Connor led JieMin to the elevators and down to the third floor of the administration building. They walked north through the building along a major corridor, then over a bridge across First Street. As they left the walkway and entered the building, they crossed under an arch proclaiming ‘Chen Hall of Science.’
Connor chattered along the way.
“The university is actually quite large, given our relatively small footprint downtown here. Many of our undergraduate students take most of their courses remote, though doing their entire program remote as you did is not so usual.
“There are also satellite campuses in some of the other cities. That means our faculty as well as our students are distributed throughout the colony.
“Even so, we have large buildings spread across five city blocks here in our urban campus. The secret was to build up, not out. The Chen Hall of Science here is our latest addition. It was Chen Zumu’s project to get it funded and built. In addition to the sciences, the mathematics program is here as well.”
That explained much to JieMin. Chen Zumu may be the university’s single largest patron. When she called, the president of the university would most assuredly listen.
It also meant that being JieMin’s patron was both an extension of Chen Zumu’s patronage of education on Arcadia and a small additional project for her.
“Our graduate program is a bit different. It really needs to be on-site, mostly because the materials we brought from Earth aren’t amenable to use through the communicators. The undergraduate courses, yes, but the graduate courses are much more involved. One needs a viewing room for those.
“Here in Chen Hall, all the offices are equipped as viewing rooms, which means you can take the graduate courses without leaving your office. We don’t really have lecture halls, or even many classrooms. That’s another reason our footprint can be so small.”
They went up in the elevator to the math department’s main floor.
Klaus Boortz was the head of the Mathematics Department at the University of Arcadia. He had been the head of the department for twenty years, and had fought long and hard to get the math department the respect it deserved.
Fifty years ago, Matthew Chen-Jasic and Adriana Zielinski – who was both the chairman of the charter convention and the provost of the university – had remade the government and founded the republic. Part of that restructuring had finally gained the university the funding it needed to become a true university.
But the emphasis had been on engineering and the sciences, including agriculture, as most needed by the colony. When Boortz was made the head of the struggling math department, the gruff German had emphasized mathematics’ role in supporting all of these technical fields. How a strong math department was necessary to provide the analytical rigor for them to be most effective. And he had largely succeeded.
Now this. The spoiled favorite child of the most politically connected and wealthiest family on the planet – and the university’s biggest supporter – being foisted on his graduate program. At age fourteen, no less.
Boortz had angrily opened the student’s records to find the information he needed to give Connor a piece of his mind, and he’d been surprised.
First, Chen JieMin had in fact completed all of the undergraduate mathematics courses required, with honors, and taken the graduate courses available via communicator as well.
Second, Chen JieMin was Chen, but he was not the pampered child of an urbanite family. He was from Chagu, a farming enclave of his family, and grew up in very modest – and crowded – housing in the mountains. He had probably worked in the fields since he was old enough to walk.
His anger defused now, Boortz went back through JieMin’s records with a fine-toothed comb. There was also a personality and intelligence test result there, the same one given to every youngster at eight or nine years old.
Chen JieMin’s intelligence had not been rated that highly by this test, but Boortz knew more than a little about testing analysis. That was a composite score. Boortz sliced the test apart, and evaluated the bits separately.
On the sections on interpersonal communications, on understanding people, on emotional intelligence, on everyday items, JieMin had performed well below average. But on the sections on logical and abstract thinking, on visualization, on deduction and induction, his scores were off the charts. Well above the range where the test was even considered accurate.
Boortz went from being angry to elated. Chen JieMin had all the signs of being a true mathematics prodigy.
But he had to keep the Physics Department from poaching his new star student.
Anders Connor had sent Klaus Boortz a message that they were on the way, and Boortz met Connor and JieMin in the elevator lobby on the tenth floor. Where Connor was in a business suit and JieMin in a lavalava and flip-flops, Boortz split the difference in slacks and a loud tropical-print shirt over his considerable bulk.
“Klaus, this is Chen JieMin. Mr. Chen, this is Professor Boortz. He is the head of our mathematics department.”
“Good morning, Mr. Chen. I’m very pleased to meet you.”
“I am honored to meet you, Jiaoshou,” JieMin said, bowing. “Please call me JieMin.”
“Jow shoe?” Boortz asked.
“It is Chinese for professor, but it conveys more respect than the English word.”
“Ah. Well, thank you for that. But if I am to call you JieMin, then you must call me Klaus. Reciprocity, you see.”
JieMin did see. Huhui – reciprocity – was a basic precept of Chinese culture.
“Very well, er, Klaus.”
Boortz laughed with gusto. It seemed he did everything with gusto.
“I’ll leave you two, then, Klaus.”
“Yes, Anders. I have it
