12 December 2014
In the afternoon of 5 December 2014, the working meeting on the teaching and academic affairs for the joint MFA program in playwriting of Shanghai Theatre Academy (STA) and Columbia University was held at in the meeting room on the 4th floor of STA Library. The meeting was chaired by Prof Lu Jun, Dean of Theatrical Literature Department. Prof Ye Changhai, Chairman of STA Academic Committee and a number of professors, teachers and staff of teaching and academic affairs participated in the meeting. The participants also included a dozen of visiting scholars, post-doctoral students, doctoral students and master students from the playwriting major and theatre studies major. The agenda of the meeting was about the arrangements for two MFA students of Columbia University who would be coming soon for a seven-week-long residency at STF for study and exchange. The purposes of the meeting were to reiterate the significance of the program, arrange the contents of teaching, assign tasks and finalize the implementation plan.
As the supervisor of the two MFA students of Columbia University, Prof Lu Jun briefly introduced the scope of this international cooperation project in teaching. He specifically emphasized on the academic contribution of Prof Ye Changhai who had played the leading role in bringing this project into STA. He also expressed his commitment to making this joint MFA program with one of the world’s top universities a great success and, in the meantime, transforming the teaching process of this program into the teaching resources beneficial to STA’s postgraduate students of playwriting and theatre studies, thereby living up to great trust and high expectation of Prof Ye Changhai.
As the leader of this program, Prof Ye Changhai further introduced the background of establishing this international cooperation project in teaching and gave his comments about the actual teaching plans. He emphasized that a joint postgraduate program with an internationally leading university is a symbol of in-depth international exchange and cooperation. With this as a good start, continued efforts should be made going forward to explore expansion into more areas of professional cooperation. Therefore, it was his special hope that this first attempt to run joint postgraduate program with Columbia University would become a successful example for STA in undertaking projects of this kind in the future.
After that, Prof Lu Jun gave a detailed introduction about the overall arrangements for teaching and academic affairs and assigned the tasks to the participants at the meeting. Four key modules were clearly defined, i.e. guidance on creation, theoretical studies, on-stage presentation, observation/site visits. A duty system was put in place to ensure that everyday, there would be a teacher or student of STA to act as the liaison person for the two postgraduate students of Columbia University during their two-month residency at STA. These would enable the students of Columbia University to not only receive high quality teaching and guidance and, in the meantime, get a certain degree of understanding of the Chinese traditional culture, conditions and customs, social outlook, but also experience the warmth and caring support of STA people. On the other hand, the postgraduate students of STA will also benefit greatly from the interaction between the Chinese culture and American culture.
This meeting laid a solid foundation for the smooth implementation of the STA-Columbia University joint MFA program.
