Bin Li, professor and chair of the Sociology Department at Central-South University in China, spoke at IU Southeast. He came and spoke at an IUS Diversity Academy event in University Center North on Tuesday, Feb. 2, during the lunch hour.
Li spoke about housing development in China, a subject he has been specializing in since 2003.
The event was hosted by the new IUS Diversity Academy, which was formed during the summer.
The new academy is hosted by IUS Continuing Studies and supported further by other academic agencies.
“It provides education, training and professional development opportunities to meet diverse needs in virtually any career and any aspect of life,” Allison M. Riggle, post-doctorate diversity fellow, said.
Riggle is the first member of the Post-Doctoral Diversity Fellows Program that was launched in the academy this summer.
Through the program, she is teaching a course at IU Southeast and has written four grant proposals. The academy was able to help her get two of those proposals funded.
Sheying Chen, associate vice chancellor of Academic Affairs, is heavily involved in this program. He said Li had come to IU Southeast as the first senior international fellow for the academy.
“He was scheduled to teach a course here, but, unfortunately, due to the enrollment level — it was so low — so we had to cancel the course,” Chen said.
Li transferred here from Stanford to do some research and spend time preparing for the course he had planned to teach. The course was on Chinese housing policy.
“China’s market-oriented reform has been considered to be learning by doing,” Li said.
Li’s presentation was packed with statistics and information.
Li has been studying the housing market in China since 2003, when he was earning his doctorate in sociology and conducted a study on differences in housing interests in six different work units in Changsha, China.
Since then, Li has published three books and many journal articles on the subject.
Chen said he intends that the academy will continue inviting international fellows like Li to come to IU Southeast as part of this new academy as soon as it becomes possible.
“We hope to continue that part of the work, but the thing is that we don’t have the funding,” Chen said.
The IUS Diversity Academy was able to secure a grant in order to fund the salaries and benefits for the people involved in the Post-Doctorate Diversity Fellows Program, such as Riggle.
Unfortunately, the academy couldn’t also secure enough funding to also keep the international fellows program going strong.
“But we still need to work on international fellows,” Chen said.
By MICHELE HOP
Staff Writer
mhop@ius.edu