Broadening international partnerships
WMU is broadening and enhancing its collaboration with the world’s most established universities. It has forged partnerships with 131 universities and research institutions in 29 countries and regions, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia. It has joined seven major global academic alliances, including the Sino-American CHEPD Program and the United Nations Academic Impact (UNAI) programme.
Enhancing educational exchange
WMU students had a valuable exchange programme with the University of British Columbia in Canada.Credit: WMU
WMU has 75 foreign exchange programmes for students, ranging from short-term study tours, to courses and joint degree programmes, with bases set up at University of British Columbia, in Canada, and the State University of New York’s College of Optometry, among others. In the past five years, nearly 3,000 WMU students had travelled abroad for study.
In 2000, WMU launched the joint PhD/OD programme in optometry & ophthalmology with New England College of Optometry in the United States, China’s first joint doctoral programme with a foreign institution. The clinical medicine doctoral programme collaborated with Lund University in Sweden, China’s first foray into international joint training in translational medicine. WMU has also partnered with Thomas University in Georgia, United States, to launch a bachelor’s nursing programme, which was among Zhejiang’s first demonstrations of international education collaboration. In 2018, a joint master’s programme in nursing with Burapha University, Thailand, was approved for launch.
Currently, WMU has 1,096 international students, including 795 in various degree programmes ranging from clinical medicine and pharmaceutical sciences to stomatology, radiology and nursing.
Improving faculty teams
The past five years have seen 1,697 exchange trips organized for WMU teachers and seven teacher training bases launched overseas, including in the United States, Australia and Poland. The university also has 123 foreign experts, 54 of whom have won Friendship Awards from central or local governments, including two having received state government Friendship Awards.
Making footprints abroad
WMU launched China’s first overseas educational programme in clinical medicine in 2016 — the ‘Huatuo Programme’, a partnership with the Medical University of Lublin in Poland, which was also the first collaboration in medical education between the two countries. The university’s footprints abroad also include the Confucius Institute, specializing in traditional Chinese medicine and language, established in 2006 in partnership with Thailand’s Burapha University, and another Confucius Institute in 2010 at the State University of New York’s College of Optometry.
The ‘Huatuo Programme’, collaborated with the Medical University of Lublin in Poland, was China’s first overseas educational programme in clinical medicine.Credit: WMU
Boosting collaboration
Housing 45 research platforms for international collaboration, WMU has organized 54 conferences in the last five years. They included conferences on myopia and vision science, laboratory medicine, and translational medicine, and have made great global impact.
In 2018, WMU established the advanced research institute, which plans to recruit five to ten world-leading research teams within five years. A partnership with Monash University in Australia has led to a biomedical research institute that supports joint doctoral programmes, student exchange, as well as joint international conferences, and that will promote further cooperation in disease prevention, diagnosis and treatment.