Directors
The Confucius Institute of the State of Washington(CIWA) is led by a team of Directors from both Washington state and our partner institutions in China. Our current American Directors are Dr. Jeffrey Riedinger, Director of CIWA and Vice Provost for Global Affairs at the University of Washington, Dr. Michele Anciaux Aoki, Director of CIWA Education Center and International Education Administrator for Seattle Public Schools, and Aihua Liao serves as the Assistant Director at the UW. Jeffrey chairs the Confucius Institute Board of Directors and Michele chairs the Education Advisory Board for the Confucius Institute Education Center. Our Chinese Directors are Dongmei Huang, representing Seattle’s partner institution in China, the Chongqing Municipal Education Commission, and Jun Zhou, representing the UW’s partner institution, Sichuan University in Chengdu.
A Brief History
Our founding directors in 2009 were Dr. Stephen Hanson, Vice Provost for Global Affairs at the University of Washington, who is now Vice Provost for International Affairs at the College of William and Mary in Virginia, and Karen Kodama, who was International Education Administrator in Seattle Public Schools before she retired in August 2014. In early 2011, the Confucius Institute of the State of Washington welcomed our first two Chinese directors: Deng Bo from Sichuan University and Tang Changping (Donna) from Chongqing University of Technology. They have now returned to China.
Our second UW Director from 2011-2013 was Dr. Gary Hamilton, Professor in the Department of Sociology and the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington.
Our second Chinese Director from Chongqing was Wenqiu Wang, representing Seattle’s partner institution in China, the Chongqing Municipal Education Commission. She served in that role from 2014-2018.
At the December 2016 Global Confucius Institute Conference in Kunming, China, CIWA’s Chinese Director supporting K-12 education, Wenqiu Wang, received the 2016 Confucius Institute/Confucius Classroom Individual Performance Excellence Award.