Features
New program, and alumni, assist students unable to return to campuses
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hrough no fault of their own, more than 450 Penn State students residing in China and South Korea — including at least seven from the College of Education — were unable to travel to any of the University’s campuses this fall. Instead, Penn State took a campus to them. The global coronavirus pandemic forced the closure of many U.S. consulates abroad and new visa appointments would have been issued far too late for students without existing student visas to travel to Pennsylvania in time for the late-August start of classes. Constructing a customized education abroad program is nothing new, according to Brian Brubaker, director of Education Abroad, Penn State Global Programs. But typically it takes nine to 15 months to do so, he said, and it was April. “Many details needed to be considered, among them course structure, load, what courses to offer, price-point, housing, development of co-curricular programming, and alignment of academic policies between the partner and Penn State,” Brubaker said. That inspired the creation of Penn State First: Shanghai and Penn State First: Seoul, a collaboration between the University and the Council on International Educational Exchange. Students were able to register for two courses delivered remotely and three in residence at East China Normal University in Shanghai. “The courses being taught on-site are led by local hires from the Shanghai academic community, hired by our partners
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Penn State Education
By Jim Carlson
on the ground,” Brubaker said. “Courses in Seoul are being taught by faculty at Yonsei University, the No. 2-ranked university in that country.” In addition to the coursework, Brian Brubaker Penn State alumni in China volunteered to support activities ranging from onsite orientation to movie nights to sports days to even hosting students to visit various companies and businesses. “I’m grateful about the activity that Penn State and its alumni provide us, like the movie night and the lecture about it,” said prospective secondary education major Jiayu Zhang. “It provides a more specific detail about how our cultures are different and how we could cope with that.” Brubaker said 415 students are enrolled in Penn State First: Shanghai and 38 in Penn State First: Seoul. More than 10,000 international students from 140 countries and six continents attend Penn State each year. “For this first iteration of Penn State First (PSF), we worked with the Eberly College of Science to offer several courses very popular with first-year international students (BIOL 110, CHEM 110, MATH 110, etc.) and that meant that we had to recruit and confirm Penn State faculty who would teach sections of these courses especially for PSF students (during ‘daylight’ hours in China and Korea),” he said. “Naturally, too, the students also had to go through course registration as well as pre-arrival
and on-site orientations.” The College of Education has been in contact with its students enrolled in the Penn State First programs, according to Greg Mason, director of the Advising and Certification Center. “These international students typically are highly motivated, academically speaking,” Mason said. “They have been well-prepared in Chinese secondary schools for our academic content. “Of course, what they are missing out on is the social integration to university life, which is true for many of our students right now. The interaction with other students from other backgrounds and beliefs ... that’s a hallmark of university life, and it’s certainly a bit more stunted than usual right now.” Mason said that some degree of anxiety is to be expected. “It’s not just the students feeling it, we all are, given the ambiguity of how this pandemic will unfold in the coming weeks and months,” he said. “Acknowledging it to students is important, but also keeping an eye on them to ensure that they are not disengaging from their academics; that would be a red flag for us.” The social integration situation is a concern for students who aspired to be living in State College, Pennsylvania, instead of their Far East homeland. “To be in my home country to begin my semester, it is hard for me to contact and meet with foreign students. It will also be harder for me to have new international friends under this special circumstance,” said future early childhood education major Ziyi Lin. Both Lin and Zhang have two
