Asian American/Asian Research Institute offers a lecture, "Modern" Education vs. "Traditional" Culture: The Ford-funded Community Colleges in China Project by Frank Kehl October 17, 2003, Friday, 6 PM to 8 PM, at 25 West 43rd Street, 18th floor, between 5th and 6th Avenues, New York City. The Community Colleges in China Project was conceived as a way of introducing American community college concepts to China. It was felt that community colleges were both great engines of mass higher education, nimble promoters of new technologies and spurs to local economic development, just the things needed and wanted by a China making the transition from planned to market economy. For some years Ford had been promoting grants to community colleges in the US as both escalators to four year institutions and creative forces to deal with poverty in minority areas. Eight Chinese institutions of higher education in Taiyuan, Shanghai and Beijing and the Ministry of Education (unofficially) seemed ready, willing and able to partner with the US-China Education Foundation in carrying out the project.
Frank Kehl is President of United States-China Exchanges Inc. His Ph.D. was in Cultural/Social Anthropology and East Asian Studies, Columbia University. "Hong Kong Shantytowns" was the subject of his thesis. He has taught at Brooklyn College, directed an ethnographic film, "Hungry Ghosts," about traditional religion in urban Hong Kong, edited "New China Magazine," and he has been Coordinator of Research and Evaluation in the Office of Special Programs, CUNY Central Office. After retirement from CUNY in 1995, he created US-CX inc to consult and facilitate novel exchanges between the US and China. One of them was the Community Colleges in China Project of the US-China Education Foundation of which he was one of the main fund-raisers and start-up year Co-Coordinator. The project was funded by the Ford Foundation at $1.4 million dollars from 1999-2003.