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 Wang Jie from China won the International Centre of Excellence in Tourism and Hospitality Education (THE-ICE) and University of Canberra (UC) 2006 Masters by research scholarship. She was keen to win the scholarship because it enabled her to gain a high quality international post-graduate qualification in a country with a well developed tourism industry. Her work in China as a lecturer in tourism, and as a tour guide made her perfectly suited to undertake the Masters program.
Wang Jie's hometown is Wuxi, situated in Jiangsu Province in southeast China. Wuxi is a beautiful city including the unique features of the Yangtze River, the Grand Canal and Taihu Lake and is said to be one of China's ten major tourism cities.
Jie plans to return to China. "I'd like to be a good teacher in tourism and provide excellent students to the tourism industry", said Jie. Her youthful perspective and enthusiasm for the provision of innovative curriculum will assist in producing industry ready graduates.
Jie's first impression of Australia is that it is "full of sunshine" and that UC is "international and friendly". Furthermore, Jie notes that as a multicultural education destination "studying in Australia encourages cross-cultural communication, which is very important in tourism because people want to experience different things, so cross-cultural communication is good for tourism students to study and feel."
Jie is currently a PhD scholar in the School of Tourism at the University of Queensland.
Jie is from China but finished her Masters by research at UC and received an award for "Academic Excellence by a Tourism Postgraduate Student" at the 2008 UC Tourism Program Awards. Before Jie joined UQ, she was a Research Assistant in the Faculty of Education at UC and before that she was a lecturer in tourism in China.
Jie's Masters thesis looked at the Australian tourism industry's needs and tourism curriculum designs at the undergraduate level. Part of her findings have been presented at the 6th Asia-Pacific (APacCHRIE) Conference & THE-ICE International Panel of Experts Forum 2008, where Jie was an invited Panel Presenter at the Conference. Jie's PhD topic focuses on a cross cultural study of crisis management planning, attitudes and behaviour in the Australian and Chinese tourism industries.
Dr Brent Ritchie and Dr Peiyi Ding are supervising Jie's research. |
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