They may be separated by approximately 6,800 miles, but Traverse City’s Northwestern Michigan College (NMC) and the Yellow River Conservancy Technical Institute in Kaifeng, China are sister schools. More than a decade ago, NMC sought a far-flung partner to take its educational offerings global, and college leaders decided Yellow River was the right fit. While the partnership struggled during the COVID-19 pandemic, it will be back to full force next spring, with NMC instructors preparing take their first trip to Kaifeng in six years.

According to John Lutchko, the new director of NMC’s Great Lakes Water Studies Institute, the roots of the Yellow River partnership date back to the 2012-13 academic year, when NMC first set its sights on “creating a global opportunity with a sister school in China.” College leaders visited multiple Chinese schools, but it wasn’t until they came across Yellow River that they felt true “crossover programming potential.”

“The relationship, at the start, was really rooted in water,” Lutchko tells The Ticker. Because China is so invested in hydroelectric power – according to GlobalData, hydropower accounted for 13 percent of China’s total power generation last year – Lutchko says the country has “a lot of engineering based around dams,” including a key program at Yellow River. Because of NMC’s work around water in degree programs like marine technology and freshwater studies, the two institutions found immediate common ground.

“They also have a massive land surveying program, which is an increasingly big thing at NMC,” Lutchko continues. In fact, NMC’s land surveying program was inspired by the one at Yellow River, which is the biggest program of its kind in China. “Land surveying is so important over there, because there is just so much building and development going on. I think Yellow River has something like 2,000 or 2,500 students in that program alone.”

NMC ended up formalizing a memorandum-of-understanding with Yellow River in 2014, though Lutchko says “the first academic course delivery between our institutions didn’t happen until 2017.”

Once those connections finally took hold, NMC instructors were traveling to Kaifeng to teach cohorts of Yellow River students. Water and surveying were one side of the coin: “Our thinking was, ‘What if we delivered some of our marine technology curriculum to the land surveying students, and gave them some of that water/hydro side of surveying?’” Lutchko explains. Construction technology was the other side: “Yellow River has a big construction technology program, but they don't use a lot of wood; it's all very concrete-based,” Lutchko says. “So, we created a partnership with our construction technology program for them to deliver some carpentry classes to the students at Yellow River.”

Lutchko accompanied Hans Van Sumeren – his predecessor in the Great Lakes Water Studies director job – to Kaifeng, as did Water Studies instructors like Scott Swan (pictured with a Yellow River class in 2017). NMC’s construction technology department also dispatched various faculty members to China, including adjunct professors Brian Sweeney and Phil McCuien.

Those instructors returned to Kaifeng in 2018 and 2019, and were set to go back in 2020 before the pandemic put the kibosh on the plans. NMC faculty members haven’t been back to Yellow River since, though the partnership hasn’t been totally dormant. After a missed year in 2020, Lutchko says NMC and Yellow River rallied to craft “a full virtual delivery of the programs” for both marine technology and construction technology. Each fall since, that arrangement has meant NMC instructors are pulling double duty, teaching their classes in Traverse City during the day and then pivoting in the evenings to connect virtually with students in Kaifeng.

Going virtual worked in a pinch, but Lutchko says it’s compounded one of the bigger challenges of doing this work: teaching across a lingual and cultural divide.

“You’re teaching to international students who mostly don't speak a word of English, so you're teaching through translators, which can be very challenging, especially virtually,” he explains. “I'll tell you one thing about being there in person, though: Despite the language barrier, the technology sort of transcends that. You can show a student how to fly an ROV or how to utilize sonar without actually talking to them. You can point to things, or push buttons in the software, or physically fly the ROV, and they get it right away.”

Despite the challenges of virtual, demand has only grown for NMC’s programs at Yellow River. Back when the program was operating on a fully in-person basis, NMC averaged 40 students apiece for each marine tech and construction cohort. This fall, each program was up to 75 students in Kaifeng, and enrollment for the 2025-26 cohort is already outpacing those numbers by a quarter.

“We’re talking nearly 200 students that are going to be a part of this next cohort,” Lutchko says. “That just shows how big the demand is on their side. And what’s really cool is, these are our students. They may be on the other side of the world, but they are enrolled NMC students. And the people that have gone through and completed these programs in the past, they are NMC alumni, with NMC degrees.”

The climbing demand, combined with the tactile benefits of face-to-face instruction, has led NMC and Yellow River to plot a new hybrid model for their partnership. Last month, NMC instructors wrapped an eight-week cycle of virtual instruction with students in Kaifeng. In April, they’ll travel to China for two weeks of in-person courses, focused on technology demonstrations and hands-on training.

If Lutchko has one reservation about going back to Kaifeng, it’s that “the world has changed quite a bit in the past six years,” including with United States-China relations.

“What you see in the media is a strained relationship between our two countries,” Lutchko notes. “Which, that’s fair, and that’s real. But when you really get down to the ground level of this stuff, it's getting in front of a person face to face and having a conversation. And that kind of connection is so helpful to understand that we're all human beings, and we're all just trying to figure it out, and we're all trying to make a living, and we're all trying to raise our families. It doesn't matter where you are.”