SJTU student leads a discussion at the board.

Summer School at Shanghai Jiao Tong University (July 11-21, 2016)

In recent years, a number of universities in China have been offering their students intensive, English-language and discipline-based short courses during brief 2-4 week summer terms.

I have been collaborating with Nanjing University and Shanghai Jiao Tong University to help identify highly qualified instructors for these courses. This year, the Zhiyuan Honors College at Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU) offered a pair of such courses during July.

Notably, SJTU offered tuition-free enrollment to U-M students who wished to attend these classes. Moreover, the topical areas (An Introduction to Chemical Biology and Bio-Organic Reaction Mechanisms, and Nano-Materials Chemistry) are precisely the intermediate elective courses that have been challenging for the U-M chemistry department to offer due to enrollment demands in the basic program. A group of six U-M students joined the 26 SJTU students who were registered for these classes.

The Chemical Biology course was team taught by me and a former U-M post-doc, Professor Jean-Paul Desaulniers, who is currently on the faculty at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology, while the Nano-Materials course was taught by Professor Thomas Seery from the University of Connecticut.

Old School schooling at SJTU.

UM student Zohaib Siddiqi collaborating with his SJTU counterparts on some chemistry questions.