The Second Annual Conference of Confucius Institutes in the United States(April 19th-20th)

The 2nd Annual Conference of Confucius Institutes in the United States was held in Washington D.C., April 19-20, 2008.Ninety participants, including directors and associate directors from thirty-eight Confucius Institutes in the Unites States, representatives of the Office of Chinese Language Council International (Hanban), and officials from Chinese embassy in Washington D.C., Huston, Chicago, San Francisco, and New York, attended the conference.

On April 19 at 1pm, Madam Xu Lin, Director-General of Hanban and Secretary-General of Confucius Institute Headquarter, opened the conference. Prof. Chuan-sheng Liu, Director of Confucius Institute at University of Maryland chaired the conference. Mr. Brodie Bremington, Vice-President of University of Maryland, gave the first speech in which he congratulated the opening of the conference, expressed welcome and gratitude to the participants, and wished the prosperity of Confucius Institutes. The Deputy Director of Asian Society expressed the same wishes too. Afterwards, Madam Xu Lin gave the keynote presentation. Madam Xu presented the plan of CI Chinese Headquarter for 2008, including the Five-Year Plan for CI Global Development, the plan for director/teacher selection and training, the operation of an on-line Confucius Institute, the orchestration of a Television Confucius Institute, etc. Deputy Director Wang Yongli and Section Chief Yang Yandong gave reports on financial issues. Questions from participants were co-answered by the three Hanban representatives.

In the second session, individual Confucius Institutes in the United States took turns to give a brief report on their operation and innovations, including their visions, goals, programs, innovations, community outreach, and long-term missions.Afterwards, four groups were formed according to four different topics. Directors exchanged their insights on increasing recruitment, community collaboration, resource sharing, improvement of teaching quality, evaluation standards, internal management, CI sustainable development, etc. During the second day, April 20, the leaders of the four discussion groups presented a summary of the discussions by their group in the previous night to the conference. Finally, Madam Xu Lin responded to questions raised in the discussion sessions. The Q & A session was lively with all the participants actively sharing their points of views.