2019 CNU International Day
Every year around the beginning of November, Chonnam National University (CNU) hosts its “International Day” event on campus. Since international students’ nationality gets more diversified, CNU tries its best to make this day as special as possible. On November 7, approximately 2,500 students celebrated this year’s International Day and had an amazing time around Bongji on Gwangju campus.
As assistant staff of the Office of International Affairs (OIA), CNU International Student Supporters (CIS) have contributed to organizing the event. For this year, their main tasks consisted of four parts; to help setting up a venue for the event, to promote the event, to cast student clubs for the stage performance, and to assist in running booths on the day.
For the venue, CIS was given charge of installing the stage, designing a CNU photo zone, and decorating the whole site. CIS, we did a research on companies for a stage installation and crafted objects, and chose the optimal ones, made a contract with them, and successfully finished setting up the venue. CIS created a main poster and leaflets for the event, and uploaded them to social media platforms to promote the event to the public. We also contacted international exchange students personally to attract as many students as possible.
CIS tried our best to cast talented performers for the main stage in order to make the festival full of entertainment. Fortunately, we could find several teams including a dance team, a band, and a Korean traditional music performing team. These performances made the festival much more enjoyable. Finally, on the International Day, CIS members were sent out to all the areas, assisting OIA’s staff at each booth.
One of the impressive facts that I found out, by engaging in this year’s CNU International Day, is that the volunteers for the event were mostly international students who are currently studying at CNU. It was quite a surprising discovery. The composition and engagement of international students have changed over the past years. In 2016 when I was a freshman, CNU had relatively small number of international students, and of course, it was not easy to find international students contributing to school events. This year, however, they actively participated in the event by offering help as volunteers at each booth or running food stands at a food market. These international students took a big part in the event. This encouraged more international students to come and enjoy the event, making the CNU International Day literally an international event on campus.
Taken as a whole, I think this year’s CNU International Day was an excellent opportunity to show that international students have improved their roles in school activities. Just as a regular Korean student, I was simply fascinated by international atmosphere on campus, and it definitely even made me feel proud of my school. It seems like the effort to globalize CNU officially starts to pay off.
By Park Cheol-hwi, Junior, Faculty of Business Administration