I’ve been talking lately with a few KU faculty members who regularly travel overseas about their joy at the news they’ll be able to access wireless internet internationally. Provost Jeff Vitter is not among those I’ve talked to, but I can report he is an international traveler, as well: He returned two weeks ago from a 12-day trip to China.

Gavin Young, a spokesman for the provost’s office, reports that the main purpose of Vitter’s trip was to attend (and speak at) the seventh Confucius Institute Conference in Beijing, as well as the KU Confucius Institute Advisory Board Meeting in Wuhan. (KU is among about 80 U.S. institutions with Confucius Institutes, which are cooperative ventures with the Chinese government designed to spread understanding of Chinese culture.)

Also during his China trip, which lasted Dec. 7-19, Vitter visited several universities to present on the subject of “compressed data structures” (note that two of the three references in that Wikipedia entry are to works by Vitter, who is also a distinguished professor in the electrical engineering and computer science department). He presented at Central China Normal University, Northwest University, Tsinghua University and Xidian University.

A productive trip, no doubt, but don’t feel bad if you’ve been sitting at home rather than traveling about China; just send a KU news tip to merickson@ljworld.com, and you can feel as if you’ve accomplished something.