Bulletin Number One 1984

IASP other parts of the world, we handle the selection directly, but we have regional representatives in Southeast Asia to help promote the Programme. Q. How about graduate students ？ A. The Programme has been more successful with undergraduate students. For graduate students, we handle their applications here in Hong Kong and before admission, we must be sure that they already have a supervisor. Incidentally, there are many foreign students interested in working for a graduate degree at The Chinese University. Q. Are your students active in extracurricular activities? A. Yes. Our participants are very active and often organize extracurricular activities themselves. Among the most popular ones is teaching English at the Vietnamese refugee camps. Students also take an active part in regular campus activities. This year they organized on their own initiative an International Student Union at The Chinese University. Other cultural activities include: talks by diplomats and business leaders, and travel on their own in Asia during holidays, which gives them a better understanding of this part of the world. Q. What are the difficulties or problems you and the lASP students have encountered? A. Difficulties in adjustment and problems arising from cultural differences are the most trouble some for IASP staff who have to interpret between the two cultures. I am glad to say that we are much more experienced th an seven years ago when we started the Programme. Q. What are your future plans fo r the IASP? A. Firstly the IASP needs to consolidate its curri culum to make it an academically as well as culturally viable programme. Secondly, it should also serve as a forum to arouse the awareness of the value of international exchange among our students. A student would be amazed to see how much one increases his under-standing of his own culture by going abroad temporarily and meet another culture. Thirdly, I hope to help local students going abroad better prepare themselves by offering special briefing and orientation programmes as feedbacks from our students abroad indicate the existence of such a need. Finally, I hope the IASP w ill eventually be able to realize one of its long-term goals to actually support projects in international exchange. Some IASP Participants are American-born- Chinese and some have migrated when they were very young. They come to Hong Kong to look for their ‘roots' ， or just to learn something about their native culture. Sylvia Kwan, a computer science junior from Brown University, says: 'I came here also fo r cultural reasons. Being Chinese, I want to speak Chinese. I feel like a Chinese but I don't know much about Chinese culture.‘ 6 RECENT DEVELOPMENTS