Twenty-four students from Henan University of Chinese Medicine spent three months at Kellogg College, University of Oxford, on the first full-length study abroad programme of its kind delivered by UCEC. The cohort landed at Gatwick on 30 December 2025 and flew home on 31 March 2026, having completed a pre-sessional induction, a ten-week academic programme in medicine and healthcare, two rounds of assessed group presentations, four industry visits, and a public Traditional Chinese Medicine event that they ran themselves.
Arrival: the last days of December
The students arrived the day before New Year’s Eve. The first days were given over to adjusting: a walking tour of Oxford, a visit to Christ Church and the Christmas Tree Festival, a New Year’s Eve dinner, and — on New Year’s Day itself — a resolution planning party in which each student set out what they wanted from the term ahead. Sessions on living in Oxford covered banking, healthcare and food; a survival English class dealt with the language of daily life; a session on the rules of British culture covered the customs and etiquettes of living in the UK.
January: the pre-sessional weeks
The first full teaching block, running from 5 January, was all about preparing to study. Students were introduced to the University of Oxford, to Oxford teaching styles, and to the UK political system, and given an overview of the history of Britain and of everyday British life and traditions. A session on science and innovation in the UK set the context for the medical programme to come.
Threaded through both weeks was a series called Planning for Success, which tackled the things international students most often struggle with and are least often taught: managing time, taking notes, reading efficiently, researching effectively, thinking critically, working in groups, using the public library, staying well, staying safe, and dealing with homesickness. Two further sessions — Understanding Your True Colours and a guide to self-reflection using the Four Cs — asked students to look at how they themselves learn. Each day ended with a Notes and Reflections block to ensure students retained information and fully reflected on each day.
The pre-sessional closed with the cohort’s first set of group presentations: an early, low-stakes run at speaking to an audience in English, and a marker of what they had absorbed in three weeks.
Late January: the academic programme begins
On 19 January the academic programme opened with a welcome lecture at Kellogg College, and the timetable changed shape — morning lectures, independent reading, afternoon seminars and skills classes, and long reading blocks at the end of each day.
The first academic strand was Introductory Logic, working through soundness and validity, types of argument, logical fallacies and the construction of good arguments. The opening lectures set the tone for the medical programme: Traditional Chinese Medicine in Oxford, AI and healthcare, surgery for children, and a seminar on advancements in reverse ageing research.
Outside the classroom, the cohort marked Burns Night on 25 January, attended an evening lecture on neural networks in minds and machines, and spent the first Sunday of February in London at the Old Operating Theatre and the British Museum.
February: the heart of the programme
February was the densest month. The lecture series moved through cancer biomarkers, regenerative medicine and bioprocessing, the gut–liver axis in health and disease, remote monitoring and its clinical applications, machine learning for medical devices, applying evidence-based medicine in healthcare screening, vaccine development and clinical assessment, and the economic evaluation of health policies and interventions. Seminars on antibacterial resistance and tissue engineering ran alongside, and evening talks at The Hub covered the future of climate technology through synthetic biology, building confidence in AI, and the economic and clinical perspectives on the impact of children on mothers.
The afternoon skills strand turned to Academic Research: choosing a research topic, journalling, library databases, a library field day, parsing sources, quoting, paraphrasing and summarising, and citation styles. By the end of the month it had handed over to Academic Writing.
Two Industry Insights visits took the cohort out of college, to a primary care building and to a research laboratory. Chinese New Year was marked with a group dinner on 16 February and Shrove Tuesday the following day. The month ended with a day out in Cambridge — city exploration, university tours, and boating on the River Cam.
Bringing Chinese medicine to Oxford
One of the highlights of the programme was an event the students delivered rather than attended. Hosted at The Hub at Kellogg College and free to attend, the community Traditional Chinese Medicine experience was open to college staff, students and members of the public.
Visitors could have their pulse taken and read, watch and join tai chi demonstrations, receive massage, and observe acupuncture demonstrations, alongside a talk introducing the principles of Chinese medicine. It drew a warm response, and gave the cohort something no lecture could: the experience of explaining their own discipline, in English, to an audience encountering it for the first time.
March: writing, work and the final push
The March lectures continued the clinical thread — the diagnosis of transient ischaemic attack and minor stroke, infectious diseases, newborn surgery, cancer vaccine research and development, benign and malignant disease of the prostate — and closed on the economics of care, with sessions on why healthcare costs money and on health economics and management.
The Academic Writing strand ran through generating ideas, essay structure, providing evidence, building good arguments, academic style, referencing and proofreading. It gave way in the final fortnight to Practical Skills: job searching, CVs and résumés, cover letters, interviews, and presentation skills and public speaking, with dedicated run-through sessions before the end.
Two further Industry Insights visits — a medical school exchange and the Traditional Chinese Medicine session — rounded out the programme, and a day out to the Seven Sisters and the white cliffs came at the end of the month.
On 27 March the students gave their final group presentations, this time before a panel of three judges, followed by a group review.
Graduation and Reflections
The programme closed on 30 March with a graduation ceremony at Kellogg College, individual and group portraits, a drinks reception and a formal dinner. The cohort spent the morning of 31 March in Windsor and flew home that evening, three months after arriving.
Three months is long enough for something to change. The students who presented to a panel of judges in March were not the students who had arrived in December — they had sat in Oxford lecture theatres, worked in an Oxford library, taught their own medical tradition to an Oxford audience, and learned to stand up and defend an argument in a second language! UCEC looks forward to welcoming many more bright, curious and hardworking cohorts of outstanding students to Oxford in the years ahead.
