Update from the International Side... aka: The Sunny Side of the Street

OK, up till now it's been all "domestic" talk on the SAIT blog, but guess what? SAIT Polytechnic is also very active in reaching out to international students too. We even have an international centre website for these potential students. And as you may have guessed, I'm the lucky duck that does a great deal of the overseas travel.

That's me in the photo, Ross, standing in front of the entranceway into the Forbidden City in Beijing. Technically, I'm standing at the edge of Tiananmen Square. And for a vicarious look into the Forbidden City check out the flick The Last Emperor. Very cool ending but I won't give it away.

So my 2008 travel first took me to Beijing for "Canada Information Days" It was basically a mini Canadian Education Fair, held on January 8 & 9th. Most of the events I attend are sponsored by the Canadian Education Centre Network, a non-profit group founded in 1995 with support from the Government of Canada to promote Canada's exceptional education system. SAIT programs were a big hit at this annual Beijing event.

In fact, the largest group of international students on SAIT's campus are from China. But as any SAIT student will tell you, ours is a very ethnically diverse campus. This year alone we have over 840 international students on campus, and we have SAIT graduates from over 55 different countries around the world! Very cool stuff.

Also in January, I attended CEC Network events in three cities in Indonesia (Surabaya, Jakarta, and Bandung) and one stop in Vietnam (Ho Chi Min City, aka: Saigon). We actually have over 20 Vietnamese students currently on campus, who knew? And as if my schedule wasn't tight enough on this January travel, I slipped in and out of Singapore and visited the CEC office there where I met with three students.

One student, with a medical background, applied for our Diagnostic Medical Sonography program (...the what? You know, ultra-sound stuff). Recently all our Health and Public Safety programs opened up to our international student and since then the response has been very high. The other two students I met at the CEC Singapore office began the application process for Hospitality Management and Business Administration. Both are always favorites among our international students as both programs offer some very unique features.

And in an unrelated story, I've seen some interesting things on my travels so I thought I'd include a few crazy picks here. Why not, eh? It the photo of an indoor ski hill in Dubai. Below the photo is of cows chillin' out on the city streets of New Delhi. I actually grew up on dairy farm near a ski hill but somehow the memories didn't look like this!