Program returns to China
after semester in Hawaii
A Chinese-American cross-cultural studies program that relocated to Hawaii last year because of the SARS epidemic in Asia is returning to China, officials said last week.
Although Chinese authorities have confirmed three new SARS cases, officials with the Hopkins-Nanjing Center for Chinese and American Studies determined that the situation does not constitute a health crisis and the program will return to Nanjing, China, for the second semester beginning in March.
Robert Daly, the American director of the program, said 78 Chinese, American and other international students, plus 14 faculty and staff members, have started leaving Honolulu with the first semester finished.
Officials will continue to monitor the public health conditions, Daly said in a news release.
The program, operated jointly by Johns Hopkins University and Nanjing University since 1986, allows Chinese and American students to live together during a year of graduate-level study in economics, law, history and related social science issues.
As a result of last year's SARS outbreak, the center closed its spring semester in Nanjing on April 29, six weeks early, and said the fall semester would be moved to the East-West Center, an independent research institution on the campus of the University of Hawaii.
Loren Heinold, a student from Lexington, Ky., said there was "very little concern" among students about SARS.
"There is a general feeling that we want to be there," he said.