◎ Food : International students usually go to eat their meals in the student cafeteria. But Indians mostly cook their meals for themselves since many are vegetarian. On top of that, they feel difficulty in ordering food at the snack bar in the Student Union building because the staff receiving the order can not speak English. So students suggested giving a number to each dish on the menu so that the staff can easily recognize what people want to eat.
◎ Class : Before they came to POSTECH, international students read in the guidebook that English would be provided in any class with at least one foreign student. But in reality, this is not the case. For example, one of the students in the meeting said that when she attended a class that she was interested in, the professor kept on using Korean to lecture without caring about foreign students. However, students said that they were very satisfied with the opportunity to do a research with good facilities in their laboratories.
◎ Dormitory : The five international students were very content with the dormitory. Since they are living in DICE, they have no chance to feel bored, with many activities such as playing board games, exercising, cooking food, and learning Korean. They also said that the Korean students living in DICE are very enthusiastic to interact with international students and give help to foreign students adapting to a new environment.
◎ Suggestions : As a suggestion, they requested to improve the POVIS system. Since POVIS does not work with other Internet environments such as Google Chrome and Firefox, which foreign students mainly use, they find it very inconvenient to change the web browser system to Internet Explorer to use POVIS.
The Student Union said that this meeting was more useful and productive than expected and said that they would try to open this gathering regularly to listen to the international students’ voices.
