In an effort to help Chinese students understand and read English newspapers, NIU’s International and Special Programs will sponsor a journalism professor’s trip to China.

Associate professor Donald Peterson will teach a course in newspaper reading to undergraduate students at the Xian Institute of Foreign Languages in Xian, a city 700 miles west of Shanghai.

Daniel Witt, International and Special Programs dean, said only faculty members from NIU’s English and history departments have traveled to the institute in the past eight years.

Peterson said he will use Western and Chinese newspapers as text materials for his course. He said the course mainly concerns the English language, but he also plans to include three or four lectures on journalism basics.

Peterson will teach five sections of the class, each made up of about 30 students, he said.

The institute, established in 1958, also provides courses in Russian, German, French, Spanish and Japanese.

Witt said NIU has an exchange contract with the institute under which NIU faculty members are allowed to teach one semester or one year. In exchange, Chinese faculty members visit NIU to do graduate work, he said.

“We are one of the first American universities to develop an exchange arrangement with the Xian Institute,” Witt said. NIU has exchange programs with other foreign universities, he said.

Journalism department chairman Donald Brod said international exchange programs are helpful in learning different cultures. “It is a value not only to the faculty member but to the department,” he said.