A SWUFE “Summer Camp”

Two Wilson students study abroad in China under new agreement

This summer, Wilson forged a new international partnership with the Southwestern University of Finance and Economics (SWUFE) in Chengdu, China. This partnership includes an exchange program with either waived or reduced tuition for Wilson students, an opportunity for Wilson professors to serve on SWUFE’s summer faculty and two reserved spots for Wilson students to attend the university’s 10-day study-abroad program

The first Wilson students to take advantage of the “Discover SWUFE International Summer Camp” were Christina Gonzalez ’16 and Danniele Fulmer ’17. From July 5-14, they took part in discussions on international relations and entrepreneurship at SWUFE, experienced Chinese theater and archaeological sites, took a few basic lessons in speaking Mandarin and tried their hand at calligraphy and fan-painting.

SWUFE is a public research university under the direction of the Chinese Ministry of Education. Last fall, President Barbara K. Mistick visited SWUFE with a group of educators from FriendlyPA, an economic development initiative aimed at building partnerships and promoting exchange activities between Pennsylvania and Chinese educational institutions. Mistick and a small group from Wilson then met this summer in Pittsburgh with SWUFE members to finalize the exchange agreement.

“This is a great opportunity for our Wilson students to gain first-hand experience about China,” President Mistick said. “China is now the world’s second-largest economy, and our agreement creates an important educational exchange not only for our faculty and staff, but for SWUFE’s as well.”

Gonzalez and Fulmer were part of a group of 56 students from 39 different countries participating in the session. “Now I can say I have friends on every continent except for Antarctica!”  Fulmer said.

Gonzalez, a senior from Santa Barbara, Calif., carries a double major in political science and Spanish, and was elected this spring as the president of the Wilson College Government Association. She is a participant in the Women with Children program. Fulmer, a junior from Clymer, Pa., is participating in the 3+1 program with Vermont Law School, in which she will earn her undergraduate degree from Wilson and a master’s degree in environmental law and policy from VLS in four years.

Both said they found Chengdu a fast-paced, crowded city full of new skyscrapers that contrasted with older, traditional pagoda-style buildings. Traffic was “organized chaos—I had more than one hair-raising taxi ride,’ Fulmer said—and the Szechwan cuisine was tongue-tingling, hot and spicy.

While Chengdu is new and vibrant, with evidence of a vast amount of wealth, there are still reminders of the country’s communist past, Gonzalez said. “I learned more in these 10 days about China than I could learn in an entire semester Chinese immersion course, and I came away with an admiration for their traditions and culture and their work ethic,” she said. “But you have to go into this with your eyes open.”

The cultural education became a two-way street when 50 Chinese students visited the summer camp to take part in discussion groups with the international students.  “I think what is interesting is that the younger generation of Chinese [is] starting to ask the challenging questions,” Gonzalez said. “They are very curious about how we do things in Western culture. You could see this clearly during the international student discussion group segment.”

While many of the academic lectures and discussion had a business slant, Fulmer said, the summer camp’s main focus seemed to be to introduce students to the area’s Chinese culture and to foster international cooperation. Fulmer found the Mandarin lessons to be both fascinating and challenging. “It was eye-opening to deal with a language that is that complex. Just going to McDonalds and trying to order food was hard.”

Fulmer was also impressed by a field trip the group took to the region known as the Panda area, which included a visit to a panda breeding facility where the World Wildlife Federation has a headquarters. “After seeing their facility, I’d consider applying to work at WWF,” said Fulmer, who spent the rest of her summer interning at Volvo in Shippensburg, Pa., working in the company’s environmental regulations section.

Chengdu was not the only study-abroad program Gonzalez took part in this summer. Under Wilson guidelines, she was able to design a personalized study-abroad program in Mexico. She spent three weeks in the state of Colima, studying the government and the effect of NAFTA on the people there.

“It’s important to take study abroad in non-European countries, to go to a country and a culture where you are out of your comfort zone, where you can look at a culture without a Western lens,” Gonzalez said. “You discover, at the bottom, we are all human. The heart breaks the same way; mothers love their children the same way. You can still make those connections, despite all the differences.”