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International Summer Camp Welcomes 36 Chinese Students to Mississippi College
Three dozen Chinese students are soaking up American culture, taking classes and engaging in water balloon fights at Mississippi College.
It’s all part of MC’s International Summer Camp on the Clinton campus through late July.
Whether they’re studying world civilization, academic writing or oral communication, the students are making new friends as they learn. There’s also time for a little fun. Hit movies like “Jaws” and “The Sandlot” are on the schedule and so is a trip to the Farmer’s Market.
The summer camp “is an excellent chance for students from around the world to experience American culture and Southern hospitality first hand,” says Ron Howard, MC’s vice president for academic affairs.
While they stay overnight in residence halls and take classes at Self Hall, headquarters of the MC School of Business, their introduction to the South isn’t limited to the Clinton campus.
“This summer, our Chinese students will study English and history and travel around the state and all the way to New Orleans,” Howard says. Along the way, they “will experience the sights, sounds and tastes of the Southland.”
It’s truly an honor for Mississippi College to host the Chinese university students from July 13-31, Howard added.
Mississippi College’s three week summer school represents the first joint program between the China Scholarship Council, the Dongfang International Center for Education Exchange ISEC Office and Mississippi College.
Staffers at the Christian university’s Office of Global Education are helping make the visitors from China feel welcome in the Magnolia State. With 2.9 million people, it’s a state with award-winning artists like Wyatt Waters and Sam Gore, both Mississippi College graduates from Clinton.
Country singers like Faith Hill and best-selling novelists like John Grisham are Mississippians, too. MC is just ten miles from the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson. The Clinton campus is only a 40-minute drive to Mississippi port cities like Vicksburg on the banks of the meandering Mississippi River.
Mei-Chi Piletz, executive director of MC’s Office of Global Education, is delighted that Chinese university students are spending part of their summer on the Clinton campus.
Office of Global Education staffers Ken Qiu and Judy Wren, director of the university’s Intensive English Program and Forster Sun, the MC director of Academic Computing, deserve a good deal of the credit for their many contributions to help the summer program, she said.
Piletz and others with the Office of Global Education plugged the International Summer Camp during interviews Friday on STAR 93.5, the Christian radio station at Mississippi College.
A native of Taiwan, Piletz was once an international college student. She worked as a German instructor and administrator at Jackson State University before taking the reins at MC’s Office of Global Education a few years ago. MC’s 5,000 student enrollment includes more than 400 international students from two dozen nations. The bulk of them come from China, Saudi Arabia and India. Under her leadership, international student enrollment has doubled at Mississippi College.
The Office of Global Education, Piletz said, strives to be the “home away from home” for international students. And she hopes that’s the case for the summer campers from China.
