UW and China’s Tsinghua University team up on new master’s degree program

The University of Washington and Beijings Tsinghua University announced today the establishment of a new educational institution in Bellevue called the Global Innovation Exchange, or GIX, which will offer a masters degree program that teaches students to address real-world problems by drawing expertise from the areas of technology, design and entrepreneurship.

“GIX will present students with opportunities like no other available at any university in the world today,” says UW Interim President Ana Mari Cauce. “Uniting students with faculty, professionals, industry leaders, and entrepreneurs from a variety of disciplines will foster expansive thinking and better prepare a generation of leaders with a passion for discovery and the ability to be nimble.”

The GIX campus will be built in Bellevues new Spring District and could ultimately occupy as much as seven acres of the 36-acre development. Although the location is inconvenient to UWs main campus in Seattle, it is close to a proposed light rail station that will eventually allow easy access to two new rail stations soon to open in the University District.

Microsoft, which has close ties to Tsinghua, often called the MIT of China, helped develop the GIX concept and is supporting the new institution with an initial grant of $40 million. “GIX creates an innovative education model that will facilitate international and interdisciplainary integration for technology innovations,” says Tsinghua University President Qiu Yong.

Adds King County Executive Dow Constantine: “Increasing access to higher education on the Eastside for the next generation of engineers, developers and entrepreneurs will fuel innovation and give our region a strong advantage in the global economy. This is a unique partnership that strengthens King County’s position as a vital gateway to Asia.”

Washington Governor Jay Inslee says, “We are going to celebrate the U.S. Open for about one week and the GIX for about 100 years.”

Shwetak Patel, a UW professor of computer science who designed much of the new curriculum for the GIX program, says the idea is to allow students to learn design principles or computer science in coursework and immediately apply what they learn to projects they will work on jointly with teams that include students from other countries and other disciplines. Those projects will last the entire 15-month of the program, and Patel fully expects students on graduation to launch startup companies or new businesses within existing companies based on what they have learned.

While a number of American universities have opened facilities in China, this is the first time a Chinese research university has established a physical presence in the United States. Tsinghua and UW are equal partners in GIX, and other leading universities will be invited to join as equal partners in the future.

The arrangement calls for Tsinghua to send faculty to teach at the institution, but most of the faculty for GIX when it begins offering courses in the fall of 2016 will come from the UW. The hope is that as other global research universities, nonprofits and leading technology companies join the GIX partnership, they can help students identify real-world challenges around issues such as health, sustainability and cloud computing while also providing students with mentoring and support.

“Tsinghua University students are familiar with Seattle because of [TV shows like] Grey’s Anatomy and movies like Sleepless in Seattle,” says Qiu, the Tsinghua president. “From this day onward, students of Tsinghua will have one more reason to know about Seattle.” On a more serious note, Qiu adds: “There are global issues like climate change and food shortages. We need cooperation to address these challenges.”

Washington state hopes GIX will help reinforce the Seattle areas reputation as a technology leader and a gateway to Asia. The UW hopes it will help drive regional prosperity by producing a new generation of innovators with a better understanding of global challenges and a greater ability to identify and respond to global opportunities.

GIX will begin with an enrollment of 35 students but expects to have 3,000 students within a decade, which could go a long way toward filling the need for graduate students with technology and design skills. Students will pay market-based tuition, which could be upward of $40,000 for the 15-month program. Initially, GIX will offer a Master of Science in Technology Innovation, but new degree programs will be added during the next decade.

UW computer science professor Ed Lazowska says the program does nothing to fill the sharp demand for undergraduate students in computer science. The UW computer science department is currently looking for funding to add a building that would double its capacity. But Lazowska says he expects many of his undergraduate students will be interested in going on to get their masters at GIX.

Just as teams tackling problems must include the fresh perspective provided by women, says Lazowska, since the problems they are addressing are global, they should also include people with a global perspective. Students at GIX will have a decided advantage because they will learn to work with those from other cultures as well as students from other disciplines, he says.

The GIX approach echoes that of Cornell Tech, a new Cornell University campus focused on technology and design that opens in 2017 on New York Citys Roosevelt Island. Cornell Tech involves an academic partnership with the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, Israel. When completed, that campus is expected to cost $2 billion. The Cornell program has already received significant private support, including $100 million from Michael Bloomberg, $350 million from Charles Feeney, a Cornell alumnus, and $133 million from Qualcomm founder Irwin Jacobs and his wife.

However, says Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith, “In 20 years, GIX will be every bit as important or more so than Cornell Tech.” GIX’s biggest advantage, Smith says, will be its relationship to top institutions such as Tsingua which will draw top faculty and students to the campus. “While Cornell has strong ties to Ithaca, GIX has Beijing,” he says.

GIXs establishment comes at a time when there is deep concern about Chinese government activities with respect to hacking the computer systems of United States companies and government institutions to steal information and trade secrets. Meanwhile, the United States is promoting the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade agreement that excludes China.

Local leaders see GIX as an opportunity to chart an independent path that helps build close ties between Washington state and China even as ties are strained at the national level.

“While we have huge bilateral problems, Washington and China need to drive another path forward,” says Kristi Heim, executive director of the Washington State China Relations Council. “We need to think of the world in terms of shared problems and common interests.” She sees GIX as one way to help build that relationship.