清华大学与华盛顿大学在西雅图合作办学
SeaTTLE — With hometown companies like Amazon and Microsoft, this bustling region on the Puget Sound easily ranks in the top tier of technology hubs in the United States.
西雅图——作为亚马逊(Amazon)和微软(Microsoft)等公司的家乡，位于普及湾(Puget Sound)的这个繁荣区域，可以轻松跻身美国一流科技中心之列。But the area lags its peers in one glaring way: It is home to a single major research university, the University of Washington, while nearly every other big technology scene in the country has at least two.
但与美国其他大型科技中心相比，它有一个明显的薄弱环节：这里只有一所重要的研究型大学，即华盛顿大学(University of Washington)，而其他中心至少有两所这种档次的大学。
For years, that weakness has stoked local unease about whether the gap between the supply of people with computer-related degrees and the surge in demand for those skills could impede the region’s economy. “We’ve long realized we’re at a relative competitive disadvantage when it comes to higher education,” said Bradford L. Smith, Microsoft’s general counsel.
多年来，这个薄弱环节令当地人感到不安，因为这里对计算机相关人才的需求激增，而对人才的培养却不足，其差距有可能会阻碍该地区的经济发展。“我们早就意识到，在高等教育方面，我们相对处在劣势，”微软总法律顾问布拉德福德·L·史密斯(Bradford L. Smith)说。
On Thursday, Seattle’s top academic and business leaders unveiled a plan to create a new institute of learning, with the goal of strengthening the educational foundation of the region’s high-tech economy. The institute, the Global Innovation Exchange, is a partnership between the University of Washington and one of China’s leading research universities, Tsinghua University. It will open in fall 2016 with a master’s degree program in technology innovation.
本周四，西雅图学术界和商业界的领袖，公布了建立一所新高校的计划，目的是加强该地区高科技经济的教育基础。这所机构名为全球创新学院(Global Innovation Exchange)，是华盛顿大学和中国一流的研究型院校清华大学合作成立的，将在2016年秋季开学，开设技术创新相关的硕士学位课程。Microsoft will contribute $40 million to help the institute get started. Some of the money will go toward creating a base for the institute in a large new urban development project in Bellevue, Wash., about 10 miles from the University of Washington’s main campus. Faculty for the school will come from the University of Washington, Tsinghua and, eventually, a couple other international universities the Global Innovation Exchange expects to attract as partners.
微软将出资4000万美元（约合2.5亿元人民币）帮助该学院起步，其中部分资金将用于为该学院修建基地。这将是一个新的大型城市开发项目，位于华盛顿州贝尔维尤，距离华盛顿大学主校区大约10英里（约合16公里）。全球创新学院的教师将来自华盛顿大学、清华大学，以及该院期望吸引参与合作的其他几所国际性大学。It will start with only a few dozen students, but the institute has a goal of more than 3,000 a decade from now. Tsinghua is expected to help recruit Chinese students to the institute, providing an important global aspect, said Ana Mari Cauce, interim president of the University of Washington.
它最初只招收几十名学生，但计划在十年里增加到逾3000名。清华大学将帮助该学院招收中国学生，这提供了一个重要的全球性维度，华盛顿大学的临时校长安娜·玛丽·科斯(Ana Mari Cauce)表示。“This will be the first time a Chinese university has a physical spot in the U.S.,” Dr. Cauce said in an interview before the public announcement of the institute. “That’s a big deal.”
“这是中国大学首次在美国拥有了一个实体立足点，”在公开宣布该学院成立的消息之前，科斯博士在接受采访时说。“这是一件大事。”The institute will not initially grant undergraduate degrees, which will limit its potential to make a dent in the region’s deficit of technology talent, at least in the near term. But the participants in the project said it was too early to pRedict what the institute could eventually become. “Fundamentally, it’s about looking ahead a decade and a century,” Mr. Smith said.
该学院最初不会授予本科学位，这将限制其改善该地区技术人才缺口的潜力，至少在短期内是这样。但该项目的参与者说，现在为时尚早，还无法预言该机构最终会达到怎样的状态。“根本而言，它面向的是未来10年、100年。”史密斯说。A 2013 report by the Washington Student Achievement Council, a state agency focused on education, said the state needed to produce more than 2,700 additional bachelor’s degrees annually in computer science to meet projected employer demand in the region through 2021. The University of Washington currently awards about 300 computer science degrees a year.
华盛顿州学生成就理事会(Washington Student Achievement Council)是该州政府一所关注教育的机构，其2013年的一份报告称，该州每年需要另外再培养2700名计算机科学学士，才能满足该地区雇主2021年前的预计需求量。华盛顿大学目前每年向大约300名学生授予计算机科学学位。Glenn Kelman, chief executive of Redfin, an online real estate company based in Seattle, said he had never seen a region so solely dependent on one research institution. “I was shocked when I got here,” Mr. Kelman said. “Really, it’s Microsoft and Amazon and a dozen other companies our size and hundreds of even smaller ones picking over the same group of graduating computer scientists. It’s an incredibly small group of people.”
总部位于西雅图的在线房地产公司Redfin的首席执行官格伦·凯尔曼(Glenn Kelman)表示，他从未见过一个地区如此单一地只依赖一所研究机构。“来到这里的时候我震惊了，”凯尔曼说。“真的，微软、亚马逊、十几家和我们规模一样大，以及数百家规模更小的公司，都在从同一批计算机科学毕业生中选人。毕业生少得令人难以置信。”Silicon Valley’s development is closely linked to the strength of two institutes of higher education, one public and the other private, the University of California, Berkeley and Stanford. The University of Washington, a public university, has one of the top computer science programs in the country. But it turns away a significant number of students applying for computer science because it has not had enough money to increase capacity.
硅谷的发展和两家高等教育机构的实力密切相关，它们分别是公立的加州大学伯克利分校(University of California, Berkeley)和私立的斯坦福大学(Stanford)。作为一所公立大学，华盛顿大学有在全美名列前茅的计算机科学课程。但因为没有足够的资金扩充教学能力，学校会拒绝大量申请计算机科学的学生。The university is seeking to graduate more computer science students through an effort separate from the Global Innovation Exchange. Last week, it announced that Microsoft was the lead donor, with a $10 million gift, for a $110 million effort to build a new 130,000-square-foot computer science building, one that will allow the university to double, to 600, the number of degrees it awards annually in the field.
华盛顿大学正寻求通过全球创新学院之外的另一个项目，培养更多计算机科学专业的学生。上周，该校宣布，将花费1.1亿美元修建一座13万平方英尺（约合1.2万平方米）的计算机科学大楼，微软作为主要捐赠方，将出资1000万美元。新楼将使该校每年的计算机科学毕业生人数翻倍，增至600人。The institute will not concentrate on long-term research at first, focusing instead on “project-based learning,” in which students work on intensive, short-term undertakings. The first students will work on projects related to wearable technology and the Internet of things.
全球创新学院初期不会把精力集中在长期研究上，而是会关注于“基于项目的学习”，期间学生会参与大量高强度的短期项目。第一批学生将参与和可穿戴技术及物联网有关的项目。“China and the United States are two leading economies with enormous strengths in technological innovation,” said Qiu Yong, president of Tsinghua University. “The higher educational collaboration between them facilitates the scientific and technological progress and social development around the world.”
“中国和美国这两个主要经济体在科技创新方面都有巨大的优势，”清华大学校长邱勇说。“两国之间的高等教育合作会促进全世界的科技进步和社会发展。”The Global Innovation Exchange was inspired partly by Cornell Tech, an effort to create a major new computer science-focused campus on Roosevelt Island in New York. That project, which had its groundbreaking this week, also has an international partner in Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. The Cornell project will involve close collaborations with technology companies, partly to make it more responsive to industry trends.
全球创新学院的设想，在一定程度上是受了康奈尔科技学院(Cornell Tech)的启发。该项目计划在纽约的罗斯福岛上创办一个主要服务于计算机科学的新校区。已于本周动工的该项目，也有一个国际合作伙伴，以色列理工学院(Technion-Israel Institute of Technology)。康奈尔的项目将包括与科技公司的密切协作，这在一定程度上是为了让自己能更敏捷地应对行业趋势。Daniel P. Huttenlocher, the dean of Cornell Tech, said he was excited to see the institute in the Seattle area get off the ground.
康奈尔科技学院的院长丹尼尔·P·胡滕洛赫尔(Daniel P. Huttenlocher)表示，看到西雅图地区这个项目启动，他感到很兴奋。“These are leading-edge experiments in how to educate students for a new kind of world,” said Dr. Huttenlocher, who spoke with the University of Washington educators as they were planning the project.
“在如何为新世界培养学生方面，这些都是前沿试验，”胡滕洛赫尔说。华盛顿大学的教师在对项目进行规划时，胡滕洛赫尔曾与他们有过交流。In a nod to one of the top technical universities in the country, M.I.T., the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the founders of the Global Innovation Exchange have already taken to referring to it by the initials G.I.X. They even occasionally pronounce the name as “geeks.”
创始人已经开始习惯用首字母缩写GIX来指代全球创新学院了，这是在效仿以MIT来指代美国首屈一指的科技类院校麻省理工学院(Massachusetts Institute of Technology)。他们甚至偶尔还会把这个名字读作geeks（意为“极客”——译注）。“These days geeks rule,” Dr. Cauce said.
“现如今是极客的世界，”科斯说。
