China Daily Interviews GDUFS President on Conferring of Academic Titles on Foreign Teachers

On Jan 15th, 2015, LI Wenfang, Deputy Chief of the Guangdong Bureau of China Daily, China's National-level English daily paper, visited GDUFS to interview the Universities' President on the conferring of academic titles on foreign teachers, which is, to-date, an unprecedented act in China. Those interviewed included ZHONG Weihe, President of GDUFS, Martin Weisser, Professor of Foreign Linguistics and Applied Linguistics, and Raymond Rocher, Assistant Professor of the French Department of the Faculty of European Languages and Culture.

LI interviewed President ZHONG and based her queries on four themes: (1) The reasons, (2) The influences, (3) The backgrounds and (4) The future developments related to this innovation in China.

President ZHONG in the interview with China Daily reporters

President ZHONG stated that since 2014, GDUFS, as a provincial pilot spot, has taken initiatives in autonomous comprehensive reform of education, with special emphasis on building a highly-qualified internationalized faculty team. Foreign teachers have been a significant component of the teaching staff and of human resources at GDUFS for many years. Through the conferring of official academic titles to foreign teachers, they can, not only get to know their place in terms of career development in the overall scheme of academic personnel, improve themselves in their teaching skills, move forward their research and social services, and also actively participate in the establishment of the university and gain a strong sense of identity and sense of belonging.

Generally, in similar circumstances, other countries will pinpoint the title and treatment of the employees in the contract, a characteristic which is totally different from practices in China. The measures GDUFS promulgated not only referred to foreign practices, but also, fully took into account the practical situation of our university as determined through extensive investigation and solicitation of opinions from both foreign teachers and other similar international employers.

GDUFS is the first university to confer standardized academic titles on foreign teachers in China. President ZHONG said that GDUFS has taken multi-channel ways to employ foreign teachers, including stable inter-school recommendations, the recommendations of foreign embassies in China, on-line recruitment as well as others means. Selecting candidates and interviewing them was done by utilizing very strict criteria in order to employ excellent candidates to teach at GDUFS. During 2014, GDUFS employed a total of 98 foreign teachers (including those from Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan) among the candidates to teach here for a long term. Among them were those with Master抯 or PhD Degrees which takes up more than 68% of the total number (based on data accumulated by the end of December, 2014). Additionally, there are more than 135 short-term visiting scholars coming to GDUFS. These come from 28 countries such as the U.K., America, France, Russia, Italy, Canada, Australia, Singapore and others, including Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan.

At this time, a total of 41 foreign teachers have received academic titles: including 1 professor, 5 associate professors, 8 assistant professors, and 27 lecturers. Aligning foreign teacher's salary to their academic titles, GUDFS has made great efforts considering many aspects of the candidate's quality and experience, to raise foreign teacher's incomes to reflect their experience. At the same time, GDUFS will link the recruitment system of foreign teachers to the programs that introduce talents such as the criteria for "Yunshan Scholars" derived from the aspects of the general system and policy. GDUFS will also actively introduce foreign teachers to the many effective ways to extend the scale of the recruitment of foreign teacher's majors to improve the total quality of foreign teachers employed. All of these measures will make foreign teachers teach and research more actively.

Raymond in the interview

Raymond Jean Rocher, 54, received his first award and title Assistant Professor in Languages and Literature, said in the interview: the title is not only a reward for my work, but it high-lights recognition for all the foreign teachers in GDUFS, and an encouragement for me as well as the present and future foreign workers at GDUFS."

Martin Weisser in the interview

Martin Weisser was awarded the title of Professor of Linguistics and Applied Linguistics in Foreign Languages. He has taught in a number of universities in the U.K., Germany, and Hong Kong before joining GDUFS in 2013, He said "compared with Hong Kong, the atmosphere here is much more relaxed, it is easier to communicate with colleagues, and the students here are more motivated." About the title, the change is extremely welcome, and he believed the approach is a huge step forward for GDUFS and China to engage more international research, and find more international qualified teachers."