Strategic Communications and Marketing News Bureau

Ceremony to mark establishment of Confucius Institute at Illinois

CHAMPAIGN,Ill. – Officials from Jiangxi Normal University in Nanching, China, and the University of Illinois will sign an agreement establishing a Confucius Institute at the Urbana campus during an event Nov. 21 (Thursday).

The institute will be a unit within the U. of I. College of Education, which will operate the institute in close collaboration with International Programs and Studies, the Center for East Asian and Pacific Studies, and the Chinese language program, which is a unit within the department of East Asian languages and cultures.

A language testing and research facility will be a component of the institute, which will be housed in the Education Building at 1310 S. Sixth St., in Champaign.

The initial budget for the institute at the U. of I. campus includes $150,000 in startup funds from the Chinese Ministry of Education, which the university is matching with funds from the campus, the College of Education, and International Programs and Studies.

A board of directors comprising representatives from the Confucius Institute headquarters in Beijing, Jiangxu Normal University and the U. of I. will govern the institute.

Hua-Hua Chang, who is a professor of educational psychology, of psychology and of statistics at the U. of I., will serve as the institute’s director.

More than 300 Confucius institutes exist worldwide, including several at Big Ten campuses and other large research universities. China began establishing the public nonprofit institutes in 2004 to promote Chinese language and culture in foreign countries and facilitate cultural exchanges.

Representatives from the Chinese General-Consulate office in Chicago will be on campus for Thursday’s event along with a delegation from Jiangxi Normal University, including the university’s president, Guoping Mei; Tao Hou, director, department of international cooperation and exchanges; Yanhong Huang, deputy director, Office of International Programs; and Zhaosheng Luo, deputy director, College of Psychology.

Thursday’s ceremony will begin at 2 p.m. in Room 192 Education Building, followed by the signing of the agreement.

Chang and Mei will speak at the event along with Ilesanmi Adesida, the vice chancellor for academic affairs and provost; and Mary Kalantzis, the dean of the College of Education, both from the U. of I.

The event is free and open to the public.

[ Email | Share ]

Read Next

Announcements Marcelo Garcia, professor of civil and environmental engineering at The Grainger College of Engineering.

Illinois faculty member elected to National Academy of Engineering

Champaign, Ill. — Marcelo Garcia, a professor of civil and environmental engineering in The Grainger College of Engineering, has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering.

Social sciences Male and female student embracing on the quad with flowering redbud tree and the ACES library in the background. Photo by Michelle Hassel

Dating is not broken, but the trajectories of relationships have changed

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — According to some popular culture writers and online posts by discouraged singles lamenting their inability to find romantic partners, dating is “broken,” fractured by the social isolation created by technology, pandemic lockdowns and potential partners’ unrealistic expectations. Yet two studies of college students conducted a decade apart found that their ideas about […]

Engineering Civil and Environmental Engineering Professor Nishant Garg, center, is joined by fellow researchers, from left: Yujia Min, Hossein Kabir, Nishant Garg, center, Chirayu Kothari and M. Farjad Iqbal, front right. In front are examples of clay samples dissolved at different concentrations in a NaOH solution. The team invented a new test that can predict the performance of cementitious materials in mere 5 minutes. This is in contrast to the standard ASTM tests, which take up to 28 days. This new advance enables real-time quality control at production plants of emerging, sustainable materials. Photo taken at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign on Monday, Feb. 3, 2025. (Photo by Fred Zwicky / University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)

Researchers develop a five-minute quality test for sustainable cement industry materials

A new test developed at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign can predict the performance of a new type of cementitious construction material in five minutes — a significant improvement over the current industry standard method, which takes seven or more days to complete. This development is poised to advance the use of next-generation resources called supplementary cementitious materials — or SCMs — by speeding up the quality-check process before leaving the production floor.

Strategic Communications and Marketing News Bureau

507 E. Green St
MC-426
Champaign, IL 61820

Email: stratcom@illinois.edu

Phone (217) 333-5010