Students from South Korea recently visited the New Mexico State University campus as an opportunity to team up with NMSU students to try and tackle some of the world's biggest issues. NMSU assistant professor Dr. Gain Park is originally from South Korea and got her doctorate at Sungkyunkwan University and has been vital in setting this collaboration up.
“Ten students from SKKU and twelve students from NMSU, they are collaborating together and working on their campaign to promote one of the UN’s Sustainable Development goals,” Park said.
The United Nations Sustainability goals were created in 2015 with hopes of accomplishing things like ending world hunger, ending poverty, and achieving gender equality by 2030. With such daunting goals, Park says that international collaboration is critical.
”The most important thing is the collaboration itself. Because global collaboration is crucial for solving global problems. So based on global problems and global solutions philosophy, we are trying to have a conversation and discussion,” Park said.
NMSU student Alessandra Tablon says that her group has a couple ideas in the works.
“Our group decided to focus on goal number four which is quality education and mainly on the funds related to that and primary school teachers and how they should be supported more and have a bigger salary,” Tablon said.
Alongside trying to tackle the world's biggest problems, she says interacting with students from another country has been a memorable experience.
“We’ve shared a lot of conversation on the similarities and differences between the cultures and just like life as a college student,” Tablon said.
SKKU student Yewon Kim says that the states are quite different from Korea but everyone she has met has been helpful in showing her around southern New Mexico.
“Yesterday they actually brought us to a basketball match at NMSU so we enjoyed that a lot and they brought us because some of us told them we wanted to feel the real vibe of sports in the USA so we enjoyed that a lot thanks to them,” Kim said.
Along with going to a basketball game the students from SKKU also enjoyed White Sands National Park. and after word got around that their tour company recommended Chipotle for authentic mexican food, people from NMSU were quick to point them towards La Posta.
"It was the first time to experience desert with the white sands so I would like to recommend everyone to visit there at least once in their life so I am enjoying it a lot and I am having fun with NMSU students,” Kim said.
While their trip only lasted four days, students from both universities and countries say that it was nice to meet new people and that the convention was a great learning experience.
