Two years ago representatives from Minnesota’s Private College Council visited China to explore new opportunities in higher education.

At the same time, a group of Chinese visionaries was launching the first new liberal arts college in China since the 1950s, called United International College.

The two groups got together and today are fine-tuning a partnership that will give the Chinese school officials access to private college know-how and give Minnesota private college students and faculty the opportunity for meaningful study in China.

Patrick Quade, director of international education at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, said private colleges in Minnesota already are developing programming ideas.

“Our goal is to provide many exchanges,” he said. There will be both faculty and student exchanges, one of which is already in the works.

Janet Moldstad, a faculty member at Bethany Lutheran College, was unable to be on campus when Edwin Kwok, executive vice president of UIC, spent a day meeting with faculty and staff there. That’s because she was in China, preparing to spend spring semester 2008 at UIC. Things are moving quickly.

What makes UIC so unusual in China is its liberal arts approach.

Traditionally, Chinese colleges and universities have been pragmatic in the extreme. In China, the communist government rules almost all of higher education, and the government has dictated that students will go to school to learn specific skills. Times are changing a little, and the UIC will be a dramatic departure from the Chinese norm.

“We have a meaningful opportunity to contribute to China’s reintroduction of the liberal arts into its higher education system,” said David B. Laird Jr., president of the Minnesota Private College Council. “As we’ve seen here in Minnesota, a liberal arts education has so many benefits, including the intellectual skills that are critical in our world’s rapidly changing, knowledge-based economy.”

Kwok said the transition hasn’t been easy.

“China has been trying very hard to change its education system from a Soviet system to a more American model,” he said.

Kwok is the visionary behind the UIC phenomenon.

For 27 years he has taught at and been an administrator for the Chinese University of Hong Kong. After first receiving a degree there, he obtained his master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of California, Berkeley. He has published more than 20 books.

Kwok has many ideas about what UIC can be, including his vision of a residence hall where the entire ground floor is occupied by artists and studio space, easily accessible to students coming and going from the residence hall.

The school, while probably not fully resembling a Minnesota private college, will emphasize education of the “whole person” instead of teaching skills applicable to a specific occupation.