Travelling more than 5,000 miles and spending two weeks on campus, students from Ajou Motor College in South Korea learned the most important parts of Shoreline Community College’s Automotive program: cars, culture, language and the Seattle Mariners.
About 20 Korean students spent the two weeks working with faculty, staff and students as a piece of the partnership between Shoreline and Ajou.
“It’s a really neat exchange between the two colleges that fosters a global learning environment,” Diana Sampson, director of the international program at Shoreline said. “There are a lot of cultural exchanges between our students and theirs and both sides really benefit from it.”
The Ajou students were able to learn about automotive history, scan tools, diagnostics, removing axles, English language skills and also spent time with American students and faculty to learn about U.S. culture. They were taken to a Mariners game, walked around Seattle neighborhoods and saw the major Seattle landmarks.
Shoreline faculty members Betsy Binnian and Janos Szablya spent the most time with the students during the program.
“As much as they learned, I was able to learn, too,” Szablya said. “And when I get to come to work and learn, that’s a wonderful experience.”
The Ajou faculty were also able come away from the experience having learned about the curriculum taught at Shoreline to be able to bring it back to their own campus and integrate it into their programs.
The students received a certificate after completing the program and held a small celebration with the Shoreline faculty on August 7.
” We really appreciate the time these students have spent with us here,” Sampson said. “We want to continue this special partnership and continue to grow it.”
The association with Ajou began in 2006 after the institutions signed a Memorandum of Understanding to support educational exchanges. The first exchange occurred in 2007 when 19 students came to Shoreline and in 2008, 15 students from Shoreline’s automotive program participated in a training at Ajou.