Office of International Affairs created

Adelaide Ferguson will become associate vice president of the new Office of International Affairs on July 1, 2008.

The new office will bring together the Office of International Programs, which supervises study-abroad programs and international campuses, and the Office of International Services, which provides services for international students. It will be responsible for all international activities except for international admission.

The new office is designed to expand Temple’s global engagement and to oversee the university’s extensive and burgeoning international programs.

Currently, Temple provides programs that allow students to study in more than 10 countries around the globe. Last year, the university spent close to $4 million for the operation of its campuses in Rome and Japan.

“Temple offers a wide array of study-abroad programs, but students and faculty do not always know about them,” said Fabienne Darling-Wolf, an assistant professor in the journalism department who also teaches at Temple University Japan. “For instance, in the summer program I teach, I often have as many students from other universities as Temple students. That’s a shame.”

Students also said they do not know much about the university’s international programs.

“[Temple should] have more information available and present more so people have more knowledge about the programs,” said Miesha Cooper, a freshman legal studies major.

Students face other problems, including curricula and financial constraints.

“If I want to study abroad, the courses I want to take would not be available there,” junior economics major Ian Pastura said. “Having to save up for the trip is another problem.”

Indeed, not only Temple students here in Philadelphia think money can be a problem.

“One of the main obstacles to Japanese students studying at Main Campus is money,” said Matt Wilson, senior associate dean and general counsel of TUJ. “While in Tokyo, students can save money by working and commuting from home. In Philadelphia, this is not possible.”

Ferguson’s first priority will be to develop plans for new initiatives by working closely with deans, faculty, administrators and international partners. She said that Temple has a strong base on which to build to improve the university’s internationalization and expanding its global reach, according to the release.

Yet, while the lack of student participation hinders Temple’s global expansion, faculty’s sporadic and scarce involvement also becomes a barrier.

“With the tenure requirements becoming increasingly challenging and more and more faculty members being in two-career households, leaving Main Campus for a couple years has become more difficult for a larger portion of the faculty population,” Darling-Wolf said. “People are worried about getting their research done, and their spouse may not be able to leave their job.”

Although both Darling-Wolf and Wilson agreed the administration provides enough support for them, they said they think the university lacks exchanges between Main Campus and Temple’s international campuses.

“Going forward, I hope that there will be even more opportunities for faculty exchanges,” Wilson said.

Esther Hiotang Castillo can be reached at hiotong.castillo@temple.edu.

New law school dean named: Epps to replace Reinstein

JoAnne A. Epps has been named the next dean of Temple’s Beasley School of Law, effective July 1.

The former associate dean will replace Robert J. Reinstein who will end his 19-year tenure when he steps down on Monday, June 30, hoping to return to teaching, according to a university release.

Epps, who specializes in trial advocacy and criminal procedure, will take over the law school, which boasts 64 faculty members, more than 1,200 students at Main Campus and more than 100 in the university’s law programs in Beijing and Tokyo.

She has been associate dean of academic affairs since 1989, primarily serving as a liason between Reinstein and the law faculty. She joined the law faculty in 1985, rising to full professor in 1994. Between 1980 and 1985, Epps was an assistant U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

The first job for a 16-year-old Epps was as a cashier at Temple’s bookstore, and her mother was a Temple employee, according to the release.

Epps was the only law professor selected by the American Bar Association to travel to London to train Sudanese lawyers representing victims of the Darfur crisis. She has also taught in Temple’s law programs in Beijing.

Reinstein also served as vice president for international programs, but a replacement for that position has yet to be announced

Reinstein, the longest-serving dean among American law schools, served over expansive growth in the law school from 1989 to 2008. The law school’s endowment ballooned from $4 million to $57 million and faculty increased by 20 percent. This fall’s entering class has the highest academic record in the law school’s history, according to the release. Some 4,800 applicants, double what it was in 1989, compete for 300 roster spots.

In his role as vice president for international programs, Reinstein oversaw tremendous growth at Temple University-Japan and further developed Temple Rome into one of the top American study abroad programs. Reinstein, who joined Temple’s law faculty in 1969, served as a law professor and the university’s general counsel from 1982 to 1969. Prior to Temple, he was a contributing attorney for the NAACP and fought to integrate the Philadelphia Police and Fire departments, and other groups.

Christopher Wink can be reached at cwink@temple.edu

Temple professor, who brought ties to China, dies at 95

Man-Chiang Niu, who was instrumental in forging Temple’s well-developed relationship with his native China, died last month in Beijing. He was 95.

Niu, a retired Temple biology professor, died of complications from bone marrow cancer. He was a 21-year member of Temple’s faculty.

His distinguished career focused on cell research almost as much as he worked to develop scientific exchanges between China and the United States.

“The entire extended Temple family is saddened by the passing of Professor Niu,” Temple President Ann Weaver Hart said in a university press release from late last month. “His impact on international higher education, particularly here at Temple, has been felt by generations of students, and will continue to grow as Temple’s close ties with China strengthen in the future.”

Hart met with Niu at Temple’s first alumni reunion in Beijing just 10 days before he died.

Niu personally started the foundation for a relationship between China and Temple in the 1970s. Beginning in 1972, he visited with Chinese academics each summer, hoping to bring some back to Temple. Through his persistence, his goal was met when two Chinese genetic researchers were allowed to work at Temple in 1978.

Then in 1979, the opportunities grew substantially during an American visit by then-Chinese President Den Xiaoping. Temple gave Deng an honorary law degree, said the current director of the Temple-Beijing Rule of Law program, Mo Zhang, who spoke to The Temple News in early October of this year.

Niu helped arrange Deng’s honorary degree. In return, Deng invited a delegation from Temple, including Niu and former university president Marvin Wachman, to visit China later that year.Today, Temple sponsors a 15-month course on American law, housed at the prestigious Tsinghua University in Beijing.

“It is the first and only program to offer a foreign law degree in China,” said Zhang, the director of the program. Niu’s dreams have largely become a reality.

Niu was born on Oct. 31, 1912, in the northern He Bei province of China, which surrounds the nation’s capital. After graduating from Beijing University, he married his wife, Lillian Paoying, in 1943, and together, they immigrated to the United States in 1944. He earned a doctorate from Stanford University and, after a stint at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in New York, he took a position at Temple in 1960. He retired in 1981.

In retirement, he directed a laboratory at Beijing’s Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Developmental Biology, which he founded in 1980. He kept homes both in Beijing and Elkins Park, Montgomery County, where the Tyler School of Art is currently located.

Niu is survived by his wife and two daughters, McYing Niu and Manette T. Nieu.His Nov. 16 funeral in Beijing was attended by Chinese President Hu Jintao, among others, according to the university’s press release.

Christopher Wink can be reached at cwink@temple.edu

Temple students change China law

Temple’s foreign programs are wide-ranging and popular, and you don’t even know about Chinese law reform.

Temple has been running a program for almost a decade in Beijing. The Temple-Beijing Rule of Law program, housed in Tsinghua University, teaches a 15-month course on American law.

“It is the first and only program to offer a foreign law degree in China,” said Mo Zhang, the director of the program.

The conversation about starting a program began in the late 1990s. However, the idea was really planted in 1979, when Temple gave then-Chinese president Deng Xiaoping an honorary law degree.

Temple received requests to start a program in China by several universities during the 1990s but had not moved on it. When the Chinese Ministry of Justice approached the school, however, they reconsidered.

The program opened in 1998 and began with considerable success.

When it became accredited by both the American Bar Association and the Chinese Ministry of Education, the program moved to Tsinghua.

“It is called China’s MIT,” Zhang said, describing Temple’s home in Beijing as the Chinese form of the leading U.S. technology school.

Each class is not made up of traditional
university students, but judges, prosecutors, lawyers and some law professors. About 60 percent of each class of about four dozen students is employed by the government.

For Chinese judiciaries, the importance of studying American law is clear.

“China was accused of having no rule of law,” Zhang said, “[It] wants to be a part of the world family, and the world wants it to be, as well.”

In order to become a part of that family, China is trying to improve its human and civil rights record, he said. One of those improvements has been judicial independence.

The judiciary is much more active in the process of the trial, though. They can ask questions of both the defense and the prosecution, and even verify evidence. Given these differences, that China is ruled under a one-party system, and that all the judges are part of that party, justice is not always as fair as it should be.

“It’s supposed to be neutral, but in fact it is more to the government’s side,” Zhang said. “We are very eager to promote judicial independence.”

The program may be facing an uphill battle.
“China has a tradition of never taking an outside system,” Zhang said. “They will take whatever they find necessary.”

The Chinese government has allowed Zhang and the program to operate with little oversight, even though it is teaching an outside system. This may seem like a conflict of values, but it is all part of the complex play between China’s isolationist tradition, communist government, and current desire to be a player in the world scene.

“The differences between Chinese and U.S. law are getting narrower and narrower,” Zhang said.

And the agent bringing them together is Temple.

Stephen Zook can be reached at stephen.zook@temple.edu.