Red and yellow banners that read "One World, One Dream" will welcome Penn students when they arrive in Beijing this summer.
These 15 students, participants in one of the University's newest summer-abroad programs, Penn-in-Beijing, will spend one month studying how the media will play a role in the 2008 Summer Olympics that will take place in China.
PIB, along with Korean Summer Language Institute, represents the University's newest summer-abroad programs to Asia.
"Students will be studying the Olympics as a shaping political event in the life of China and in the definition of China in world. . It's really about globalization, sports and political systems," said PIB director Monroe Price.
"There will be a lot of proximity and interchange with local students," he added.
And then, of course, there's the added bonus of visiting various Olympic venues, including the Olympic Green.
The program, designed by the Annenberg School for Communication, was finally authorized after a similar program for Graduate students was held in China last summer.
CGS director Marni Baker Stein expects the program - run by the College of General Studies in conjunction with Peking University in Beijing - to facilitate "interesting conversation between faculty and students from Penn and Beijing."
And, apparently, this program is just what Penn students are looking for.
College sophomore Maggie Howard, who went on a Princeton-run, language-intensive program in China last summer, said that, "from experience, Penn students always wished Penn had a summer program in China but, before this, [Penn] never did."
Also in East Asia, Penn, along with private Korean university Kyung Hee University, is offering KSLI, which will provide 25 full-expenses paid scholarships to students to study in Suwon, South Korean.
It was developed as part of the U.S. National Security Language Initiative, a U.S. government effort to increase the number of Americans proficient in widely spoken languages like Korean.
Language Initiative officials chose Penn to administer the program because of its "excellence in Korean studies," said KSLI director Milan Hejtmanek.
It is also a "highly experimental immersion program," said Hejtmanek, who is also a History professor at Penn.
This program, too, has generated positive feedback among students.
College and Wharton Sophomore Li Chen said that, as an International student from China, he thinks that "people usually know more about Europe than Asia, [but] I think the Asian programs are important."
Wharton freshman Vidyut Saraf pointed out, "At the end of the day, all of the Asian countries are on the rise in terms of economics and business. The more we know about all of the different countries, . the better we are for the future."
