In celebration of the Chinese New Year

Guest speaker: Dr. Li-Rong Lilly Cheng

Dr. Li-Rong Lilly Cheng is a Professor in the School of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences and the Executive Director of Chinese Studies Institute at San Diego State University. She is the Managing Director of the Confucius Institute at SDSU.

Her presentation will focus on the most important elements of understanding the differences between the east and the west.

Thomas Friedman says the winners in the 21st-century will be those with more PQ and CQ in order to leverage all the new digital tools to not just find a job, but to invent one or reinvent one, and not to just learn but to relearn, for a lifetime.

In his book ‘The World is Flat’ he talked about how we must be globally competent. Global competence is defined as the ability to work across cultures with the understanding of cultural imperatives and mandates. Cultural imperative are driven by cultural values and world views. World views are deeply rooted in cultural and history of people. So an appreciation of such differences is part of the acquisition of global cultural competence.