IMUSE Foundation-2009 Beijing Summer Fellowship

Initiating Mutual Understanding through Student Exchange (IMUSE) aims to promote broad understanding between people in China and North America by bringing together top college and graduate students from both regions to think about key issues. This cultural exchange culminates in a two-week conference in Beijing.

Mission
Initiating Mutual Understanding through Student Exchange (IMUSE) aims to foster mutual curiosity, respect, and understanding between people in China and North America by providing top college and graduate students from these regions an intimate forum for discussion and deep personal reflection about the key issues affecting China and their own regions today. IMUSE currently has three primary goals:

Socially intimate and intellectually meaningful face-to-face interactions among a small group of promising North American and Chinese college and university students to increase mutual curiosity, trust, and understanding among them;


Development and maintenance of an alumni network to effect high-impact, positive social change through the continued collaboration of former participants of IMUSE events;


Maintenance of a strong partnership among its satellites at Harvard, Tsinghua, and Peking Universities to maximize fruitful international exchange among members of our staff.


These goals are achieved through a variety of means, the most important of which is an annual conference among top college and graduate students from North America and China in Beijing. Other events overseen by IMUSE include but are not limited to essay, photography, and other creative work competitions; campus speaker events; social gatherings; mini-conferences for alumni in China and North America, and more.

Welcome to IMUSE!



Current Programs
The IMUSE 2009 Beijing Summer Fellowship Program will bring thirty outstanding students from Chinese and American colleges and graduate schools together from August 9 to August 21, 2009 to share their opinions, experience Chinese culture, and learn from one another. During the fellowship, Chinese and American delegates will participate alongside one another in a variety of activities designed to be both academically and personally enriching. Delegates will participate in panel discussion events with a student audience, where they will discuss the pertinent issues facing Chinese-American relations today. They will interact with and learn from distinguished guest speakers, which in past IMUSE events have included distinguished academics and celebrities from both America and China. As IMUSE is strongly committed to improving the quality of life for individuals in both countries, the fellowship will include a short period of public service within an underprivileged community. Other activities and workshops will cover a variety of topics from politics to pop culture to food. All events will be carried out in English, and no knowledge of Chinese is necessary.

In an effort to help students become familiar with Beijing and all that it has to offer, IMUSE will facilitate tours to sites of cultural interest as well as major businesses and government offices within the city. In addition, two days of the fellowship will be spent visiting a village outside Beijing, granting delegates a rare opportunity to glimpse the rural China so often overlooked by Western visitors. In order to help document their experiences, delegates will each keep a blog during the two weeks that will be uploaded onto the IMUSE website.

Students will stay the two weeks in a hotel and have all necessary living expenses paid for, including accommodations, food, ground transportation, and $500 toward transportation to and from Beijing.

IMUSE hopes that this dynamic, multidisciplinary, and challenging two weeks will expose both American and Chinese delegates to a better understanding of each other, and foster friendships and relationships that last long after the two weeks have ended.

The program will include 15 delegates from North American schools and 15 delegates from Chinese schools. All students in an American postsecondary school (including two- and four-year colleges, graduate schools, and vocational, technical, and trade schools) are eligible to apply. Students need not be American citizens to apply. Applications to be an American delegate are currently open and are due on April 1, 2009.

Select applicants will be contacted for English-language Skype interviews shortly after the application deadline, and fellows will be announced in late April.

Application website:

http://www.projectimuse.org/application/