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Recipients of the Ningbo Business Awards at the February 2019 Awards Ceremony:

Jiayuan Wang & Yangyang Yu (Class of 2018);  Jiaqi Yu & Zhaojie Yu (Class of 2019).

 

The Humber-Ningbo program: A first in international partnerships

April 4, 2019

 

Created in 1996, the Humber-Ningbo international partnership was the first of its kind for Humber and a first for polytechnic institutions in Canada. The idea for creating postsecondary pathways for Chinese business students at Humber quickly took off and more than 20 years later some 2000 students have graduated from the program.

Humber’s partnership with China’s Ningbo University remains one of the most successful and longest standing Canada-China postsecondary programs. It has had a tremendous impact on both schools and has been instrumental in shaping Humber’s internationalization work.

 

Humber’s introduction to internationalization

The Humber-Ningbo program offers students at Ningbo University, in Zhejiang province, a jointly-delivered diploma in International Business Administration. Students spend two years studying at Ningbo alongside Humber faculty, and travel to Canada to complete their final year at the Humber campus.

When the first cohort arrived in 1998, international students made up less than 4% of Humber’s student body. “The experience of having the Ningbo students on campus had a significant impact on the Humber community as staff, faculty and students hosted the Ningbo students and participated in Chinese cultural events,” says Diane Simpson, Senior International Consultant and former Dean of International at Humber. With the program’s early success, Humber began to take a serious approach to internationalization and creating an internationally-minded community of students, faculty, and staff.

 

Transformative learning opportunities

For Ningbo students, the opportunity to study at Humber was a life-changing experience. The pathways model to degree completion helped students reach advanced level of postsecondary studies at Canadian institutions as well as at partner schools across the United States. On a personal level, the program also provided a unique opportunity for students to develop culturally and individually.

The experience was also transformative for Humber faculty and staff; those who first travelled to Ningbo University to live and teach and those who worked with the students here on campus within the business school. There was an immediate appreciation for learning and intercultural exchange, alongside a recognition to improve capacities, design programming and mobilize resources to help international students thrive at Humber. It was very much the start of the many successful internationalization programs that exist at Humber today.

 

20 years of building global perspectives

Much has changed at Humber and Ningbo University in the last two decades, but the Humber-Ningbo program continues to run with success. At both institutions, the growth and development have been incredible. This partly due to the partnership and the willingness of the two communities to see the value in creating global perspectives, international learning opportunities and global-ready students, faculty and staff.

 

Learn more about the Humber-Ningbo program.

Find out more about the history of internationalization at Humber.

 

Students in the Humber-Ningbo program visiting Niagara Falls as part of their August Orientation Program