Student Ambassador Invited to the Chinese Flagship Culture Initiative Conference

Molly Wolyn
March 30, 2024

From March 30 to 31, IU hosted their first Pre-Capstone Student Conference.

All the teachers, alumni, and pre capstone students who attended the conference in Bloomington, Indiana

From March 30 to 31, IU hosted their first Pre-Capstone Student Conference. The two-day event saw around 30 pre-Capstone students from the 13 Chinese Flagship campuses gather in Bloomington, Indiana. Accompanied by 6 Capstone Alumni and Chinese teachers, the students worked together to create interculture-based scenarios and decide the proper approach to solving the issues dealt with in those scenarios. One of our student ambassadors, Molly Wolyn, flew to Indiana to participate in the conference and meet her fellow pre-Capstone students. 

The scenario-creation activity took place over two days. To create the culture based scenarios, the pre-Capstone students were divided into 6 groups, each of which had around 4-5 students and one alumnus. The scenarios ranged from how to deal with possible issues with host families to helping out strangers to addressing one’s boss.

Molly Wolyn with two other pre-capstone students and alumni on the way to the airport.

Molly’s group focused on how to properly request a change in role for a company’s research project from one’s boss. The day after creating the scenario, drafting 4 different responses, and creating a script, the groups presented their different cultural scenarios. The scenarios were judged and Molly’s group won “Judge’s Choice!” 

There were also many other activities in between breaks, such as visiting IU’s on-campus museum, Kahoot, and chatting with Capstone alumni. The Kahoot that was hosted after dinner on Saturday, featured questions about Taiwan and since Molly’s group also won the Kahoot, the student conference was a success in her eyes! The conference was also an excellent opportunity for the pre-Capstone students to meet with alumni and ask them questions about their year abroad. Molly was glad for the opportunity to learn more about the year abroad from people who recently returned to the US, especially regarding the fantastic restaurants she can look forward to in Taiwan.