Texas Border Business
By Gail Fagan
RIO GRANDE VALLEY, TEXAS – DEC. 8, 2016 – One of three scrolls celebrating the ongoing relationship between The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley and Hengyang Normal University (HYNU) in China was unveiled Dec. 7 at an Open House of the UTRGV Deputy Provost.
The scrolls, created by world-famous calligrapher Xi Zhi Qiang, a member of the HYNU art faculty, were presented to Deputy Provost Dr. Cynthia Brown; Dr. Patricia Alvarez McHatton, dean of the College of Education and P-16 Integration, and Dr. Dennis Hart, associate provost of the Office of Global Engagement.
The three administrators visited HYNU, located in Hengyang, Hunan Province, this past summer, observing a few days of a digital photography study abroad course led by UTRGV art faculty member Ping Xu that UTRGV students participated in at HYNU.
Hart said the scrolls, seen frequently in China, were done in what he called a “bold style,” and usually feature a popular slogan.
“Reading right to left, these symbols say, ‘Friendship spreads through the four seas’ – the four seas an idiom meaning the world,” Hart said of the scroll displayed in the deputy provost’s office. “We have developed a strong, friendly relationship with this university.”
HYNU is a public undergraduate teaching institution with about 16,000 students. A sister university agreement, signed in 2009, established opportunities for faculty from then UT Pan American and HYNU, to study and conduct research on each other’s campuses. The agreement carried over to UTRGV in fall 2015.
Since then the partnership has flourished with faculty exchanges, sharing methods and research each semester. Four HYNU faculty participate in the fall and another four in the spring. A few UTRGV faculty have travelled to HYNU to teach.
Student exchanges are planned for the future, Hart said.
