Message from the Program Directors

It feels strange to come out from the background to the foreground. Hung Tao and I, and briefly Yongming Liu, have run this program from 2000 till now. We have always been silent from the website. Now, our last cohort of this program asks us to say a few words as part of the closure section for this last year.

The human chain mentioned in the background is only part of the whole. All the Chinese mentors and their graduate students, more numerous than we can possible cover in this short space, have contributed to the success of this program. All together there have been over twenty Chinese professors at five different institutions, and at least twice this number of Chinese graduate students participated in mentoring the 150 plus undergraduate students who participated in this program. Their styles of mentoring were different, but their dedication to education was the same. Professor Yue at the Dalian University of Technology exemplified the absolute “can-do” leadership style. Professor Fu at the Ocean University of China orchestrated a superior academic team to challenge the students. Professor Yu at the Nanjing University represented a teacher who held character improvements above knowledge gain. Professor Hou at the Chinese Academy understood each student’s talent instantly and focused on building their independence. Professor Wang at Tsinghua University truly loved each of his students with wide open heart. Like Professor Yue, Professor Wang’s “can-do” spirit was critical to the successful transition of the program into Materials Science. The names mentioned above were the lead professors at each campus associated with the program. All mentors whose contribution we cannot individually mention here are also gratefully acknowledged. Equally so, I must include those numerous graduate students who helped our 150 plus undergraduate students on a daily basis throughout their summer research, and equally importantly, their assimilation into life in China. We are lucky to have reconnected with some of them years after and watched them grow into young professionals.

Fourteen years is a long time. From the first year only one laptop was available in the entire REU group and now every the street sweepers in China has a cell phone. The exchange rate also went from 8.2 RMB in 2000 to 6.1 RMB this year. The world has changed a lot and even more noticeably, China has changed a lot. Meanwhile, all of our 150 plus alums have chosen interesting life paths. For us as program directors, knowing them and learning about their stories is the most rewarding experience.

At its closing, we cannot help but think: what is the value of such program? When we started in 2000, what was the question we wanted to answer by conducting such a project? We only felt that it was a good thing to do, but can we measure the goodness at the end?

But the other day as I walked under the trees that shaded the sun’s blaze, I heard birds sing in the trees above me, I realized: birds spread seeds as part of their life’s activities; trees grow where the seeds were dropped. Nice things in nature happen without being measured. There may be no need to quantify the goodness of each human activity. We enjoy the trees, the sun, and birds singing in them. And we keep such good things going.

-Hayley Shen