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April 11, 2025 | By Kirstin Fawcett (AGI26)

Santa Fe President J. Walter Sterling was by no means the only Johnnie on campus with a jam-packed travel schedule last November, but he was likely among those with the farthest to go. Not that the longtime local was heading home early for Thanksgiving: he was flying 8,000 miles to China’s southeastern Guangdong province, home to the city of Guangzhou and its prestigious Sun Yat-sen University. The school was celebrating its 100th birthday, and Sterling was there to join an international forum honoring the occasion—and to discuss the Great Books pedagogy at Boya, a small residential college within the university with ties to St. John’s College both established and new.

China has distinguished itself by rapid modernization in recent decades, but it’s also known for its ancient classical tradition. This heritage is celebrated at Boya, home to the nation’s first four-year liberal arts and Great Books program. As of Summer 2025, the college will be a home-away-from-home for Johnnies as well, thanks to an inaugural four-week exchange program between Sun Yat-sen University and St. John’s College.

Sterling set the wheels in motion for the Boya exchange after signing a memorandum of understanding between St. John’s and Sun Yat-sen University while visiting the campus.  Students from Santa Fe and Annapolis can follow in his footsteps this July 14 through August 10, 2025, studying Confucianism, Daoism, and Chinese historiography in Guangzhou between touring regional landmarks and participating in hands-on activities like agricultural fieldwork and calligraphy.

No prior language knowledge is required (Guangzhou’s main language is Cantonese), and Boya College will provide their pioneering summer cohort of Johnnies with free tuition, lodging, and meals. It’s the latest in a growing slate of optional study abroad opportunities for Johnnies, which includes the Marchutz School of Art, in Aix-en-Provence, France; the Rome Institute of Liberal Arts; and Incheon National University’s Great Books Center in South Korea.

Boya College at Sun Yat-sen isn’t like most university programs in China—or, for that matter, around the globe. Instead of declaring majors, students read seminal texts from the Eastern and Western schools of thought and study languages including ancient Chinese, English, Latin, and ancient Greek. They also take courses on Chinese history, Hebrew civilization, calligraphy, musicology, and fine arts.

If this all sounds too much like St. John’s College to be coincidental, it’s because the two programs share intellectual DNA. Boya College was founded in 2009 by Professor Gan Yang, a noted champion of Great Books. Already an accomplished scholar, his affinity for St. John’s College deepened while working toward his PhD through the University of Chicago’s Committee of Social Thought—an interdisciplinary curriculum formed by some of the same individuals who helped shape the early Program.

Famous for introducing the ideas of philosophers like Leo Strauss to Chinese audiences and pioneering classical Latin and Greek scholarship in his native country, Gan taught political philosophy at the Chinese University of Hong Kong before joining Sun Yat-Sen University as its inaugural liberal arts dean. “He’s an extraordinary founding figure, sort of like their Scott Buchanan,” Sterling explains. Gan is now the dean of Xinya College, the residential liberal arts college of Beijing’s Tsinghua University, but Boya remains a like-minded cousin of St. John’s—one that some might be surprised to learn first registered on the college’s radar way back in 2011 by way of college alum Yu Ji (SF12).

Santa Fe tutor Krishnan Venkatesh, who helped launch St. John’s Eastern Classics master’s program, knew that the college needed to expand its reach in an increasingly globalized world. Here, right in front of them, was the chance. “He was the first tutor who said, in 2011, ‘We’ve got this connection over there; we ought to build on it,’” Sterling says. “‘It’s going to be so important for the next chapter of St John’s.’” The feeling was mutual, culminating in the two schools forging the first foreign exchange agreement in St. John’s College history in 2014.

“We started bringing over a couple of students from Boya every year in Santa Fe to do our freshman year as their junior year abroad,” Sterling explains. In turn, St. John’s Santa Fe faculty member Lynda Myers came to Boya to teach for a semester. A handful of Johnnie undergraduates received tuition waivers for Chinese language summer programs at Sun Yat-Sen, “but those were not specifically Boya programs, and lacked the Great Books and liberal arts connection. The new program and collaboration remedies that and creates just the right kind of opportunity for Johnnies,” Sterling says.

Six or so years into the two schools’ burgeoning relationship, the pandemic upended international exchange. “It had to dissolve,” Sterling says. “We were in crisis mode for years, on both sides, so there was no further contact.” But in spring 2024, Sterling heard from Boya that the college wanted to resume study-abroad and an exchange relationship with St. John’s—this time, with a curated liberal-arts focus on their end. Boya professor and assistant dean Fangyi Cheng reached out, intent on reforging the relationship. “He knows other Johnnies in China and sees the deep affinities. We now have the strong support of the university’s president and Boya’s dean, as well. The Boya faculty will be great guides and interlocutors for our students and faculty,” Sterling adds.

Meanwhile, Sun Yat-sen University’s upcoming centennial was scheduled for fall 2024, and they wanted Sterling to attend. This presented a key opportunity for the St. John’s Santa Fe president to meet with Boya administrators, deliver a presentation on the New Mexico campus’s sustainability initiatives, and, ultimately, to participate in the signing ceremony renewing their alliance. Sterling also used the trip to meet up with Johnnie alum Xiaoqian “Lara” Hu (A16) and to connect with Jingxing “Sting” Gao (SF15), who is working to organize the college’s first official China alumni chapter.

At certain points in the college’s recent history, Sterling recalls, international students from Asia—many of them from China—comprised a substantial portion of St. John’s incoming first-year classes in Annapolis and Santa Fe. He chalks this up in part to Boya College’s influence, and a dip in enrollment from China in recent years to geopolitical developments. He hopes that this tide will begin turning now that the two liberal arts schools have formally reconnected.

“There’s more to say about Johnnies in China and our relationships in China,” Sterling says. “But the heart of it right now is this exciting opportunity to reforge this deeply meaningful partnership with this amazing experiment in Great Books and liberal arts education that was so beneficial for years and is going to be even more beneficial and important in the next chapter.”

A natural synergy has always existed between the Eastern Classics and the St. John’s Program. Confucius draws comparisons with Aristotle for the way he “sets up things in conversation with the past and recommends your own contemplation as the best way to do things,” says St. John’s Santa Fe tutor Martha Franks, who published a book in 2019 called Books without Borders describing a St. John’s-inspired curriculum she co-ran with husband and fellow tutor Grant Franks at a Beijing high school from 2012-14. “He also had a traveling seminar and a circle of disciples with whom he conversed. The use of Confucianism was bound up with civil service tests, and so it became associated with rote learning and tests, but it is really tied together with the public mind.” Founding Fathers like Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison also admired Confucianism, as it modeled the “virtuous stateman” and stressed equality and civility among ranks.

“The founders had this global vision,” reflects Venkatesh, who has taught Eastern and Western philosophy at St. John’s Santa Fe for more than three decades. “They were trying to find a new way of being. So, right back to the origins of this country, Americans were looking to China. For St. John’s to look East like this—it’s so American.”

Are you an undergraduate Johnnie in Santa Fe or Annapolis who is interested in traveling to China through St. John’s College in July-August 2025? (application date has been extended), or reach out to Santa Fe’s Office of Personal and Professional Development or the Office of Career Development in Annapolis with questions.