There are many educational programs for Soongsilians in SSU.Among those, overseas educational travel is a beloved program by many Soongsilians. What is going on in 2019's overseas educational travel?-------- ----Ed
A summer Eastern Europe education journey was held for about two weeks from July 13 to 25. A education journey is a way to enable a living education by selecting a theme of a journey and experiencing and feeling the content of it in person. The education journey at Soongsil University began around 2015, and is conducted about two times a year. This summer's overseas education journey is the second of its kind hosted by this year's student council following Jeju 4.3 history journey. Five of the Eastern European countries(Poland, Hungary, Austria, the Czech Republic and Germany) visited in this journey. About half of the cost of participation was provided to students with the support of the school in the form of scholarships to help reduce the burden on participants. The selection of the journey was made through documents and interviews, with a total of 33 participants, including 30 students (including five members of the student council) and three faculty and officials. Before starting the journey in earnest, they had three pre-education sessions. In pre-education, by studying the history of the destinations and having time to solve simple quizzes, the purpose of the journey was clarified, and the participants provided an opportunity to become intimate with each other.
The theme of the recent education journey was 'Spring of the Korean Peninsula, talk about unification as a way of development.' The countries that fit the keyword of unification were selected and visited. Lee Sun-yong, director of the student council's director of planning, said on the subject of the journey, 'At a time when reunification of the Korean Peninsula is becoming a hot topic, we wanted to explore European countries that experienced the process of reunification to prepare for unification and promote unification.' Indeed, as much as it was an educational journey, visits to historically meaningful places have been marked. First, they visited places related to Germany's Auschwitz concentration camp, Hungary's Holocaust memorial, Austria's Mauthsen Memorial and other places to look for the remaining traces of the World War. In addition, they provided education suitable for the theme of unification by visiting Dresden in Germany or the Berlin Wall, the venue for the declaration of peaceful unification. It also took time to find out which direction to go if the nation were to unify. Also, Lee Sun-yong said, 'We have tried to provide an educational purpose as well as an opportunity to look at the world from a new perspective by facing our country and a different culture, and I hope the participants felt the same way.' Kim Min-ji (Department of Business Administration, 18), a participant of the journey, said, 'This trip was help you build good memories by taking time to tour major tourist sites in each country and learn about the country's history, in addition to educational schedules such as historic places.' She added, "I was a little embarrassed by the cancellation of the flight, but I was able to return safely without further problems due to the calm response from the student council and faculty members."
Meanwhile, the journey was supposed to be completed after arriving at Incheon International Airport on July 25, but the flight problems pushed back the schedule for returning home by a day. Due to this incident, the flight group was divided into three teams, and all of them were able to return home safely on saturday, a day off from their existing schedule, via other countries. The school is in the process of requesting appropriate compensation from the airline as some damage has occurred in this regard.
Yeom Da-yeon(ST-Cub Reporter)
ydy1213@soongsil.ac.kr
