Robert Barker/University Photography

Students from China give their final presentations in visiting senior lecturer Craig Snow's six-week summer course Writing 1011.

For Chinese students enrolled in three- or six-week courses in the Cornell-China Undergraduate Summer Program (CCUSP), “the experience is a real immersion,” from taking academic credits to engaging in cultural activities, said Mary Adie, director of Special Programs in the School of Continuing Education and Summer Sessions (SCE). “Most of them would like to come to the United States for graduate school and want to acclimate to American culture.”

Thirty-six students from six partner institutions in China – Nanjing University of Finance and Economics, Renmin University, Shandong University, Shanghai University, Xiamen University, and Beijing University of Chemical Technology – learned about written and oral communication with Craig Snow as well as business management, statistics, computer programming, art, anthropology and animal husbandry, among other subjects.

Snow, visiting senior lecturer of management communication at the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management, said the students were “all very impressive … by their work ethic, by their attitude, and their ability to sustain their energy and enthusiasm over six weeks. Those who come here tend to work very, very hard.”

The program helps them “to become familiar with American educational norms. In China, they sit and listen and take notes,” he said. “There’s not a lot of interaction; they don’t ask questions. … Getting the students to do that gets them out of their comfort zone. No one likes discomfort, but discomfort is where learning happens.”

Kelly Ren and Kristy Zou, rising juniors at Renmin’s School of Finance, were among eight students taking Technology for Bootstrapped Entrepreneurship in the School of Hotel Administration.

“The professors are so friendly, and I love the courses here,” Ren said.

This was Zou’s “first opportunity to engage in a smaller-scale class” – her smallest classes at Renmin have at least 30 students, she said.

Rydge Li, a rising senior computer science major at Shanghai University, took Snow’s course and a programming course.

“I think the professors here explain things and see things differently than my professors back in China, and I can get something new to add to what I’ve already learned,” Li said.

Snow said he gets to know the students very well in six weeks. “I encourage them to revise and resubmit each paper, but first they have to meet with me. It’s my opportunity to discover what they understand about my comments and what they may be confused about. At first they see it as a price, but they later see it as an investment.”

Snow has taught Chinese students for the past three summers. Several have stayed in touch with him “with questions that are career-related or language-related,” he said, “partly because they are not used to American professors who are so student-centered and take such an interest in them.”

He noted that two students from 2012 “have already begun graduate studies at American universities.” Others, he said, “had such a good experience at Cornell that they decided to do an additional full semester studying abroad in America, Europe and Australia.”

Outside of class, the students traveled as a group to Niagara Falls, visited Taughannock Falls State Park and attended summer lectures and concerts on campus.

“What we hear from students is that CCUSP gives them an outstanding academic and cultural experience, one that enriches their lives and, after they return home, the lives of those around them,” said Charles W. Jermy Jr., SCE associate dean. “One of our goals is to help the university build global connections, both by providing opportunities for students to study abroad and by bringing students from abroad to campus.”

SCE’s Summer College program also hosted 149 high school students from China this summer. “We're currently working to expand these collaborations through online learning,” Jermy said.