The Penn State Global Alumni Engagement team hosted the first SAGA’s meet and greet on Monday, November 1st, in person. More than 30 SAGA members and 8 faculty and staff participated in this event.
The following article, written by Giselle (Yunqi) Liu, our SAGA member, provides you a recap of the event. Pictures are courtesy of Haley Deitz, Marketing Communications Specialist at Penn State Global.
Assistant vice president of university development, Ken Hall, provided an opening speech introducing the origin and the goal of establishment of SAGA. Mr. Hall shared his personal story of how he became an open-minded person growing up in State College. His subsequent working experience as an intern in Hong Kong expanded his horizon and changed his mind about multicultural society that he had never been exposed to when he was in State College. “There are Penn State alumni from more than 68 countries,” Hall said. What SAGA will highly contribute too is to “stay connected with international Penn Staters”.
Larry Asu, Penn State Alumnus from class of 2014, presented a speech sharing his college life as an international student from Malaysia and his current career as the Learning and Development Manager for Supply Chain at The Hershey Company. With his experience living in the US for 9 years, Asu discussed the presence of culture shock that keeps impacting him. Asu’s mentor in The Hershey Company Marcia, who significantly helped Asu from career-wide to life-wide, is also a Penn State Alumna. Asu expresses his excitement and prospect of SAGA and how it will help with alumni connection. Asu, who shared his challenges living and pursuing his career in an unfamiliar country, at the end of the presentation said “don’t be afraid to explore…Go big or go home” as some advice for students.
Presidents of the Thai Student Association, Aida Muneechai and Poom Chantarapornrat, performed a Thai Pop song “Test Me” which warmed up the event. This pop song showcases Thai culture with its joyful rhythm and melody. The lyrics are about a girl loving a boy and wanting to show how much she loves him. This song gives positive and delightful vibes to everyone who is in love. In between, SAGA members played interactive game learning Ethiopian Amharic Alphabet Tips with Eden Yemesegen, a SAGA member who is a doctoral student from Ethiopia. We learned that Amharic is written from left to right using a system that grew out of the Geʽez script. The writing system is called fidäl (ፊደል) in Ethiopian Semitic languages. Fidäl means “script”, “alphabet”, “letter”, or “character”. We were able to spell out “SAGA” using Amharic.
Dr. Roger Brindley, Vice Provost for Global Programs who joined Penn State on April 6th, 2020, came to the event to provide closing remarks. In the meeting, Dr. Brindley said “Penn State wants us to embrace the world”. Connecting with people at similar ages is something alums would like to do, Dr. Brindley pointed out. According to Penn State’s data, international student population is growing over the past decade, which makes Penn State a more diverse and inclusive community. Dr. Brindley encouraged everyone “the more you put in, the more you will take out.”
A SAGA member, Huang (Maggie) Chi, from Taiwan, expressed what attracted her to join SAGA. She shared her experiences doing an English Vlog, “I go around interviewing people from international (backgrounds)… The questions are basically about identities. Beyond that, I figured out international history and talking to people is really fun. That’s what motivated me to join SAGA.”
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