Hi everyone! My name is Bonnie Yang, a third year ISYE major, and I am a past participant of the Beijing-Singapore Faculty Led Program. It was one of the most challenging and rewarding program that I have ever experienced. From taking rigorous courses during the weekday with tech and local students, to hiking volcanoes on the weekends in Indonesia, it was an all-around experience of work hard and play hard. Below is a short overview of my experience. It is and amazing program for ISYE majors!

Course Overview

The structure of the courses requires students to dive rigorously into one class at a time. All the materials of a semester are condensed into about three weeks. It is a very intense and focused studying process. All this may sound overwhelming, but the upside to this structure is that we are a small class and the professor is extremely flexible with office hours and helping each student understand the material. I am very thankful for my peers as well because we really bonded through the struggle and motivated each other to learn. I know I could not have survived the classes without them. I think another amazing part about the courses offered is that it really gives a sense of what each concentration in ISYE is like. Some courses were taught through application by allowing us to work on projects with local students. It was a great experience because you really get to see another perspective of industrial engineering in Singaporean and Chinese culture. Although courses are rigorous and challenging, the overall experience strengthened my learning and cross-cultural communication skills.

Cultural Experience

Weekends were filled with amazing memories and new experiences! We traveled to Kuala Lumpur, Phuket, Hanoi, Bali, and Hangzhou, to name a few. One amazing thing about Asia is that these places are so geographically close to each other and yet the culture is completely different. We were constantly absorbing new information and adapting to the types of customs suitable to that culture. One phrase that we used very often was “living on the edge”, literally. After coming back to the states, I realized how much I have grown and matured. I learned that travel is really a lesson in itself. The Beijing-Singapore Program gave me the opportunity to gain all these memorable experiences!

Will I do this program again? Of course!