China-Rice Advanced Leadership Forum

Rice University is deeply honored to host a prestigious delegation of Chinese leaders for the inaugural meeting of the China-Rice Advanced Leadership Forum, a joint university leadership program to be held this spring. We will welcome 26 Chinese university presidents, chairman and vice chairman, and high officials from the Ministry of Education and the National Academy of Education Administration for a two-week period.  The leaders hail from the top 30 universities located throughout China. The delegates themselves represent an impressive variety of backgrounds, experience, and scholarship. Though the universities may be diversified in their strategic focus and mission, all share a vision of being world-class institutions.

We believe this to be a tremendous opportunity to showcase Rice University, Houston, and our sister universities in the region and to emphasize the richness of research and academic offerings in Texas.  The participants will spend a day at the University of Houston and Texas A&M University during the first and second weeks of the Forum.  Both UH and TAMU have embraced the Forum and are excited to host the delegation for a unique look at their own institutions.

Among many other topics, the participants want to learn our perspectives on how to build leading, world-class private and public universities by achieving academic and operational excellence in a diverse, global community.  They would like to know how our respective universities create a strategic plan, govern and structure the university, develop faculty, educate students, conduct research, and capitalize on technology transfer. Our Chinese counterparts have also expressed an interest in learning how we give back to the community through targeted research designed to resolve urban problems (traffic, pollution, poverty) and how we capitalize on Houston and our region’s distinctive offerings by creating research, employment, volunteer, cultural, and entertainment opportunities for our students. 

In short, our goal is to optimize the time the Chinese delegation spends with us and to cultivate a mutually valuable learning experience for all participants. We are confident that this event will deepen our relationship with China, and China’s relationship with Houston, and will strengthen our international collaborations.

We look forward to learning as much from the Chinese participants as they do from us.

President David W. Leebron