The academic credentials and diversity of experience among these students applying to Quest are most impressive. We are very pleased to see students enrolling from all over Canada, the U.S. and such countries as Switzerland, Thailand, China, Bhuton, Germany and others. Our entire staff is thrilled by the scholastic achievements of our emerging student body. But we are also delighted by the curiosity demonstrated in the student dossiers. It turns out that “Questers” are an active, entrepreneurial lot who are deeply concerned about world poverty, the environment, self-improvement and making a difference - just as we had hoped they would be.
On the Quest web site, we have asked students from around the world to share their “quests,” to briefly outline a shape for their lives. You can read what dozens of young people have written about their journeys and the contributions they hope to make at http://www.questu.ca/about_quest/quests.php. Be sure to add yours as well.
My Quest may be even loftier than cracking the mysteries of the moon’s crust: To augment the Canadian landscape with a university that offers students and those who work with them, the opportunity to pursue personal quests that reverberate in wonderful ways all over this big blue planet.
1 comment:
Dear Dr. Strangway,
It was exciting for me to find the webpage of Quest University and your blog. You probably will not remember but I met you in Canberra in April of 1998, at a conference of university leaders held at the Australian National University. At that time you were in the early stages of planning for your new private university and shared the vision with us.
However wonderful now to see the photos of your new campus in such amazingly beautiful surroundings, and to know your first class of students will begin studies this autumn.
I have worked in Hong Kong and China for more than half of my adult life, as a teacher, diplomat, researcher and recently President of the Hong Kong Institute of Education. I stepped down from that position in spring of 2002 and am back at University of Toronto, teaching and doing research. At the moment I am doing a series of case studies on different types of Chinese universities in the move to mass higher education, including several private universities. Just last week I was in Zhengzhou, Henan province, for a week, doing a series of interviews and focus group meetings with leaders, faculty and students of the Huanghe (Yellow River) University of Science and Technology, the first private university to be developed after Deng Xiaoping’s reforms. It started up as a training class for students taking self-study examinations, but by 1994 it already had its own campus and was enrolling short-cycle students in diploma programs recognized by China’s Ministry of Education. By 2000 it had gained Ministry approval for undergraduate programs at the bachelor level, and with the sudden expansion in enrolment initiated by the government in 1999, its undergraduate enrolments grew rapidly in subsequent years. It has some amazing programs in music, television and radio broadcasting, arts and design, medicine (including nursing, pharmacy and assistant doctor) and various fields of engineering.
The reason I am writing to you is that I imagine Quest University might be interested in finding a Chinese partner institution, and felt this was an institution whose experience could be quite inspirational, given the heavy bureaucratic restrictions that exist for private institutions in China, and that have been overcome in remarkable ways by its visionary woman founder and president. Also it is located in the heartland of China’s historical culture, with the famous Shaolin Monastery just an hour’s drive away, also the Songyong Academy, one of China’s four most famous private academies, going back to about the 5th century CE. The provincial museum in Zhengzhou has a remarkable collection, with artifacts going back to 8000 BCE, in a modern building, recently built, with world standards of display and protection (also all displays have bilingual Chinese and English notation).
If you should be interested in some contacts with Huanghe Keda (its short name), I’d be glad to assist. Perhaps you could send me an e-mail (hayhoe@bellsouth.net) and let me know if you would be interested to have contact information or how I might help to facilitate contact. (For example, I could have their international office contact one of your staff). At the moment I am in China, teaching a doctoral course in Shanghai, and I have excellent web access, but blogs are sometimes blocked. I got onto yours once, but subsequently was not able to do so. So I have asked my sister in Vancouver to put this message onto your blogsite, in the hope that you will see it.
Very best wishes from Ruth Hayhoe
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