MIND SPELLER - KU Leuven

Alumni
K.U.Leuven launches association for Chinese
alumni
Reiner Van Hove
On 5 and 6 March, the foundation of
the K.U.Leuven China Alumni Club was
celebrated in Beijing and Shanghai. It
is the first university-wide alumni association
that covers a whole country.
The alumni association is the most recent of a series of initiatives
K.U.Leuven has taken in China in the past few years. For
example, it has concluded bilateral co-operation agreements with
a number of top universities in China and in 2007, a comprehensive
institutional accord was signed with Tsinghua University.
China is the second best represented country in Leuven’s
international student community after the Netherlands; about
450 Chinese students enrolled this year. “Our objective is not
necessarily to increase that figure, but rather to profile ourselves
better in order to continuously attract the best students and researchers,”
Bart Hendrickx, Director of the International Office
tells us. “You can establish all kinds of complex systems to this
end, but social networks continue to be the most efficient way,”
Professor Bart De Moor, Vice Rector for International Policy
adds. “I know this from personal experience. Many of my doctoral
students found positions at Stanford as a result of the contacts
I have there. If we track down our alumni in China successfully
and develop good relations with them, they can assist us with the
selection of new students and researchers.”
“Our alumni could also be involved in guiding professors
from Leuven who travel to China for short periods of time, as
well as facilitating the access of our spin-offs to the Chinese market
and of our researchers to Chinese research centres. This requires
people who know the local do’s and don’ts.”
“The Chinese attach great importance to networks,” Hendrickx
says. “That is why Chinese alumni are also able to benefit
from the excellent reputation K.U.Leuven is developing in their
country: being affiliated with high quality increases their own
market value.” Professor De Moor makes a comparison to the
US: “Americans consider the university they studied at to be a
real asset on their CV. They are very proud of being able to say
they are an alumnus of Yale or Berkeley, etc. We have a lot of
room for improvement with respect to identity and branding.
We have to find the aspects of K.U.Leuven that a Chinese alumnus
would recommend to his/her children.”
The China Alumni Club provides an umbrella structure
for the existing alumni associations in Beijing, Shanghai,
Guangzhou and other places. The association will co-operate
with the Belgian Embassy in Beijing, the consulates in Shanghai
and Guangzhou, the Benelux Chamber of Commerce in China
and the Belgian-Chinese Chamber of Commerce in China. David
Xu, who is himself an alumnus of K.U.Leuven, will co-ordinate the
China Alumni Club. Hendrickx: “He is meeting with a number of
alumni in the next few months to explore the ways in which they
can concretise their commitment and which duties will be entrusted
to them. There is also an online database through which
Bart Hendrickx, Director of the International Office of K.U.Leuven, addresses the alumni in Beijing.
members can register. In the next stage, we can start ‘nurturing’
the network with the most appropriate information.”
At the launch of the club at the beginning of March, it was
apparent that many alumni are interested. Hendrickx: “About
fifty alumni attended in Beijing and there were about eighty in
Shanghai, including a few Flemish alumni who live there. It was
a good mix, but we need to promote more interaction between
the Chinese and Flemish groups.”
Xu’s responsibilities extend beyond the co-ordination of the
alumni association. Hendrickx: “He has been tasked with strengthening
K.U.Leuven’s position in China in the broadest sense. China
evolves incredibly quickly and you need a permanent representative
in the field if you want to successfully maintain your reputation
as an illustrious research university. For example, he has
to draw attention to the position of K.U.Leuven in various rankings
– these are of enormous importance to top Chinese universities,
for the selection of their partners. Moreover, we expect Xu
to assist the development of existing co-operations with Chinese
partner universities. A fine example of this is the seminar about
technology transfer and spin-off creation that we are organising
with our Chinese partners for the World Fair in Shanghai.”
“The situation in China is of course part of a broader policy,”
Professor De Moor concludes. “In these times of globalisation,
our perspective must be intercontinental and we should thus
also explore new initiatives in other parts of the world – in Latin
America, for example.”
Online
http://www.kuleuven.be/international/chinalumni
“Leuven was unforgettable”
If it aims to promote a sense of pride amongst its members,
the China Alumni Club could not have a better co-ordinator than
David Xu. Without hesitation, he describes his stay in Leuven as
the most wonderful time of his life: “My father studied medicine
in Leuven and later obtained a PhD supervised by Professor Edward
Carmeliet. He encouraged me to study in Leuven as well,
for the benefit of my personal development and my career. He
hoped that I might be of importance to Belgium and China in
my professional life. My own time in Leuven – I studied the postgraduate
in Human Settlements – was unforgettable: it was hard
work but a lot of fun as well.”
The wish of Xu’s father has come true: his son represents
the Flemish company Egemin in China and he is now also the
representative of K.U.Leuven: “Leuven already has a good reputation
here when it comes to research and technology transfer.
I hope I can expand that good name through the network of
social contacts that I have established in the government, at
universities and in the media. I have already contacted the partner
universities to ask if they can organise a K.U.Leuven Day
or Weekend to introduce Leuven to Chinese students. We have
also planned a number of activities for the Shanghai World
Fair, which will undoubtedly give Leuven’s image a considerable
boost as well.”
“I also intend to organise alumni meetings once a month, in
different cities. My main goal is to foster a family reunion feeling
amongst the alumni, but I also want to appeal to their networks
to spread information about K.U.Leuven.”
Alumni
Bioscience Engineering
successfully represented
in Latin America
The Network of Resident Representatives (NoRR), launched
by the Faculty of Bioscience Engineering one year ago, is a
success. Alumni and students in five Latin American countries
serve as ambassadors of the faculty.
“Latin America was the obvious choice
for a pilot project,” Dean Pol Coppin tells us.
“K.U.Leuven is not as well represented there as
in Asia and Africa. Moreover, I worked in Bolivia,
Peru and Nicaragua for many years. During
my time there, I often encountered people who
were all too happy to serve as ambassadors.”
It came as no surprise then, that the faculty
had no trouble finding candidates. “For
the past year, the project has operated with
nine representatives in South America and the
results have motivated us to pursue it further,”
Matt Tips, head of external relations tells us. “A
number of ambassadors are Flemish alumni or
students who live in the host countries, the others
are Latin American alumni of our university.
When we launched the pilot project, we organised
workshops in Lima and Sao Paulo and
we continue to support the project through a
newsletter and website.”
According to Coppin, the network is a
cheap and efficient way to represent the university
locally: “Our ambassadors travel to education
fairs to provide information about Master’s
programmes and doctorates at K.U.Leuven.
They also conduct preliminary interviews and
test the language proficiency of candidates for
our programmes. Furthermore, the representatives
are the first points of contact for researchers
from Leuven and Latin America who are
interested in co-operations with one another.
They are also able to receive students, researchers
and professors from Leuven who travel to
Latin America and assist them during their first
few days there; helping them to find accommodation,
for example.”
“They also function as our eyes in their
countries,” Tips adds. “They inform us of projects
that companies or research centres establish
that may be of interest to K.U.Leuven. The representatives
also accompany us to negotiations
with partner universities. For example, Riet
Ysebaert was involved in the discussions concerning
the agreement we concluded with the
Universidad de La Frontera (UFRO) in Temuco,
Chile in December 2009. Starting in the 2011-
2012 academic year, our students may choose
the Forestry Production specialisation and travel
to Chile for a semester to gain practical experience.
Furthermore, there is intense co-operation
between the International Potato Center in
Lima and the banana gene bank at our Division
of Crop Biotechnics. They each have the world’s
largest collection of their respective species.”
Online
http://www.biw.kuleuven.be/verenigingen/
NoRR/
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