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October 12, 1999

Chinese Educators Visit ULM School of Construction

A delegation of five construction educators from the People's Republic of China recently visited the School of Construction at the University of Louisiana at Monroe to discuss the American accreditation process for construction-management programs.

The Chinese group met with Herbert McCaskill, president of the American Council for Construction Education (ACCE) -- the national accreditation body for construction management programs -- and Dan Dupree, executive vice-president of the ACCE. McCaskill, associate professor at ULM, served as director for the ULM School of Construction from 1987 to 1994.

There are approximately 200 construction management programs currently in China. The Chinese delegation members intend to use the ACCE accreditation procedure as a model to develop their own accreditation program. "If they apply the same criteria and standards for accreditation as we do, we will develop an agreement with them," McCaskill said. "We will then accept their graduates and they will accept ours."

Such an agreement already exists between the ACCE and the British accreditation body. "We want to get international," McCaskill said. The ACCE is currently developing agreements with Canada, Australia and now the People's Republic of China. With these agreements, the ULM construction degree could have more chances to be internationally recognized.

The ULM (then NLU) School of Construction program was the first program to be accredited by the ACCE in 1976, and, so far, has always had a 100 percent placement of its graduates in the construction industry.

The delegation from China was composed of: Ding Shizhao and Lin Zhiyan, Tongji University; He Bosen, Tianjin University; Zhu Yan, Tsinghua University; and Yan Qing, Northeast China University of Finance. They will visit four other American universities.

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