On February 21 2022, Penn State Global Alumni Engagement hosted our fourth biweekly meeting in Spring 2022. The purposes of the meeting were to continue our group presentations (led by Group 2 and Group 3) and also discussing the upcoming events such as Global Career Workshop, GELE, and SAGA Award Ceremony. The meeting was held at Room 410 Boucke Building from 4.30p.m. to 6.00p.m. and 29 members were present.
The meeting began with an ice-breaker activity led by Afiqah and Alisia. Each member was asked to share 2 of their cultural taboos and then present it with the group. The activity was simple yet we all learned something new about different cultures in that moment.
We later moved on to our second agenda where Nirmit, a representative of the International Student Council(ISC), invited SAGA members to participate and/or perform during the “We Are The World” event which will be held on March 18. More information can be found on ISC Instagram page(@iscpennstate) .The meeting was continued with a panel session to the Top 6 SAGA members who were able to reach out to their alumni the most. Panelists include Margarita, Lorine, Yifan, Zijia, Beibei, and Asma. Yifan was gifted with a laptop bag as he managed to reach out to 12 alumni. Dr. Anna then began a brief session for them to share their advices and tips on how they were able to reach out to their alumni. Some of the experiences shared were as below:
“My alumni just gave me their phone number and we chat on WhatsApp. They were really chill about it. I guess there is just something about the Argentinians that make them so easy to reach out to. ”
-Margarita-
“I reached out to Jiayuan (Anna) Shen and Shixiang (Rachel) Yuan(who graduated last semester) as I’m pretty close to them. ”
-Yifan-
Dr. Anna concluded the discussion by mentioning how it is actually creative to reach out to fresh graduates. Doing so will keep a good cycle of support within the past and current SAGA communities.
Our discussion was followed by group presentations by Group 2 and Group 3. They had done an excellent job in delivering the assigned tasks. Group 2 (represented by Margarita, Yunice, Filipp, Maggie, Lalitha and Nirmit) had shared useful tips on contacting alumni. Some of them were using Google Scholar which is useful especially for PhD students. Other than that, they are utilizing referrals(mutual connections) and also Facebook class groups. Group 3 (represented by Sungjin, Sabrina, and Alisia) had also worked hard on preparing their slides. They had chosen “Festivals” as their theme and each of the aforementioned group members presented different festivals from various countries such as South Korea, Indonesia, and China.
The next agenda of the meeting was for the SAGA updates. Afiqah briefly promoted the ongoing video competition while Alisia reminded each group to send her the alumni information so that they can be featured on the Global Alumni Spotlight. Jeff also gave an update on the business cards that were distributed before the meeting. Dr. Anna then reminded SAGA to sign up for the upcoming Global Career Workshop and GELE. She also encouraged SAGA to apply for the student orientation leader job position. More information regarding these events can be found below:
The last discussion in the meeting was about a reminder of the important dates which is included below:
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- Biweekly meetings
- Next Meeting: Monday, March 21, 2022, 4.30-6.00pm (Group 3 & 4 will present)
- Other: April 4 & 18
- Global Career Workshop
- February 25, 3.00-5.00pm
- SAGA Award Ceremony
- Thursday, April 28, 11.30am-1.30pm in HUB Heritage Hall
- Biweekly meetings
Before we ended our meeting, Alisia led our “Expand Horizons” motto cheers. We then ate the provided dinner from Domino’s. The meeting was adjourned at 6.00pm. Overall, the meeting went as well as expected.
Expand Horizons!
Author: Afiqah Razak