By Sonali Raghunath
Shiman Li is one of our current Culture Corps graduate consultants. She is originally from China and is a 2nd year Ph.D. student who majors in apparel studies at the College of Design. Shiman was interested to join the Culture Corps (CC) program when she got to attend several events from GGE (Global Gopher Experiences) and was really drawn to be part of CC. She ended up joining the ISSS CC team in July 2022.
Shiman has worked on several projects to help international students navigate the University of Minnesota and help them succeed through their journeys. Some of her completed projects include the Pre-Arrival Welcome event for Chinese students in partnership with the UMN China Office, Global Gopher Experiences: Academic Success day, and the Soccer event which was hosted by Orientation & Transition Experiences (OTE), CC, and GGE together.
The welcome event for the Chinese students project was an information-sharing event where newly admitted students and parents were invited to ask questions about the University and other resources. Another project was co-organizing the Academic day tour where Shiman was handling all of the check-ins for international students. Additionally, Shiman was tasked with training the program volunteers on expectations, responsibilities, and tasks.
From all the projects, Shiman had good practice with her English speaking skills, learned how to make new connections and communications, and also understood how to work on several projects as a team. She is also very appreciative of how she had the chance to learn methods on how to deal with different people and situations through practical experience from the team and this has influenced her to make better decisions.
According to Shiman, her major key takeaways from projects and working with Culture Corps were her practice of quick decision-making ability and making informed decisions, improved confidence as a team and finding resolutions together without feeling nervousness or pressure, and also how to keep calm under pressure.
For the international students, Shiman's advice was “ Do not be afraid to ask questions and Be confident and you will solve every problem in your way”. Thank you Shiman for all your hard work with the team. Hope more students benefit from CC.
About the author
Sonali Raghunath is a Culture Corps Graduate Consultant working with Advocacy projects with ISSS. She is a 4th year PhD student at the Food Science and Nutrition Department from CFANS and she is originally from Chennai, India. She has been working in editing and interviewing students who are GGE leaders and Culture Corps consultants with a goal to highlight their skills and impacts of their projects to a wider audience as part of her Advocacy project.
