Delegation from Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań Visits GDUFS

On the morning of November 13, Professor Rafał Witkowski, Vice-Rector of Adam Mickiewicz University (AMU), Poznań, Poland, led a delegation to Guangdong University of Foreign Studies (GDUFS). President Yan Xiangbin met with the guests in the VIP Hall of the Administration Building of the Baiyun Mountain Campus. The two sides held in-depth discussions on strengthening bilateral cooperation, advancing the development of Mickiewicz Innovation Institute, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies (MII, GDUFS), and expanding faculty and student exchanges.

Highlight from the Meeting

During the meeting, President Yan extended a warm welcome to Rafał Witkowski and his delegation, and reviewed the progress of cooperation between GDUFS and AMU. He noted that the jointly established MII of GDUFS was approved by the Ministry of Education in 2025 as the university’s first Sino-foreign cooperative education institution. GDUFS attaches great importance to the project, having set up a dedicated institute and offering full support for its development. He expressed hope that the visit would allow both sides to conduct in-depth discussions on talent cultivation models and jointly nurture the institute’s first cohort of students. He highlighted that GDUFS offers the widest range of foreign language programs in South China, with 33 languages currently taught. The Polish language program has been offered for more than a decade and has been designated a national first-class undergraduate program. AMU is one of Poland’s top universities with strong international recognition, presenting broad prospects for collaboration. President Yan expressed the hope that, through the Institute, both sides could enhance student recruitment and graduate employment quality, increase investment, and cultivate high-caliber interdisciplinary talent, building the institute into a leading model of Sino-foreign cooperative education that serves bilateral economic and trade exchanges while continuously injecting vitality into China–Poland friendship. He further suggested expanding cooperation beyond foreign language education to frontier fields such as AI and large language models. By deepening joint research and faculty exchanges, the partnership could become more diversified and enriched.

Rafał Witkowski thanked GDUFS for the warm reception and congratulated the university on the establishment of MII. He noted that AMU is undergoing rapid development and looks forward to exploring comprehensive and multi-tiered cooperation models with GDUFS. He emphasized that joint programs should adopt an international perspective and cultivate high-quality talent capable of contributing to China–Poland economic, trade, and cultural exchanges. He stressed that the AMU team would fully support the advancement of bilateral cooperation. Professor Witkowski praised China’s leading position in quantum computing, AI and related fields, noting that AMU likewise places strong emphasis on AI and natural language processing research, which is closely aligned with GDUFS’s disciplinary strengths. Faced with the transformative impact of AI on language learning and employment, he expressed hope that both universities would jointly explore response strategies and open up new possibilities for cooperation. He also mentioned that multiple funding mechanisms have been established at the governmental level between China and Poland and encouraged both universities to actively apply for such programs in the future to provide more support for bilateral exchanges. He concluded by congratulating a GDUFS postgraduate student majoring in Polish on having received a Special Award in Poland’s Outstanding Master’s Thesis Competition, and also praised the excellent academic performance of GDUFS students at AMU.

Group Photo

Representatives from the Office of International Cooperation and Exchange, the School of Global and Area Studies and MII attended the meeting. After the discussions, the two sides exchanged views on specific matters such as curriculum development, faculty exchange, and academic cooperation. During the visit, the delegation also took part in International Academic Conference 2025 on Central and Eastern European Studies from the Perspective of Country and Region Studies, one of the events celebrating the 60th anniversary of GDUFS, and attended the unveiling ceremony of Mickiewicz Innovation Institute of GDUFS.