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Shanghai Students Have STEM Fun at College, Visit Iconic Utah Sites


About 30 children from China this summer visited Salt Lake Community College to create electricity from wool and Styrofoam, make polymers from glue and Borax, and cool ice cream in a bag using salt. They used compasses to find school supplies and candy to power bottle rockets. In short, the kids from Shanghai had a blast while visiting SLCC’s Taylorsville Redwood Campus.

The visit is part of the Utah Chinese Center’s effort to provide an annual cultural and teaching exchange for students and teachers from China. The entire trip lasts about three weeks and includes other American cities. While in the U.S., the students and teachers stay with host families.

The UCC’s goal is to expose students and teachers to American history, culture and ethics as well as China’s major contributions to the development of the civilized world, according to Dave Richardson, SLCC interim dean for the School of Humanities and Social Sciences. The UCC hopes the exchange helps to bridge real or perceived Sino-American misunderstandings. “Even though the organization makes a microscopic indentation in this process, any contribution to diversity is better than none,” Richardson says.

In previous years the exchange included more classroom time, learning English, history and culture while indoors. The visits evolved into STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) hands-on activities that are fun and at times confounding. “Bottle rockets were challenging for them to make, as they didn’t realize how to tear duct tape,” says Barbara Antonetti, a fourth-grade teacher who also helps out with the college’s Slick Science Camp, the blueprint for activities with the Chinese elementary school students. “They loved launching them and had fun dashing around trying to find theirs when they landed.”


While in Utah, the students also visited the University of Utah, Snowbird Ski Resort, Timpanogos Cave, the Utah State Capitol, Temple Square and Arches National Park. So far, the exchange has been one sided, with only Chinese students visiting the U.S., but the Richardson hopes that will change. “It has been very difficult to get American parents to send their children more than 6,000 miles into a distinctly unfamiliar environment for three weeks under the supervision of someone other than themselves,” he says.

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