Monday, 6/23/97 Meeting focuses on future of Pacific Rim in
academics EDUCATION: Universities form group, prompted by
importance of region
By Patrick Kerkstra Daily Bruin Senior Staff If the hopes of
pundits, politicians and educators are fulfilled, Janine Xin Yue
Zhu is an example of the Pacific Rim student of the future. This
summer, Zhu, enrolled as a fourth-year economics student at UCLA,
is studying the transition from British to Chinese rule in Hong
Kong. When she returns in September she’ll resume her position as
vice-president of UCLA’s Pacific Rim Business Association. Zhu,
like more and more students in California, is preparing for a
career in the Pacific Rim – a region that is emerging as the
world’s most vital zone of international trade. In the last 20
years, the importance of the Pacific Rim to the United States’, and
particularly California’s, economy and culture has grown
tremendously. Seven of the United State’s top 10 trading partners
are now Pacific Rim countries, and newspaper headlines that were
once dominated by European events are carrying more news from Asia.
"The whole sense of a Pacific Rim community is based on our common
geopolitical and economic destiny," said Tom Plate, a UCLA
professor of communications and policy studies who writes a column
about Pacific Rim issues for the Los Angeles Times. Earlier this
month, the academic community issued its highest-profile response
yet to the growing importance of the Pacific Rim. In a summit-style
meeting conceived by USC President Steven Sample, the chief
executive officers of 20 Pacific Rim universities met to create the
Association of Pacific Rim Universities (APRU). The association’s
goal is to make sure the region’s universities benefit from and
help fuel the Pacific Rim’s growth. "The objective of this
association of chief executive officers of the Pacific Rim’s
premier universities is to help these institutions become more
effective contributors to the development of an increasingly
integrated Pacific Rim community," reads the association’s founding
document. Described more succinctly – the APRU would like to be the
collective brain of the Pacific Rim. This move by the bosses of the
region’s universities may be the highest profile cooperative effort
to date, but for years U.S. schools have been strengthening their
ties to other institutions ringing the Pacific Ocean. At the
University of Hawaii (UH), which is not a member of APRU, educators
and students have long emphasized a close connection with other
Asian and Pacific nations. That emphasis continues today with plans
to create a joint U.S.-Japan pacific research center at UH before
the end of the year. There, Japanese and Hawaiian educators will
work together on common interests impacting the Pacific community.
The College of Business Administration at UH recently created a
Center for the Study of Japanese Global Investment, and UH
scientists are working increasingly closer with Japan on
environmental studies. "We feel (these types of projects) help to
support our educational mission," said Erica Steele, acting
director of the office of international affairs at UH. "We also
think that those relationships can help to benefit the partner
institution. The idea is that they’re mutually beneficial
relationships." At the UCs, interest in the Pacific Rim seems to be
growing as well. Two UC chancellors were in the group of four that
helped found APRU, and UC Santa Barbara Chancellor Henry Yang is on
the association’s steering committee. In April, UCLA’s Anderson
School of Management hosted a major seminar titled "Challenges
Facing the Asia-Pacific in the 21st Century" in Honolulu. The event
brought together Pacific Rim luminaries of all stripes – academics,
business leaders and government officials – to discuss and debate
some of the opportunities and knotty problems facing the region.
UCLA also has ambitions to help establish a Pacific Rim Institute
at the massive UCLA-owned Greystone Mansion in Beverly Hills.
Although still far from realization, proponents would like the
mansion to become a site for Pacific Rim trade meetings, government
conferences and the like – a place where major policy decisions
would be made in UCLA’s shadow. And there are some students, like
Zhu and other members of UCLA’s Pacific Rim Business Association,
who are looking at the growing importance and opportunities
available in the region for their own careers. "One of our
objectives as a business club is to recruit companies that have
branches in the Pacific Area to give information sessions to UCLA
students," Zhu said. "During the information sessions,
representatives talk about the company, career and internship
opportunities within the company and in the Pacific Rim area." The
club also aims to give its members some of the basic skills
necessary for doing business in the Pacific Rim – such as
conversational foreign language abilities and training in Asian
business etiquette. In a sense, university leaders were catching up
with their own schools at the first meeting of the APRU earlier
this month. But with the requirement that each university’s top
executive attend, the association’s leaders are hoping the group
will develop some genuine authority and influence. "Their idea was
to get the top people together so that when they get a consensus on
something, it’s going to happen. This was not just a baloney
session," Plate said. "The purpose of this is to come up with some
things that no-one’s thought of," Plate said. "The approach is to
start with what they do well, do them together, and then grow from
there." Related Links: UC Berkeley’s Pacific Rim Club Homepage
Pacific Rim Research Program, a multicampus program on the nine
campuses of the University of California