Ca’ Foscari Office in China Opens

The first Ca’ Foscari University of Venice representative office abroad was opened on Monday 27th February – the Ca’ Foscari Suzhou Office at Suzhou University, China. At the inauguration, guests included Rector Michele Bugliesi and the Vice-Rector and sinologist Tiziana Lippiello.

For many years the city of Suzhou has been a twin town to Venice. Ca’ Foscari University initiated exchanges with Suzhou University a long time ago.

The office has now become the “delegation” of Ca' Foscari in China, a University outpost to develop projects of partnership with locan and national universities and institutions, to contribute to spreading Italian language and culture, promoting Ca’ Foscari’s formative and scientific activities and supporting the enrolment of the best students in the country onto the University’s programmes.

Rector Michele Bugliesi stated: “Today Ca' Foscari's distinctive international vocation and openness to the world acquires a new dimension and a renewed aim. Ca’ Foscari’s Suzhou Office allows us to make our presence stable and coherent in a particularly important geographical area of our network of relations in China. Suzhou is the first of a series of other premises in other countries that we will open in the following months, creating the operative bases for us to carry out objectives of establishing internationalization through the Strategic University Plan, that aims in particular to double the percentage of international students at the University by 2020”

The representation of the university at Suzhou University will also be occasion to consolidate the links with other universities in China with which Ca’ Foscari maintains relations on educational and scientific levels, including East China Normal University in Shanghai, Nanjing University in Nanjing, Nankai University in Tianjin, and even the prestigious Peking University in Beijing.

In the course of their international journey, the Rector and the Vice-Rector also met with the President of the Italian Republic Sergio Mattarella in Shanghai on Friday 24th February, who was on an official visit to China.