About
The Midwest Chinese Academy is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit educational organization based in the Iowa City area that promotes Chinese language and culture studies and facilitating education and culture exchanges between the United States and China. We currently have three programs: Chinese Culture Club, Individualized Instruction, and Chinese Book Library.
We provide a featured curriculum where you can gain Mandarin Chinese spoken and/or written communicative capabilities that tailor to your levels, needs, and schedules. Learners will gradually learn to demonstrate a level of cultural understanding and correct performances in realistic Chinese cultural environments.
Having the pedagogical expertise, we make every effort to help learners learn step-by-step and gain continual successes in the journey of learning Chinese. We create more opportunities for students’ future aspirations. We succeed when our students succeed!
Donglin Chai (PhD), President
Donglin Chai received her MA (2012) and PhD (2017) in East Asian Languages and Literatures at The Ohio State University with a concentration in Chinese Language Pedagogy. A pedagogue by training, Chai is a leading scholar and practitioner of the Performed Culture Approach, a paradigm-shifting pedagogical framework in the field of East Asian language pedagogy to help learners effectively communicate with native speakers of the target culture. See full profile >>
Helen Shen (PhD), vice President
Helen H. Shen, Professor, Department of Asian and Slavic Languages and Literatures, The University of Iowa, USA. She served as Academic Coordinator of the Chinese Program, Director of Graduate Studies for the Department; college board SAT Subjest Tests Committee in the U.S.; Roundtable Grant Committee of the National Federation of Modern Language Teachers Associations in the U.S. See full profile >>
Na Li, board member
Na Li, President of the Eastern Iowa Chapter–Asian and Pacific Islander American Public Affairs Association (APAPA).
Jacky Xiao, digital art Intern
Hello, I am Jacky Xiao. I was one of Chai Laoshi's students for five years and have learned much from her courses. In high school I was a part of a robotics team where I specialized in programming and now I am a student at the University of Maryland, pursuing a degree in computer engineering. I enjoy writing software to solve problems within my daily life and learning more about low level computing. Currently I work within the university's College of Education, where I write software to help streamline various processes within the workflow of the college. In my free time I enjoy video games, cooking, and drawing. I have been doing digital art for about six years now and am glad to have the opportunity to help Chai Laoshi.