Celebrating our collaborations in Asia during the Lunar New Year

As we enter the year of the Rooster we wanted to celebrate our collaborations with Asia.

We asked some of our international students and staff who work in Asia to write about their cross cultural experiences, either coming to Australia, or going overseas to work with international collaborators.

Here are the blog posts:

• International student helps conservation of iconic Australian Fish
• Helping to keep rivers healthy all over the world
• International student brings experience in ecological restoration to Australia
• Experience at the 2016 Australian Climate and Water Summer Institute

If you are not familiar with the international student system, you may be interested to hear how extremely competitive it is for Chinese students to come and study in Australia. We are lucky to have the best of the best studying with us.
First, they have to get the support and recommendation from their supervisors at the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences.
University of Chinese Academy of Science is the first and largest graduate education institution (Comprising 114 institutes, over 20,000 PhD candidates) in China, which is run by CAS. CAS is “China’s highest academic institution in natural sciences, the highest consultant institution in science and technology, research and development center of natural science and high technology, and the most important training base for advanced scientific talents”. Supported for travel to Australia is based on the student’s capability of finishing not one (like most students), but two separate research projects both in China and Australia. Students must have also already published some research work.

Then, the nominated students compete for the nine opportunities in University of Chinese Academy of Sciences each year, based on supervisors’ recommendation and their personal profile.

Finally, students must take a challenging English test to get a scholarship. The students from this project have to meet the same requirements as other international students in Griffith. Taking the English test is not an enjoyable process for non-native English speakers. Lots of the candidates with a conditional offer even lost their opportunities because they failed this test after trying several times.

I hope you enjoy the blogs.

Chris Brown