Government & Law UNC experts can help reporters with 2008 Summer Olympic Games and China
| UNC experts can help reporters with 2008 Summer Olympic Games and China |
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| Wednesday, June 25, 2008 | |
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The 2008 Summer Olympics Games in Beijing will begin Aug. 8, 2008. Faculty, students and staff of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill are involved in several projects in China, including some related specifically to the Beijing Olympics. Carolina also has several experts on various issues related to Chinese culture, history and health.
Logistics for the Olympics: Faculty, staff, students and officials from UNC and Tsinghua University in China launched a new joint Research Center for Logistics and Economic Development in Beijing in July 2007. The partnership brings together two of the world’s leading educational institutions for logistics and operations research to focus on logistics and global supply-chain management research that can enhance trade between the United States and China, support economic development and address issues of business competitiveness, such as offshore outsourcing. UNC and Tsinghua University are partnering on a series of activities in support of the 2008 Beijing Olympics Games. The universities organized and hosted two conferences related to the Beijing Olympics with the support of the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games. The first conference, “International Symposium on Olympic Logistics: Learning for the Past and Planning for the Future,” was held in 2005. The second conference in 2006 was titled “International Symposium on Crisis Management and Emergent Response: Beijing 2008 and Beyond.” Additional efforts are planned for the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai. UNC School of Journalism and Mass Communication Covering the games: Journalism students and faculty are partnering with the Beijing Organizing Committee of the 2008 Olympic Games for students and faculty to travel to China to help cover the games. Only about a half-dozen universities from the United States, United Kingdom and Australia are participating. Carolina was invited because of the journalism program’s reputation as a leader. It is the first time volunteers from outside the host country will work in the media department. Thirty-two UNC journalism students will participate in the program from July 7 to Aug. 25, 2008. Below is a link with a description of the program. Web-casting the 2007 Special Olympics: Richard Beckman, James L. Knight professor in the journalism school, worked with 15 UNC journalism students and Chinese students to provide online coverage of the Special Olympic World Games in Shanghai, China, in October 2007. UNC students were the only U.S. students among the nearly 300 students, coaches and faculty working on the project. Four Shanghai universities – Fudan, Shanghai International Study, Shanghai and East China Normal – joined the project, and the journalism school brought five exchange students from Shanghai to Chapel Hill for training. UNC journalism students helped create stories about Special Olympics athletes training for the games throughout the world, and they animated informational graphics of each of the Olympic sports, illustrations of Chinese monuments and an interactive multimedia map of China. The Web site, www.specialolympicslive.org, features a page complete with a short biography, photo and video clip for each of the more than 7,000 athletes participating in the worldwide event. Beckman, who organized the project, said it was “the largest Web-casting project that we know of that ever existed.” Accreditation of journalism education: Xinshu Zhao, professor in the UNC journalism school, was named a top 100 Chinese public intellectual. Zhao is on leave from Carolina for two years to be dean of the School of Communication at Hong Kong Baptist University. Zhao and Professor Richard Cole are working to establish accreditation of journalism and communication programs in China by the Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communications (ACEJMC), the agency responsible for the evaluation of professional journalism and mass communications programs in colleges and universities. Marketing education for executives: Bob Lauterborn, distinguished advertising professor in the journalism school, has conducted executive education courses for several years in integrated marketing, advertising management, and media for the China Europe International Business School in Shanghai, China, and the Cheung Kong Graduate Business School in Beijing. Lauterborn is scheduled to return to China in October 2008 and again in early 2009. Health communications: Jane Brown, James L. Knight professor in the journalism school, has researched and analyzed health communications in China. She has recently completed analysis of the Chinese Health and Nutrition Survey, run in partnership with the Carolina Population Center, and presented a paper about how children and teens in China who pay attention to television advertising are more likely to request and eat snacks they see advertised, which may ultimately contribute to an emerging problem with childhood obesity in China. Brown is currently working on a grant with professor Gail Henderson that builds upon relevant research by social scientists at Renmin (Peoples) University and creates an integrated, efficient and sustainable model of collaboration between social scientists and public health and medical researchers at the China Center for Disease Control and Prevention National Center for AIDS Prevention and Control and the Nanjing National Center for Sexually Transmitted Disease Prevention and Control. Brown is also working with fellow journalism professor Xinshu Zhao on a content analysis of the sexual content of a large sample of mainland Chinese television programming. College of Arts and Sciences U.S. influence on China: Michael H. Hunt, Everett H. Emerson professor of history, specializes in international history and U.S. foreign relations, focusing on 19th-and 20th-century Chinese-American relations. He is the author of “The American Ascendancy: How the U.S. Gained and Wielded Global Dominance,” which takes a long historic view of how America gained power and provides insight into the nation’s controversial role in the world today and in the future. Hunt’s recent research and writing has centered on the U.S. relationship with the world over the last half-century. He is the co-editor of the Columbia University Press series on the United States and Pacific Asia. City and Regional Planning: Dr. Yan Song’s current research projects address domestic and international issues in the areas of impetus of urbanization and urban growth, efficacy of land and housing markets, effects of growth management regulations, and integration of urban land use and transportation plans. Song’s current research projects also document evolution of China’s urban land and housing policies and urban spatial structure in the era of China’s transition toward a market economy. Her research projects have been supported by U.S. National Science Foundation, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. School of Nursing Comparing health and education systems: Edward Halloran, associate professor in the School of Nursing, taught in Hong Kong in 1999 to 2000 and can discuss the similarities and difference between the health-care and educational systems in Hong Kong and the United States. He practiced occupational health and nursing administration for more than 25 years before joining UNC’s faculty in 1989. His research focuses on nurse staffing using automated patient client classification techniques to distinguish patients nursing needs from the hospital services directed by physicians. Carolina Entrepreneurship Initiative Student entrepreneurship interns: Sixteen entrepreneurship minors from UNC-Chapel Hill are interning at various start-up companies in Beijing from June 10 to August 10, 2008, and can do in the field reports on their experiences. Some of the internships include Cancer Therapy China, Twice Fashion and MB Associates. The goal of the program is to give the students a first hand experience with a summer internship in a small entrepreneurial organization. It is likely that many of the student’s internships at these businesses will be affected by the placement of the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing. UNC Asian Studies Summer in Beijing Chinese culture and language: Eleven select students will study in Beijing, China from June 4 to August 10, 2008, to gain a deeper understanding of Chinese culture and language. As an ancient site of habitation and the long-standing seat of government power in China, Beijing's neighborhoods and public spaces are pervaded with historical meaning and the evidence of past epochs. At the same time, Beijing is a rapidly changing modern city, now preparing to host the 2008 Olympics. Its mass media venues are diverse and lively; museums, galleries, and film festivals abound; and the daily life observable in its markets and parks is for the visitor an endless source of insights into modern Chinese society. School of Medicine Conference of the Peking-UNC Global Health forum: The conference is the third in its series and will be held from November 4 to 5, 2008, at Peking University in Beijing. The conference provides a forum for scholars from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Peking University, other researchers, government officials and representatives of international organizations involved in public health and private health-care companies to discuss and propose reform measures for China. During the third conference in November, experts will discuss issues such as emerging pathogens, mental health with a focus on schizophrenia and China’s growing weight gain epidemic in the area of nutrition. Blog from China: Dean William Roper, Dean of the School of Medicine and CEO of UNC Health Care, will visit Shanghai, Nanjing and Beijing, China, from August 1 to 16, 2008. He will be attending several Olympic Games events including the Opening Ceremonies. Roper will post a blog about his international travels on roperonhealth.com. School of Public Health UNC’s Center for AIDS Research and NIH R24 Grant: Matt Avery, a School of Public Health graduate student at UNC-Chapel Hill, is completing an internship in Nanning, the capital of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in southwest China, from May 7 to August 1, 2008, for UNC’s Center for Aids Research and an NIH R24 grant. During the internship, Avery works with the Family Health International China country program, where he works primarily to help improve behavioral change approaches and intervention strategies for community-based programs working with Chinese men who have sex with men. The goal of the grant is to promote the integration of public health and social science on HIV and AIDS research in China and is a collaboration between the UNC Center for Aids Research, the China Center for Disease Control and STD Control Center in Nanjing and People's University in Beijing. Avery can do a report from the field about his work. Nutrition transition theory in China: Dr. Barry Popkin directs UNC-Chapel Hill’s Interdisciplinary Center for Obesity. He has an active U.S. research program in understanding dietary behavior. He has also had an active set of research projects in the developing country arena that have focused not only on diet and activity and inactivity, but also body composition dynamics for more than 30 years. More recently he developed the concept of the nutrition transition and began a series of cohort studies that focused on the factors underlying both dietary and physical activity and inactivity patterns and their effects on health and has conducted studies in China and Russia. Epidemiolog of cervical cancers: Dr. Jennifer Smith's current research focuses on epidemiological studies of human papillomavirus (HPV) and cervical cancer worldwide (primarily in North Carolina, China, and Kenya), with a focus on prevention via screening or prophylactic HPV vaccines, and on the sero-epidemiology of herpes simplex virus infections. School of Social Work |