online as well as face-to-face in China has been really remarkable from our faculty members’ point of view. They all want to go back."

From the students’ perspectives, "it was a steep learning curve because this was entirely new for them," Ubell says. "The virtual classroom is not a common experience in China. They had several hurdles that were pretty steep. One was that they had to know, understand, read and write in very high-level English." Courses are delivered no differently in China then how they are taught in the U.S. "There is no lowering of standards for Chinese students," Ubell adds.

The other hurdle is that they had to experience Western-style education. "Chinese students are accustomed to the Chinese hierarchical education style in which most courses are delivered exclusively in lecture format with the professor as the sage on the stage," notes Ubell.

"All 21 students succeeded admirably. Not only did they have to absorb and understand all the technical and managerial materials, which is hard enough, they had to deal with all the cultural differences."

Online courses taught by Stevens faculty were some of the more challenging aspects of the entire program for Chinese students. "They were comfortable online but had never taken a course online," Curtis says. "They had to learn how to communicate one-on-one with their professors online and how to budget their time. They were actually quite capable. As a whole, the Chinese students performed very high in the online classes."

In the end, the 21 graduates were treated to an American-style graduation ceremony, put on "as best we could," says Curtis. "BIT provided caps and gowns and Stevens, colorful hoods. We even presented an honorary degree to BIT’s president. Parents were there with cameras out; they were quite proud." Every Chinese student who entered the Stevens program in Beijing graduated.

In China, parents are not often invited to graduation ceremonies. Afterwards, faculty, administrators, students, parents, and friends went off to a Chinese-style luncheon banquet hosted by Stevens.

Each year, Stevens plans to hold graduation ceremonies in Beijing and other cities in China. They will follow conventional American styles, with added Chinese cultural forms. Not only will the school continue to host traditional Chinese banquets to celebrate the occasion, but the stage from which student diplomas will be awarded will be flanked - as was the case this year at BIT - by giant red and gold banners in English and Chinese. This fall, Stevens will host the school’s first alumni meeting of Stevens’ former Chinese students in Beijing.

At press time, Curtis had received feedback from about half of the graduates from the first cohort. Two students went on to doctorate programs in economics and business with an international emphasis; one landed a job with the international business consulting firm, Frost and Sullivan; another now works for Siemens; another works for Huawei, China’s largest networking and telecommunications equipment supplier; and others were hired by various China-based mobile telecommunication companies.

This fall, a second Stevens Telecommunications Management cohort will enter BIT. Right now, Stevens’ other BIT program in Photonics and Microelectronics is underway, and a second cohort will enter in September. In November, the first 30 graduate students in the Stevens Project Management master’s degree will take their seats at Central University of Finance and Economics, also in Beijing.