Forty students and educators from Taiwan travelled about 7705 miles (12,560 km) to Dallas College. That is a long distance to travel to visit a school.
The Richland Campus hosted a delegation from Taiwan on Friday as part of the New Taipei International Overseas Vocational Youth Ambassador Leadership Program. The group, accompanied by sponsors Education Changes Lives and Times (ECLAT) and the Greater Dallas International Foundation, explored campus facilities and programs, including gaming, fashion, manufacturing and the Bloomberg Lab.
“I’ve seen students that were really engaging with all of our hands-on equipment that we have here,” said, Kevin Wortley, dean of academic affairs.
“I think they’ve been really excited with our gaming program, with our manufacturing program, electronics, the Bloomberg lab. I’m really excited about what we may be able to do to collaborate with them in the future. Our goal is that in the spring, we hope that one of our dual credit high school classes could do some sort of international collaboration online with them.”
After the tour, students wore cowboy hats and joined a line-dancing session at the El Paso Student Lounge, led by sociology professor Kay Coder. She said the students appeared to enjoy the dance lesson, which is also popular among Richland Campus faculty and staff. “This is part of our wellness program. For employees here at Richland, we have a free class at noon on Mondays and Wednesdays, so I do it for stress relief.”
Antonio Resendiz, a Dallas College student and one of the tour guides, said the event provided him with a different perspective about Richland. “It was a good opportunity just to get an insight. For me, this is just a campus, but for them, this is different. They just saw everything.”
Among the Taiwanese students, Ray Huang said he loved the campus and the whole experience. “It’s great. It’s very big and it’s very pretty,” he said. “Maybe [I’ll come here], because my uncle is here.”
Huang, an art school student, also shared his passion for design, mentioning his studies in design. “This school has a lot of design classes, so I’m really lucky.”
