Date of Award
Spring 2009
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Public Administration (MPA)
Department
Political Science
Abstract
During the spring of 2009 my internship experience with the Confucius Institute at Kennesaw State University (CIKSU) has given me great insight into how the recently established nonprofit organization collaborated by Kennesaw State University and Yangzhou University together operates. Under the leadership of my supervisor, Mr. Ken Jin, the director of CIKSU, I have worked with the coordinator, Ms. Cathy Liao to deal with the routine affairs and participate in the programs that were planned in the first half of 2009. Besides the daily tasks including archiving the documents and editing the content of CIKSU website, I was assigned especially the cultural awareness programs including the projects of Chinese New Year Celebration, Chinese New Year Program for Cobb County Senior Center and the exhibition of photos of 2008 Beijing Olympic Games that allowed me to practice what I have learned from the courses of Public Administration.
In terms of the learning objectives of my internship, I have employed the Organization Theory to make an in-depth research on the development and characteristics of Confucius Institute Headquarters and the organizational structure of CIKSU in particular, the methodology of Public Service Budgeting to identify the method of Program Budgeting that CIKSU used, the Leadership Theory to explore the leadership how Mr. Jin has applied into such a distinctive team-based organization, and the skill of SWOT to analyze that the Strength-Opportunity strategy is the appropriate development orientation for CIKSU. Furthermore, through my participations in the three projects mentioned above, I have exercised comprehensively the approaches involved in every process of project management.
As a result of participating in this internship, I have learned abundant experiences on effective management of public services engaged in of cross-cultural communication. Moreover, the team-based structure, team management style of leadership, customer-driven orientation and seasoned skill of project management, all those initiatives that CIKSU presented have deeply attracted and enlightened me so far. Likewise, I believe that those valuable knowledge and experiences not only meet my desires for the MPA program, but also benefit significantly my career development in promoting Chinese culture and education industry after I graduate from KSU and return to China.