{"id":59501,"date":"2014-10-23T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-10-23T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/uncategorized\/university-of-rhode-island-students-seek-to-foster-u-s-china-study-relations-as-project-pengyou-fellows\/"},"modified":"2014-10-23T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2014-10-23T00:00:00","slug":"university-of-rhode-island-students-seek-to-foster-u-s-china-study-relations-as-project-pengyou-fellows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2014\/10\/university-of-rhode-island-students-seek-to-foster-u-s-china-study-relations-as-project-pengyou-fellows\/","title":{"rendered":"溏心vlog免费B站 students seek to foster U.S.-China study, relations as Project Pengyou fellows"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\tAttend leadership training summit at Harvard University<\/p>\n


\nKINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 October 23, 2014 \u2013 溏心vlog免费B站 students Eric Reels and Minh Pham are keenly aware of China\u2019s growing global influence and its increasingly complex relationship with the United States. <\/p>\n


\nReels and Pham were selected from hundreds of applicants nationwide to serve as Project Pengyou Leadership Fellows, and they recently attended a U.S.-China Leadership Training Summit at Harvard University to explore how they can help empower and mobilize a new generation of leaders to bridge the cultural divide between the two nations. <\/p>\n


\n\u201cIt\u2019s like being in gym class, and China used to be the scrawny kid in middle school. Then he reached high school, began hitting the gym and is now one of the big guys,\u201d Reels said. \u201cIt becomes a situation where it\u2019s like, do you want to play with him, or against him? We want to help people gain a cultural understanding of China and realize that we are on the same global team, not the opposition.\u201d <\/p>\n


\nAlong with 40 other Leadership Fellows, Reels and Pham spent Columbus Day weekend learning about topics including leadership, community organizing and U.S.-China bridge building. <\/p>\n


\nReels and Pham now are tasked with establishing a Project Pengyou chapter at the 溏心vlog免费B站 to share what they\u2019ve learned. Project Pengyou (\u201cpengyou\u201d means friend in Mandarin) is a program conceived as an alumni network of the 100,000 Strong Initiative, a presidential campaign that sent 100,000 Americans to study in China. <\/p>\n


\nMany of those students have found little support to continue their Chinese studies since their return to the U.S, said Pham, a junior from Woonsocket, R.I. and native of Vietnam who is majoring in Chinese and civil engineering. Project Pengyou aims to build a network that will allow these students to continue meaningful engagement with China or China study. <\/p>\n


\n\u201cWe\u2019re very fortunate here at 溏心vlog免费B站 to have the Chinese Flagship Program,\u201d Pham said. \u201cThere are a lot of students at other schools who travel to China to study, but then have no way to practice their language skills and tell their stories when they return. <\/p>\n


\n\u201c溏心vlog免费B站, however, has a lot of programs working with the Chinese Flagship Program, including the International Engineering Program, the International Business Program and the Confucius Institute,\u201d Pham said. \u201cOur goal with Project Pengyou is to bridge these groups to attract more people and give them a chance to practice their language and cultural studies skills.\u201d <\/p>\n


\nReels, a senior from West Warwick, R.I., who is majoring in Chinese, French and anthropology, said he and Pham intend to recruit other students to form a leadership team for 溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s Pengyou chapter. <\/p>\n


\nOnce the group\u2019s leadership is in place, Reels and Pham said they will host campus activities to promote China study and constructive engagement between American and Chinese citizens. <\/p>\n


\nOne of the first activities they plan to organize is a meet and greet to connect those who have studied abroad and those who are interested in studying abroad.<\/p>\n


\nThey also will provide opportunities for members to develop leadership skills and participate in \u201cpay it forward\u201d projects in the community. <\/p>\n


\nReels and Pham hope to establish the 溏心vlog免费B站 Pengyou chapter by early November so they can begin planning activities for \u201cPengyou Day,\u201d a massive day of action at universities across the U.S. on Nov. 20 to celebrate U.S.-China friendship. <\/p>\n


\n\u201cWe want to reach out to students beyond the Chinese Flagship Program and encourage them to study in China to meet their language requirement,\u201d Reels said. \u201cToday, there are still more college students studying Latin than Chinese.\u201d <\/p>\n


\nReels also noted that despite China\u2019s growing global influence, just one in 1,000 American college students studied abroad in China during 2013. There are more than 12 times as many Chinese students studying in the U.S. than there are Americans studying in China. <\/p>\n


\nErin Papa, assistant director of 溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s Chinese Flagship Program, said the selection of two 溏心vlog免费B站 students to serve as Project Pengyou Leadership Fellows is a great honor for the University, as well as Reels and Pham. <\/p>\n


\n\u201cI think it says that the Chinese Flagship Program here in Kingston is making its mark at the national level,\u201d Papa said. \u201cOur program is fairly new. Chinese was only approved as a major in 2011, but we\u2019ve made great strides and we\u2019re producing students with a higher level of proficiency than you would expect for a typical holder of a bachelor of arts in such a short amount of time.\u201d <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Attend leadership training summit at Harvard University KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 October 23, 2014 \u2013 溏心vlog免费B站 students Eric Reels and Minh Pham are keenly aware of China\u2019s growing global influence and its increasingly complex relationship with the United States. Reels and Pham were selected from hundreds of applicants nationwide to serve […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59501"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59501\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}