The United Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia celebrated its centennial in 2022. Founded in 1922 to support 13 Christian universities in China, it has reached out to universities throughout Asia since 1952 with a special vision for whole-person education through the Liberal Arts.
In this presentation on Thursday, 19 October 2023 at 1400 UTC, Prof Peter Tze Ming Ng, Retired Professor of Religious Education at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, will highlight current research in China on the history of Christian higher education. Based on this research, he sees Christian higher education as a platform of intercultural encounters and as a means to develop new forms of liberal arts educational activities, including multicultural and comparative religious studies and also new ways to integrate Chinese and western cultures.
Dr Leping Mou, Assistant Professor of Education at the University of Glasgow, will then present research on three current programs in the liberal arts that have inherited elements of this legacy. He will look at the distinctive ways in which they have developed in three contexts of Greater China – Yuanpei College at Peking University, Lingnan University in Hong Kong, and Tunghai University in Taiwan and point to the features each can bring to the nurture of global citizens with capabilities to meet the complex social challenges of the 21st century.
Finally, Prof Ruth Hayhoe, professor in the Department of Leadership, Higher and Adult Education in the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto, will conclude with some thoughts on how this legacy demonstrates the ways in which Christian values have taken deep root in an Asian context and can serve to enrich educational thought globally.
In preparation for the webinar, consider reading the introduction to Liberal Arts and Legacy of China’s Christian Universities and register below for this behind the scenes analysis of liberal arts education in Asia, particularly Christian higher education in China.
