International Teamwork: The Global Fellows Program

Opportunities to work in an international atmosphere give college students many benefits, including exposure to other cultures in both the workplace and in off-time. Penn State Altoona recently hosted an eight-week Global Fellows program that put students from Seoul Women’s University, South Korea, on the Penn State Altoona campus, where they worked with Altoona IST majors in what Jungwoo Ryoo, division head for Business, Engineering, and Information Sciences and Technology, and professor of information sciences and technology, calls “an employability skills program—from inception to implementation.”

Last year Ryoo managed what he called a “pilot” program when he took four Altoona students to South Korea for the ICSSA 2018 conference. They had the opportunity to work with Korean students and explore the country’s culture. The trip was so successful that this year Ryoo launched the Global Fellows Program, a one-credit internship course (IST495), based on a simulated internship experience that involved domestic students.

Five students from Seoul Women’s University (SWU) made the trip to work with four Altoona students on the app for the Lower Trail, part of the hiking and biking trail developed by Rails to Trails of Central PA, an organization that transforms old railroad beds into public recreational places. Because communication is a critical part of working in an international group, the students also worked on their technical writing skills and the Korean students attended an English as a Second Language (ESL) class. Ryoo says, “It’s a good combination because they have to be using the skills they’re learning—technical writing especially.”

Ingrid Das, lecturer in English, worked with the Korean students in the ESL class. She described them as “excellent students—interesting, ambitious, and very enjoyable to work with.” The students didn’t have to start with the basics because “they had already studied English in school in Korea.” What Das’s class gave them was complete immersion in both written and spoken English. Her goal was to teach them the skills necessary for producing professional-quality work. As part of the program, each of the three teams was required to write a proposal, a description of their procedures, and a final report. “I structured the class according to the documents they had to write,” Das explains. “We dealt with the English language as we went along. I also had them do an individual progress report memo and a US-style resume along the way.”

As is common for English classes, the students practiced editing each other’s work. Das said that “the students were amazed at how much they could help one another. They were able to point things out and provide good editorial suggestions. In the beginning they were insecure about their English, but by the end of the program, they felt confident about their abilities to critique their own as well as their colleague’s work.” Das also noted that while working with the students on these documents, she came to appreciate the language and syntax associated with computer programming. For Das, it was interesting to discover “the crucial role that grammar and punctuation play in writing code.” In the end, Das said, “we learned a lot from each other—including the fact that we all shared the same taste in chocolate!”

For their work on the app project, the students were divided into three work groups—a database team, a server side, and a client side—each tackling a part of the existing trail app needing improvement or an update. Among other changes, the students worked on allowing privileged users to update information in the database, giving end users access to educational content in the database, and improving the user interface design and communicating with the server.

“This is an exciting opportunity for us,” says Karl King, vice-president of Rails to Trails. “Tom Shaffer [Coordinator, Academic Internships and Community-Based Studies] and Jungwoo approached us a number of years ago.” Since that first connection, Ryoo’s students have built an iOS app (an operating system for Apple-manufactured devices) for the trail and installed i-beacons that will make it possible for visitors to receive information about their location despite not having a cell signal on the trail. The system will also provide information about the history and environment of various locations along the trail. “A Boy Scout troop was involved,” Ryoo adds, “and this part of the project eventually became an Eagle Scout project.”

At the closing ceremonies, the Global Fellows presented their work and discussed what they learned in the program. Hyo-Kyung Choi of SWU said, “I thought it would be a nice opportunity to experience the US and meet different people.” On the technical side, she said, “when I completed some technical connections in the Spring framework, it was the first time I used such a framework. I learned many technical things. I also learned how to work with a team and how to ask my coworkers what I don’t  know.”

Charles Kovalchik. a senior SRA (security risk analysis) student at Penn State Altoona, said that he is considering changing direction after his Global Fellows experience. “I wanted to do something in cyber security but now I might want to do something more related to database management.” He also appreciates the international exposure: “It seemed like a good opportunity to work with people from all over the world and work in a group mindset.”

The future was on some students’ minds: “I want to work in a global company and eventually make a company of my own,” says Soo-Yeon Lee of SWU. But she might be making a detour first: “The visit to University Park made me think about graduate school.”

Lamjed Zahrouni, an adult student at PSA and an SRA major, chose to participate because, he says, “with all the cyberattacks happening I thought it would be a good opportunity to learn and to get closer to other students and professors.” He found the work to be valuable because, although he had already taken classes about databases, “it’s different doing hands-on work.”

Senior SRA major Ryan Pipetti, who had traveled to Korea last summer with Ryoo and other students, says about the Global Fellows program, “I entered this program not knowing what to expect, but I can confidently say that I’ve gained a wealth of new information. We learned about the structure and formalities of projects and project management. The program introduced our team to skills we may not have learned on our own outside of the classroom.” Pipetti’s future plans include “consulting, network administration, and penetration testing. This program has positively influenced my perspective and demonstrated the technical skills and competency needed for employment in the IT field. My goal to enhance and refine my skill-set was made possible by the Global Fellows program, all without having to leave Penn State Altoona.”

Jon Todd, an SRA junior, also made the trip to Korea last year. He enjoyed learning the culture so much, he says, “I thought it would be really cool to show them our culture. Every week after the scrum I would drive the Korean students back to their dorm and share American music with them.”

The Global Fellow Program gave the students from both countries exposure to people from another culture, the chance to work on a real-life application that will be utilized by many people, and a little space to envision their professional future, whether that means a job or graduate school. Ryoo expects to offer the second iteration of the program in 2020. Next time he plans to open it up to other universities in South Korea. The hope is to continue to partner with the Rails to Trails organization for the student project and to build on this year’s accomplishments.

Therese Boyd, ’79

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