CCS is delighted to announce that Dr. Nǐ Zhāng 张旎 will be joining our center as the new Associate Director (Educational Specialist, APT position) starting January 2024!
Having earned her first MA degree in Business Administration and her BA degree in Financial Management, Dr. Zhāng also holds a 2nd MA degree from Columbia University’s Teachers’ College and a PhD degree from Johns Hopkins University’s School of Education.
With a remarkably rich record of administrative experience and educational leadership skills, Dr. Zhāng is the founding director (and current board member) of the Children’s Museum Research Center (CMRC) at Beijing Normal University, where she worked as the Lead Designer for major research projects. In addition, she also piloted two additional children’s museums (one of them in Inner Mongolia) and successfully spearheaded the expansion of children’s museums throughout China. Her considerable fundraising skills and expertise in financial management with both the government and private sector are evidenced by her resounding success in raising over $ 5m for the CMRC operation. Her competence in developing partnerships across the globe and collaborating with individuals from diverse cultural backgrounds directly resulted in signed agreements between the US-based Association for Children in Museums (ACM) and the European International Association for Children in Museums (IACM). Moreover, while at Columbia University’s Teachers’ College, she helped raised a $ 1m in endowment to support the work of their CoEC (Center for Chinese Education) and organized the US-China Education Forum: Cross-Cultural Fertilization of Culture and Education that was attended by many prominent US scholars and professors. During the pandemic, this top-level education forum set the tone for the role of education in promoting cross-cultural understanding.
She was also recently invited to contribute an article to the chapter “Informal Learning and Role of Parents” in a forthcoming book edited by Prof. Nicolas Michelli entitled Education for Social Justice: The Meaning of Justice and Current Research (Routledge, December 2023).
Dr. Zhāng’s local connections in Hawai’i are equally impressive and well-grounded. Her son attends the Mid-Pacific Institute and, for the past 10 years, she has maintained research collaborations with the founders of the Hawai’i Children Discovery Center (which has a MOU with the CMRC at Beijing Normal University) and developed working relations with the UHM’s Uehiro Academy for Philosophy and Ethics in Education that is housed in CALL. Through her passion for fostering and improving cross-cultural exchange, Dr. Zhāng has cultivated valuable and lasting connections with the diverse population of educators and community leaders in Hawai’i as well as with the academic constituents of CCS and UHM. In short, Dr. Zhāng’s decade-long, solid background in fundraising, community-building, and administrative leadership perfectly compliment her strong commitment to cross-cultural and interdisciplinary education, and her expertise in initiating collaborative research projects and managing academic center programs position her extremely well to serve as the new CCS Associate Director.
Please welcome Dr. Zhāng to the CCS team!
Best,
Ming-Bao YUE
CCS Director