UTech to offer Mandarin classes in September

The University of Technology, Jamaica (UTech, Jamaica) will introduce a Mandarin course in September under a two-year agreement with the Centre for Language Education and Cooperation (CLEC), part of China’s Ministry of Education.

Under the arrangement, CLEC will supply qualified instructors, while UTech will provide teaching facilities, accommodation, medical cover and administrative support. Instruction will be delivered through the Language Teaching and Researching Centre (LTRC) within the Faculty of Education and Liberal Studies, which coordinates language teaching and academic literacy programmes.

The agreement was signed earlier this month at the School of Hospitality and Tourism Management Hotel on the university’s Papine campus.

The LTRC already offers Spanish, Japanese and French, alongside academic writing modules. 

Tresecka Campbell-Dawes, head of the centre, said the new programme could expand beyond introductory level.

“It is our hope that with the onboarding of this new lecturer, we will be able to offer in addition to basic Mandarin, intermediate and advanced Mandarin courses to our students in the future.” 

She added that short courses in conversational Mandarin may be offered through UTechOpen, the university’s school of lifelong learning.

Ambassador Lloyd Carney, the university’s chancellor, who initiated the partnership via the Chinese embassy, framed it as part of a broader push to strengthen ties with China. Citing Chinese advances in fields, such as renewable energy, biotechnology and artificial intelligence, he argued for closer collaboration. 

“There is no field of science that you can look at where the Chinese are not a significant, if not a dominant, player. As a technical university, we must partner with the country that is the most dominant player in the marketplace across numerous technologies,” he said. He added that both countries should “share more technical know-how on technical discovery”.

Dr Kevin Brown, UTech’s president, cast the programme as part of a wider effort to produce graduates with broader skills. “We want to produce the total student and by that we mean not just a student that is technically capable, but a student that also has other multifaceted skill sets, such as being multilingual,” he said. “That is why having this Chinese language programme is so important.” He added that courses would also be opened to the wider public through UTechOpen.

Meanwhile, Ding Liguo, director of international exchanges at CLEC, described the agreement as the start of a longer partnership. “We are a professional organisation committed to helping our foreign partners learn the Chinese language and also to carry out Chinese language teaching programmes,” he said. “The agreement is just the beginning of our cooperation. There must be deeper cooperation between us in the future.”