Kuo Ping-Wen or Guo Bingwen (; 1880–1969), courtesy name Hongsheng (鴻聲), was an influential Chinese educator. Biography Kuo was born in Shanghai, Jiangsu province, and his father was an elder in the Presbyterian Church. He attended Lowrie Institute (The Pure Heart Academy, Qingxin Shuyuan 清心書院), which was connected with the First Presbyterian Church in Shanghai (founded by John Marshall Willoughby Farnham, 1830–1917), graduating in 1896. Kuo Ping-wen then served in the customs and postal bureaus before coming to the United States in 1906 under the sponsorship of the Presbyterian Church, at first attending the Preparatory Academy at the University of Wooster, now the College of Wooster, in Ohio, and later, in 1908, matriculating at the University of Wooster with the support of the Boxer Rebellion Indemnity Scholarship Program. At Wooster, Kuo was one of the editors of the university newspaper, The Wooster Voice, and General Secretary of the Chinese Students Alliance. In 1911 he wrote an extensive article for the newspaper on the history of Chinese students in the United States, beginning with Yung Wing (Rong Hong) 容閎 at Yale University in the mid-nineteenth century. He won several speech prizes for the university and was mentored in oratory by Professor of Speech Delbert Lean. He graduated with honors from the University of Wooster in 1911 and then undertook graduate studies in Education under John Dewey and Paul Monroe at Columbia University, where he received his M.A. degree in 1912 and his Ph.D. in 1914. His doctoral dissertation, The Chinese System of Public Education, was published by the Teachers College at Columbia in 1915 and is a wide-ranging study of the history and structural development of education in China from ancient times onward. The Chinese edition of the book was published in Shanghai in 1916. In 1914 Kuo returned to China where he transformed the Nanjing Higher Normal School ( Nanjing Gaodeng Shifan Xuexiao 南京高等师范学校) into the first modern co-educational Chinese University, National Southeastern University (Guoli Dongnan Daxue 国立东南大学), which was later renamed National Central University (Guoli Zhongyang Daxue 国立中央大学) in 1928 and Nanjing University (Nanjing Daxue 南京大学) in 1949, and his ideas exerted a broad influence in Chinese educational circles. In 1921, he became the first chancellor of the Shanghai College of Commerce (Shanghai Shangke Daxue上海商科大学), which in 1917 had emerged from the program in commerce at Nanjing Higher Normal School. The Shanghai College of Commerce was the forerunner of