The Confucius Institute at The University of Iowa is a collaborative project between The University of Iowa and The Office of Chinese Language Council International (Hanban) and East China Normal University (ECNU) in Shanghai. The Institute, which is part of University of Iowa International Programs, draws upon the considerable expertise and resources in a number of colleges and units at The University of Iowa, including the following: College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Ph.D. Program in Second Language Acquisition (FLARE), College of Education, Graduate College, College of Law, and Office of Vice President for Research.

The Institute is comprised of three sub-units:

A center for Chinese language and culture that promotes Chinese language study and culture exchange;

An international center for the study of Chinese as a foreign language to train Chinese language teachers and to study critical issues and solve problems that we are encountering in our daily Chinese language education to CFL learners;

A new international journal devoted to the advancement of theory and research in the learning and teaching of Chinese as a second or foreign language in the world.