On July 7, 2021, The Beijing Center (TBC) entered into a new partnership becoming the only cooperative teaching center in Northern China to facilitate Syracuse University’s International Year One Online-Merge-Offline (OMO) Program for incoming freshman students.
Beginning in 2021, Syracuse University (SU) started their Online-Merge-Offline Program in an effort to enhance freshman students’ academic experience. As part of the program, Chinese college freshmen will be offered high-quality courses online and in-person, by leading TBC and SU professors. A portion of the classes will be taught in-person by TBC facility, while the remaining courses will be taught online by SU faculty. In this way, TBC will serve as the offline teaching center, where students will be accommodated and provided will all necessary academic and student life resources. For the duration of their freshmen year, students will study at TBC, and for their sophomore year, they will transfer to Syracuse University’s campus in the US to continue their undergraduate studies.
“Through this partnership, we intend to fully support our partner university and its students, by offering our facility and academic services to eager students working towards a holistic and international academic experience,” TBC Executive Director, Dr. Simon Koo.
This partnership follows several ongoing collaborations, since Fall 2020, with Loyola Marymount University, Marquette University, University of Notre Dame, College of the Holy Cross, and the University of the South. Through these partnerships, Chinese students gain transferable courses for their continued studies at the corresponding US universities, while participating in a TBC-based student experience on the campus of the University of Business and Economics (UIBE) in Beijing.
By facilitating and hosting Syracuse freshmen students at The Beijing Center, it will support their transition to American culture and student life, as they learn to adapt to the cultural and academic differences.
The past few weekends have been some of the most exciting of the entire semester, full of trips to the zoo, mountain hikes, ancient parks, and more! Our first trip out of many was a visit to the Beijing Zoo. I had mentioned earlier in the semester that I wanted to see some pandas, since I was in China after all, and our TBC friend Andy made it happen.
Spending a whole semester in Beijing, I knew I had to make the trip down south and check out Shanghai, and the city certainly lived up to the expectations. Everyone describes Shanghai as this super futuristic metropolis, and after spending a weekend there I understand why it has this reputation.