On May 11^th, CUEB Vice President Xu Fang met with Nathaniel Ahrens, director of China Affairs for the University of Maryland. The two sides held talks and reached consensus on formal inter-university cooperation, student and faculty exchange programs, research cooperation and so forth.

Xu extended sincere welcome to Nathaniel Ahrens for his revisit to CUEB. She remarked that the cooperation between CUEB and University of Maryland has gone from strength to strength ever since 2012 in research, student and faculty exchanges and so on. As part of University of Maryland, a globally well-known university, the Robert H. Smith School of Business is one of the top business schools in the world. Since there is huge potential and advantages in CUEB-Smith cooperation in management, finance and economics, Xu expressed the hope to achieve a formal all-round partnership and a bilateral framework agreement as soon as possible. In addition, Xu went into details with Nathaniel Ahrens on cooperation regarding student exchange programs, and formally invited Wallace D. Loh, president of University of Maryland and Nathaniel Ahrens to the 60^th anniversary of CUEB.

Nathaniel Ahrens gave a brief introduction of the University of Maryland. Furthermore, he said that the University of Maryland attached great importance to the cooperation with Chinese universities. And he expressed his vision to sign the framework agreement as soon as possible and to launch cooperative programs.

Later, CUEB delegates including Zhu Anbo, director of Foreign Language Department, Zhang Jie, vice dean of College for Urban Economics and Public Administration, Guo Yuanyuan, vice dean of School of Culture and Communication, and Yang Yang, assistant dean of School of Finance, exchanged ideas and reached preliminary consensus with Nathaniel Ahrens on specific programs, including short and long term student exchanges, faculty visiting and training, research cooperation and so on.