Anu Bilegdemberel Guest Reporter

To start, I would like to tell how I learned
about the PBL (Project Based Learning)
program and what it entailed. As a Mongolian
student, I am open to experiencing and
learning new things in different countries,
exploring their cultures, and gaining
knowledge from them. Thus, I consistently
search for new opportunities, news, and
scholarships offered by either our university
or the government. But like for the most part
with international students, I find indeed
that few opportunities are widely opened to
us that would be quite profitable for future
careers. Despite this, I kept searching for new
opportunities, and one day I heard students
in our department discussing their wishes
to work abroad, mainly in the USA. That is
when I learned of the PBL program, which
sends students to America, and I applied
even though I didn’t have experience in my
field.

In my view, the PBL program will expose
the students to real-life experiences, creating
a direct pathway of internship opportunities
in the highly competitive tech industry.
The KMU-Global PBL Program that I
applied to would send students to Irvine,
California, for six months of studies on the
U.S. Tech Landscape, followed by six months
of internship with major tech companies,
with the aim of hands-on learning and
professional development. Not having high
amounts of experience, but because of the
help of my small project experiences and
different language skills, I got accepted into
the program. Surprise!

But the most worrisome thing for me was
that living in the USA would cost double
or triple the money compared to Korea.
However, we got a full tuition scholarship
with an additional 5 million won for living
expenses. I've been in Irvine for 20 days,
though it's a short period, we have managed
to build a lot of networks, and we are also
being introduced to the latest trends in IT.
Major services like AWS, ChatGPT, and Jira
are being provided free of cost.

Within the first six months, we undergo
high-intensity training in both technical
and soft skills. We have been working,
under professional mentorship from
companies like Blizzard, Walmart, and
AWS, on full-stack development projects in
teams. The curriculum includes classes in
cloud computing and artificial intelligence
taught in collaboration with California State
University, Dominguez Hills.
 

First, I felt that we would get technical
skills only, but after studying and living here
for one month already, not only myself
but all the students understood this is a
much greater opportunity than expected,
because here we work directly with industry
professionals, solve real-world problems.
Currently, our team is developing some
services for the U.S. market. Things are
pretty fast-paced, and we have to deliver
fully functional projects within three or four
months.

The program also provides an important
connection to the mentors themselves;
professionals currently or having served
major tech companies in the U.S. Our
mentors are very well-respected in their field,
from a product designer at Walmart and
a CEO with VantaSoft to a senior software
engineer with Blizzard Entertainment, a
software engineering professor with KMU,
and solution architects with AWS.

The student teams also benefit from the
diverse skills of their mentors, who give
critical feedback on student projects and
help them get their career development
tasks going, including writing resumes and
networking. Each student team is tasked with
building a functional product or service-in
many instances inspired by real needs
posed by their mentors, which can range
from developing an AI-driven app or cloud
service.

During the entire six-month study program,
we were challenged to create fully functional
products that can cater to the needs of
the market. Other training for the students
includes additional events such as the
hackathon and workshops in cooperation
with California State University, Dominguez
Hills. This PBL teaching method allows the
participants to solve real projects while at
the same time preparing them for further
internships.

Finally, the aim of the program is to have
students gain hands-on experience in the
American tech industry that could lead them
to return to Korea or further their work in
the U.S. Such experiences, I really think it
will not only develop our portfolios but also
teach things about the ecosystem which a
classroom cannot.

anu.bn@kookmin.ac.kr