 ug to offer mandarin studies ug to offer mandarin studies ug to offer mandarin studies webmaster sun 7162017 1254 the university of guyana ug and the dalian university of foreign languages dufl in china have reached an agreement for ug to offer a minor in mandarin chinese studies and for development of a bachelor s degree programme this agreement was reached recently when a team from the university of guyana comprising vicechancellor professor ivelaw griffith deputy vicechancellor for planning and international engagement dr barbara reynolds director of the confucius institute ug al creighton and chinese director of the confucius institute ma tao recently met in china with officials of the dalian university of foreign languages dufl for the first official meeting of the board of the confucius institute ug the meeting was hosted by dufl the ug s partner institution in china for the operation of the confucius institute and it was held on their campus in the city of dalian china representing dufl were vicechancellor professor liu hong dean of the multilanguage base in dalian for the international promotion of chinese language professor sun yuhua and li fan of the international office at dufl professor sun yuhua pledged the full support of dufl with assistance from hanban the headquarters for confucius institutes in china for the programmes ug will continue to offer mandarin as one of the languages that ug students may choose in addition to spanish french and portuguese mandarin will also be available as one of the foreign language requirements of the new school of entrepreneurship and business and innovation sebi at the ug the meeting was chaired by ma tao and addressed by the two vicechancellors dr reynolds the dean of the multilanguage base and the director of ciug both universities reaffirmed the mou already in force between them and pledged continued cooperation while dr reynolds put on the table ideas for areas of future cooperation and ways in which the institutions can assist each other for mutual development she also reaffirmed the vicechancellor s invitation to dufl to visit the ug for the next meeting of the board ciug director al creighton presented the report of the institute covering its operations since 2014 the conduct of the programme in mandarin as well as the academic cultural and social events on the ug campuses and in the guyanese community he presented the budget of the ciug and outlined the vision of the institute plans for its future development and ways in which there can be deeper academic exchanges dufl trains and makes available lecturers in chinese language teaching for the ciug although it was historically founded with its strength in foreign languages it now has programmes in several other disciplines and the ug will now look forward to a widening in twoway exchanges involving areas beyond chinese language teaching with a current enrollment of some 8000 students ug has graduated more than 20000 students who have gone on to successful careers locally regionally and internationally the university is also a major contributor to the national economy and to business and industry established in 1963 on a parttime basis with shared space at queens college ug moved to its own campus at turkeyen in 1970 and expanded in 2000 with the addition of the tain campus it now offers more than 60 undergraduate and postgraduate programmes including engineering environmental studies forestry urban planning and management tourism studies education creative arts economics law medicine optometry and nursing several online programmes are available and ug also offers extramural classes at four locations through its institute of distance and continuing education idce ug also offers the opportunity for student engagement in debating sports and cultural religious and professional activities article adapted from  http guyanachroniclecom 20170713 ugtooffermandarinstudies confucius institute mandarin dalian university of foreign languages 