Rutgers University ROSE Initiative in China Part 2

In the last segment, we spoke with Rutger’s University Vice President for Global Affairs, Eric Garfunkel, who help conceive the ROSE initiative along with his team at Rutgers Global. Garfunkel spoke about three of the challenges he and his team faced, and in part 2 of this segment we will identify the other three challenges their team faced and how they overcame it. 

Health and safety concerns

In the midst of a pandemic, it’s no surprise health and safety would be a major concern. 

“[Parents] were all still, at that time, extremely worried about health and safety. But by June, when students were deciding whether to join the program, or participate fully online, it was clear that the Chinese universities were going to be extremely rigorous with COVID-19 protocols.” 

“Each of our Chinese partner institutions talked to the parents about what they were going to do to support the students and what measures they would be taking: what fraction of the classes would be online or in person, what social distancing and masking rules would be in place, what contact tracing and testing would be done, etc. And with that knowledge, the parents’ worries died down, as did the COVID-19 worries of Rutgers administration.”

Student administration and welfare

It’s not just courses that have to be organised and implemented, but also the support structure around the courses that help students complete their studies -- and in some places like China, where some of these support structures have to be set up almost from scratch, that can be especially difficult.

Says Garfunkel: “In addition to academic advisors, we had to hire, mental health professionals, and they don't really have that as a normal thing in China, but we required it.” 

“There were lots of logistical issues regarding things like dining, health and how we could keep to US standards on student affairs issues. How do we address students who have an academic problem or have committed personal misconduct?” 

“It's actually easier for graduate students than undergraduates, because with undergraduates, these kids are coming out of the family and home for the first time each with a different level of maturity, so we needed to have residence hall directors. That concept is not so familiar in China, but we required it.” 

Timing

“Calendaring has been a massive problem in planning for the spring semester. In the fall, it was okay, we could match the academic calendars up reasonably well, but in the spring the Chinese universities don't start until after Chinese New Year. There is an overlap of 9-10 weeks, but there's a month before that overlap period when the US classes start, and five weeks after the US classes finish when they continue to teach in China. So there's timing issues like that that have to be worked out and we just plough through them until we work them out and reach an agreement on the best possible educational experience for the students.”

“The biggest thing that I learned about was all of the things that go on in addition to the classroom experience -- now I appreciate the academic infrastructure that it's needed in universities around the world.” 

It’s also important to note the amount of risk involved in an initiative like this, where things can fall through in a moment’s notice: “It was really 60-70 hours a week for the whole team for the three months prior -- and the whole initiative could have failed if the schools would have closed down in China because of COVID-19.”

How were these challenges overcome?

Having the right team

One major factor in the team’s success was having experienced people both at Rutgers and on the ground in China to help coordinate and facilitate.

Says Garfunkel: “I know the Chinese academic ecosystem moderately well, but more importantly I had a Chinese office with native Chinese people who know the system extremely well. Between our Chinese staff, an American guy who had spent seven years doing a PhD in China and myself, we had the right team to be able to pull this off. If we had half as many people, it would have been close to impossible [to do so].”

Building strong partnerships

Another important factor was the strong partnerships Rutgers had developed with institutions within China. Thanks to this groundwork that had been laid in the years prior, they were able to lean on those relationships to bring these programs to fruition.

“Rutgers had over 300 active global partnerships with other schools at the beginning of the pandemic, including many in China” says Garfunkel. “I would say two-thirds were research and professorial partnerships, and one third were student-exchange partnerships. We do have a very strong 30-year relationship with South China University of Technology and some relationship with the other schools we finally chose, so there were some [established] connections, but we also had to build new ones.” 

Reaching out to alumni

One valuable resource for the ROSE initiative was the network of Rutgers alumni in China, who are already well versed at straddling both the Chinese and American education systems. 

“Actually, we ended up using some alumni to teach and to be our staff in [the ROSE program],” says Garfunkel. “Of the 15 staff that were hired, more than half were former Rutgers students, so that was very useful.”

As Garfunkel notes, a university’s alumni network is often an undervalued and underutilised resource, but establishing and maintaining strong connections with alumni can pay dividends down the track, in several different ways.

What have the results of the ROSE initiative been like?

“There were many positive things about the program -- providing a support network for students and avoiding the total Zoom fatigue by students in online courses -- that were greatly appreciated by the students,” says Garfunkel. “Of the 400 [students undertaking the program], over 80 per cent will come back to the program in the second semester. In fact, we even have other students who wanted to join the program in the second semester who did not participate in the first semester.”

So successful has the program been than Rutgers is currently investigating how to make it a permanent part of their offerings.

“Overall, I think it worked out extremely well for Rutgers, to the point where we want this kind of program to have a life after COVID wanes and we're in serious discussions about how to do that. We think [hybrid programs like ROSE are] something that's going to be part of the new normal. It is a question of which parts of that go forward. But definitely the landscape two years from now will look quite different than it looked before the pandemic.”

Ready for the new normal?

As Rutgers has shown, those universities that are able to pivot quickly put themselves in the best position to weather major shake-ups. Those still looking to “ride it out” may do well to heed Garfunkel’s words about the landscape of education permanently changing due to the pandemic.