On their way to Thailand, members of the Indiana University delegation made a quick stop in Taiwan. We arrived here just a few days after the annual Lantern Festival, the first major feast after Chinese New Year. Held on the 15th day of the first month in the Lunar New Year – and dating back more than 2,000 years – the festival marks the final day of traditional Chinese New Year celebrations, when people of all ages spend their time playing games, solving riddles, eating glutinous rice balls, enjoying fireworks and lighting red paper lanterns that signify hope and good fortune for the year ahead.

Lantern Festival, sometimes called Chinese Valentine’s Day, is a chance to spend time and reconnect with family, friends and loved ones. Thus, it seemed appropriate that the IU delegation would arrive in Taipei, Taiwan’s capital and largest city, on the heels of this holiday – excited to reunite with several successful members of IU’s ever-growing international family.

Members of Indiana University’s Taiwan Alumni Chapter with members of the IU delegation following the chapter’s official registration with the Taiwanese government.

As with Thailand, IU’s connections to Taiwan run deep. IU has one of our nation’s strongest China studies programs, which includes extensive educational and research programs in the culture and history of China as well as courses in Cantonese, Mandarin and classical Chinese languages.

IU has more than 200 Taiwanese students, each of whom is a valuable part of IU’s increasingly diverse student body, which now includes over 8,000 international students. We also continue to welcome many Taiwanese scholars and dignitaries to our campuses across Indiana each year.

What’s more, today there are nearly 2,300 IU alumni affiliated with Taiwan, many of whom have gone on to become leaders in education, business, arts and culture, and government here in their home country and around the world.

On Sunday afternoon, IU President Michael A. McRobbie, who became the first sitting IU president to visit Taiwan when he last visited in 2013, and Vice President for International Affairs Hannah Buxbaum met with several of our Taiwanese alumni in downtown Taipei to celebrate the official registration of the Taiwan Chapter of the IU Alumni Association with the Taiwanese government. The official recognition by the government as a nonprofit organization will almost certainly help this already vibrant alumni chapter enhance its reach and impact, making it easier for members to stay actively engaged in university life, recruit new members and help future generations of Taiwanese students follow in their footsteps at IU.

If the chapter’s inaugural conference offers any indication, its dedicated members – led by Spencer Yang, chapter president and professor of political science at Chinese Culture University – will have little trouble meeting their mission. About 40 alumni battled a steady, all-day rainstorm on Sunday to participate in the conference and attend a spirited evening celebration, where President McRobbie delivered an update on the most recent “banner year” at IU.

Among the many highlights McRobbie mentioned were IU’s record levels of global engagement, including more international students and more students studying abroad than ever before in the university’s nearly 200-year history. He also heralded the arrival of the new IU ASEAN Gateway office in Thailand, which he will help inaugurate later this week. And, to the delight of those in attendance, he even shared some hot-off-the-presses news: that IU’s women’s swimming team, led by Olympic gold medalist Lilly King, had just captured its sixth Big Ten championship and first conference title since 2011.

I can safely speak for all members of the IU delegation when I say that I hope we’ll see many of our Taiwanese friends soon and perhaps as early as June 2020, when the university hosts its Bicentennial Global Alumni Conference and Reunion. This highly anticipated event, to be held Bloomington and Indianapolis, will showcase the university’s vast alumni network and the major impact its members have had in the Hoosier state, nationally and all around the world.

An expanding global partnership

On Monday morning, members of the delegation traveled to National Taiwan University, the most prestigious university in Taiwan, one of the top-ranked universities in the world and an important international partner of IU in Asia. By this point, the rain that had fallen all throughout the previous day finally ceased and the skies had cleared just enough so that we could admire, albeit briefly, the colorful flowers, fountains, trees and brick buildings that make up NTU’s picturesque main campus.

At NTU, where a remarkable 29 faculty members, including 16 full-time professors, are graduates of IU, President McRobbie and Vice President Buxbaum met with NTU President Kuan Chung-ming and other senior university officials to discuss renewing a formal partnership agreement between IU and NTU, which dates back to 2004.

Indiana University President Michael A. McRobbie, left, meets with Kuan Chung-ming, president of National Taiwan University.

IU’s Maurer School of Law continues to enjoy a productive partnership with NTU, which has resulted in a number of student exchanges and faculty research collaborations. Additionally, IU students are able to spend a summer studying at NTU through IU’s Chinese Language Flagship Program, which is one of four federally funded Language Flagship programs at IU Bloomington – more than any other university. The director of IU’s Chinese Flagship program, which is housed in the newly renamed Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies, is Chen Yea-Fen, a graduate of NTU and a professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures at IU Bloomington.

At Monday’s meeting, officials from IU and NTU also expressed interest in potential new collaborations in medicine, given their respective teaching and research strengths in this area, particularly in cancer-related research, genomics and precision medicine. On July 4, NTU will open a major new cancer research center, funded by a $500 million gift from Foxconn, the world’s largest electronics contract manufacturing company with headquarters in Taiwan. Members of the delegation were given an impromptu tour of the impressive 15-floor, 139,000-square-meter facility, which will be the first comprehensive public cancer medical center in Taiwan and provide such services as hospitalization, stem cell therapy, preventive health care, clinical treatment and cancer research.

Much like IU’s Grand Challenges Precision Health Initiative, NTU’s new cancer center has set some lofty objectives, including establishing new research programs and state-of-the-art facilities dedicated to precision health; bringing new patient-centered therapies and prevention into clinical use; and ultimately developing cures for devastating diseases prevalent among the communities served by the university.

A sculpture within the new Cancer Center at National Taiwan University, which is scheduled to open July 4.

Honoring a ‘guardian angel,’ the great Chi Pang-yuan

 “In Genesis, Jacob dreams of a stairway to heaven. At Indiana University in Bloomington from spring flowers to winter snow, I too had dreamed of my academic stairway, with angels ascending and descending. But just as I placed my foot on the first step, the stairway was withdrawn, which provided me with regrets for many years.”

 Chi Pang-yuan in “The Great Flowing River”

Our time in Taiwan concluded in the most memorable and inspiring way possible: with IU shining the brightest of spotlights on one of Taiwan’s best-known and most beloved contemporary writers, the remarkably accomplished Chi Pang-yuan, who was also a student at IU.

Chi, a former distinguished faculty member at National Taiwan University, has been instrumental in introducing Taiwanese literature to the western world through translations. For these efforts, she has been called the “guardian angel of literature in Taiwan.”

Chi Pang-yuan holds her honorary Doctor of Letters from Indiana University.

Born in 1924 in Manchuria, Chi grew up during what was the most tumultuous time in modern Chinese history. Like other members of the last generation of 20th century China, she had to overcome exile and diaspora brought about by fierce revolution and war.

Today, at an extraordinary 96 years of age, she is renowned as the pre-eminent expert and interpreter of Taiwanese literature. She translated and edited “An Anthology of Contemporary Chinese Literature: 1949-1974,” a first-of-its-kind anthology that introduced works by Taiwanese authors to the world. With professor David Wang of Harvard University, she helped edit the series, “Modern Chinese Literature from Taiwan,” which has published nearly 30 books by Taiwanese authors. She and Wang also edited the book “Chinese Literature in the Second Half of a Modern Century,” an important contribution to the critical study of Chinese literature from 1949 to the end of the 20th century, which was published in 2000 by Indiana University Press.

From left: Indiana University first lady Laurie Burns McRobbie, National Taiwan University Emerita Professor Chi Pang-yuan, IU President Michael A. McRobbie and NTU President Kuan Chung-ming during a ceremony at National Taiwan University to award Pang-yuan with an honorary Doctor of Letters from IU.

Chi also guided the establishment and development of the study of Taiwanese literature as an educational discipline around the world. She was the founding chair of the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at National Chung Hsing University, and she served for more than a decade on the faculty at NTU. Over the course of her distinguished career, she also helped establish graduate programs in translation and interpretation at other institutions, and she taught a generation of scholars and translators, who benefited from her mentorship.

Her 2009 memoir, “The Great Flowing River: A Memoir of China, from Manchuria to Taiwan,” is an acclaimed best-seller, and it has been translated into Japanese, German, Korean and English. The book, which several critics have called a masterpiece, is being taught this semester at IU in at least one course that focuses on advanced language practice with texts in humanities disciplines.

In “The Great Flowing River,” Chi fondly remembers her time at IU. She came to the U.S. in 1967 as a Fulbright Scholar and taught at St. Mary-of-the-Woods College near Terre Haute, Indiana. Soon thereafter, she came to IU Bloomington to study English and comparative literature. She writes in her memoir that the literature classes she took at IU “were among the best in the United States.”

Among the professors under whom she studied was the late IU Bloomington Chancellor Emeritus Kenneth Gros Louis, a dedicated scholar known for his writings on medieval and Renaissance literature and history. Chi was also heavily influenced by professor Clifford Flanigan, who was chair of her master’s committee.

Although Chi passed her qualifying exam at IU and was only six credits away from completing a master of arts degree, her plans were cut short when she needed to return to Taiwan to support her family, just as her visa as an exchange scholar was about to expire. Her experience in Bloomington, however, helped build what she called “an academic stairway,” built “book by book, climbing upward with every word and sentence I read.” Indeed, she writes that, while at IU, she took advantage of every “stolen” moment to study, and she counts her time in Bloomington as among the most rewarding in her life.

At a special ceremony Monday afternoon, a crowd of about 150 adoring friends, family members, former colleagues and fellow IU alums gathered, including Nicholas Koss, a frequent translation collaborator whom Chi mentions in her memoir. There, President McRobbie presented Chi with an honorary IU Doctor of Letters degree – the highest academic recognition the university can give – in recognition of her outstanding contributions to the world of literature. McRobbie, who was assisted in the presentation by Vice President Buxbaum and IU professor Chen Yea-Fen, described Chi as a “pioneering and visionary scholar of the highest caliber” and a “great internationalist, who, through her dedicated and painstaking efforts to bring Taiwanese literature to the world, has helped build bridges of international understanding.”

Friends and former colleagues line up to take photos of Chi Pang-yuan after she received her honorary IU degree.

When it was Chi’s turn to speak, a red-carpet-like flurry of camera and iPhone flashes followed her to the podium, where she spoke movingly about her time in Bloomington a half century ago, the transformative impact IU had on her life and career as a writer, editor, translator and educator, and how much it meant to her to finally receive her well-deserved IU degree.

“This is truly a great honor in my life,” Chi said.

In that moment, the stairway that Chi described in her memoir as having been “withdrawn” was properly restored and a scholar who has made such extraordinary and eloquent contributions to world literature, inspired countless students and readers, and truly earned the moniker of guardian angel had at long last been given a day she had always dreamed of.

Thank you, Taipei, for a most memorable detour. And see you soon in Bangkok!

ยินดีต้อนรับ, and welcome to the IU Goes to Thailand blog!

Indiana University’s long and storied history of international engagement dates back more than a century and spans the globe. But few countries hold quite the connection that Thailand does.

For 70 years, IU has enjoyed a rich history of partnership with Thailand, one of the university’s longest official relationships with a global partner. As our university rapidly approaches its Bicentennial celebration, IU’s many educational and institution-building initiatives in Thailand – and indeed, our activities across much of Southeast Asia – continue to translate into numerous student and scholarly exchanges, international service opportunities, faculty research collaborations and genuine friendships that have truly transformed lives both in Thailand and here in the Hoosier state.

Former IU President Herman B Wells, left, meets with acclaimed Thai scholar Mom Luang Pin Malakul and his wife in 1948, the year IU began its relationship with Thailand.

Today, nearly 60 students from Thailand are enrolled at IU. As with all of IU’s international students, we value these students for the valuable cultural perspectives they bring to our classrooms, and the way they enrich our campuses and communities we serve. We have also welcomed many Thai faculty scholars and researchers to IU over the years.

Much of our international activity related to Thailand and the surrounding region is centered in our Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies, which houses the recently established Department of Southeast Asian and ASEAN Studies. The department is home to new degrees and enhanced language offerings in Thai, Indonesian and other regional languages. It also supports teaching, research and outreach activities on the economies, governance, culture, languages and security of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, a regional intergovernmental organization consisting of 10 countries in Southeast Asia and a growing global power. (Today, IU has about 400 students from ASEAN nations, and in recent years, we have had students from every ASEAN nation represented at IU.)

Increasingly, more and more IU students are choosing to study abroad in Thailand and experience first-hand its extraordinary culture and history. Currently, that number is around 50 students annually.

IU also has more than 1,000 Thai alumni, many of whom have become prominent members of Thai society as leaders in business, education, government, health care, higher education and other important fields. They are among IU’s greatest global ambassadors and loyal friends of the university.

A lasting friendship

Fittingly, it was a personal friendship that spawned IU’s seven decades of engagement in Thailand. In 1948, IU’s legendary 11th president, Herman B Wells, met with Mom Luang Pin Malakul, then permanent undersecretary for education in Thailand, who was in Bloomington to visit with Thai graduate students who were studying at IU. This began a personal friendship between President Wells and Secretary Malakul, who later served as Thai minister of education and culture, that would ultimately lead to a close institutional relationship between the Thai government and IU and contribute mightily to the development of the country’s system of higher education.

As one of the founding members of the Midwest Universities Consortium for International Activities, IU helped develop the Institute of Public Administration at Thammasat University in 1955 as well as 16 teacher colleges in Thailand in the 1960s and 1970s, many of which are now four-year, comprehensive universities.

IU also played a central role, in 1966, in establishing the National Institute of Development Administration. Thailand’s leading educational institution in the area of sustainable development, NIDA has trained thousands of the Thai government’s top officials and diplomats for service across the country and around the globe. IU’s close partnership with NIDA continues today through exchanges of faculty and graduate students.

And in 2016, IU President Michael A. McRobbie delivered a keynote address in front of hundreds of Thailand’s most eminent statesmen, educational leaders and other dignitaries at NIDA’s 50th anniversary celebration. McRobbie was the only U.S. college or university president asked to deliver a keynote, further illustrating just how highly influential and highly regarded IU is in Thailand and throughout one of the most culturally, economically and politically important parts of the world.

In 2016, IU President Michael A. McRobbie, center, delivered a keynote address at the 50th anniversary celebration of Thailand’s National Institute of Development Administration.

Writing a new chapter, where we’re going

Beginning early next week, McRobbie and IU Vice President for International Affairs Hannah Buxbaum will help write the newest chapter of IU’s successful and continually evolving engagement in the region when they lead a university delegation to Bangkok, Thailand’s capital and most populous city.

First, however, they’ll make a quick stop in Taipei, Taiwan, where they will attend the inaugural conference of the IU Alumni Association’s Taiwan Chapter, a reception for IU’s Taiwanese alumni (around 2,300 IU alumni are affiliated with Taiwan) and the conferral of an honorary doctorate on Pang-Yuan Chi, professor emeritus of the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at National Taiwan University. Chi is one of the world’s foremost translators of Taiwanese literature, and in her biography, “The Great Flowing River,” she fondly recalls her time as a Fulbright scholar studying on the IU Bloomington campus.

Once in Thailand, McRobbie and Buxbaum will preside over the formal opening, on Feb. 26, of the new IU ASEAN Gateway office, IU’s fifth such office around the world. Like its counterparts in New Delhi, Beijing, Berlin and Mexico City, IU’s new facility in central Bangkok will enhance and expand IU’s global engagement through support for teaching and research, study abroad opportunities for IU students, conferences and workshops, and engagement with alumni, businesses and non-governmental organizations.

As part of IU’s continued effort to expand its teaching and research capacity in Southeast Asia, McRobbie and Buxbaum will meet with the senior leadership of NIDA as well as with administrators and faculty at Chulalongkorn University. IU’s partnership with Chulalongkorn, now more than two decades old, has expanded in recent years and includes scholarly and research exchanges with a number of academic units, including IU Bloomington’s College of Arts and Sciences, Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies, Kelley School of Business and School of Education, as well as the IU School of Nursing and School of Dentistry on the IUPUI campus. They also will meet with former NIDA President Sombat Thamrongthanyawong, who is the current president of Walailak University in southern Thailand and a past recipient of an IU honorary doctorate. Recently, IUPUI Chancellor Nasser Paydar led a delegation to Walailak to explore possible partnership activities.

Indiana University President Michael A. McRobbie, right, confers upon Sombat Thamrongthanyawong an honorary degree during a ceremony on the IUPUI campus in 2013. Sombat is the former president of Thailand’s National Institute of Development Administration and current president of Walailak University.

On Feb. 28, together with the Asia Foundation and in collaboration with the Australian National University, IU will host a panel discussion on the strategic importance of international engagement with the ASEAN nations. Among the distinguished panel participants will be IU alumnus David Carden, former U.S. ambassador to ASEAN; Gareth Evans, former foreign minister of Australia and chancellor of ANU; and Marty Natalegawa, former ambassador and foreign minister of Indonesia.

The following day, members of the IU delegation will attend a special gathering of regional alumni to celebrate IU’s 70 years of engagement in Thailand. The event will include an alumni award ceremony recognizing alumni of the School of Dentistry, the Kelley School of Business, the Maurer School of Law and the School of Education. Highlighting the event will be a tea and afternoon program hosted by Her Royal Highness Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn, to whom IU awarded an honorary degree in 2010 in recognition of her efforts to expand and improve public education all across Thailand, especially in remote and rural areas. The program will include a panel on women in leadership, moderated by IU first lady Laurie Burns McRobbie. In conjunction with these activities, the Kelley School of Business will host an alumni reception and convene a meeting of the Global Dean’s Council.

Your guide

And I’ll be there for each of these activities and more – serving as your eyes and ears to our time in Thailand and delivering first-hand, real-time reports of the delegation’s daily travels. I’ll also post information about our many historic, expanding and evolving ties to Thailand and share insights into IU’s ongoing effort, as it rapidly approaches its Bicentennial celebration, to strengthen its engagement efforts in Southeast Asia and around the world.

I hope you will follow along with me, and please feel free to reach out to me directly with questions at rpiurek@iu.edu.