The 3rd International Collegiate Conference, hosted by China English for Academic Purposes Association (CEAPA), Shanghai Advisory Committee on College English Teaching(SACCET), and USST College of Foreign Languages was successfully held on May 27 at USST main campus. The Conference was also supported by the British Council and EF Education First. The theme of the Conference was Zero Carbon, Zero Poverty. Over 200 students from 19 universities in Shanghai and 15 provinces participated in the Conference and discussed the global issues of carbone missions and poverty. As the first keynote speaker of the conference, SBC student Jimmy Ji was honoured to present his project - ‘Car-sharing as a sustainable solution for low-carbon society in China’ at the beginning of the Conference and also won the ‘Best Paper’ award.
Jimmy Ji is currently an SBC Year 4 Events Management major and his paper stood out from more than 700 submissions for consideration for the Conference. In the face of this more technically environmental-friendly theme, Jimmy chose to combine his major background and interpret this issue from a business point of view i.e. from the perspective of the economy, society and the entire business environment. Jimmy demonstrated that car-sharing can contribute as part of a sustainable solution in creating a low-carbon society in China.
When asked about his motivation to participate in the Conference, Jimmy told us that, though he did a lot of internships in the four years and gained many personal honours, he always hoped to add an academic achievement to his resume. Therefore, once he saw the Call for Papers, he thought that this was a rare opportunity, even if there were several course works and a 10,000 words final paper to be completed and so he spent two nights on designing the Conference paper outline. Afterwards, he put even more effort into the questionnaire survey, telephone interviews, data collection and access to all kinds of literature in order to complete this research paper and prepare an academic presentation.
When asked about the help to him of SBC's unique teaching model, Jimmy said that without the four years English education study in SBC, he would not have been able to stand on the podium. Different to a traditional university, in SBC a student’s personal ability is enhanced through the English teaching environment in which a large number of English papers and reports need to be completed. Only when you write more than a dozen articles, read a great deal of the academic literature and present several lectures can you know how to write your own essays and give a speech. So he stressed the importance to students of reading as much as possible before writing essays.
He also said that other skills are developed during the four years at SBC, such as adaptability,resilience and multi-tasking and these are also very valuable in life after SBC. He suggests SBC students enjoy their time here and firmly believes that those who have good grades will do so through extensive reading and hard work. He also stressed the importance of being resilient as not every effort on every piece of work may lead to the grades for which a student is hoping.
Up to now, Jimmy has been offered a postgraduate place to study project and enterprise management at University College London (UCL) and will leave in September this year to begin his Masterdegree. Jimmy said that he has planned his career development for a full three years and has considerable internship experience during his time at the College. He would like to pursue a career in management consulting as his future direction of development. During this period, the Careers Service & Development Centre (CSD) gave him a lot of help. He advises SBC students to utilize the resources of CSD and practise social skills from internship.
Professor Linda Liu,Vice-Dean of SBC, said: "It is a pleasure to see our student has achieved such a good result in this academic competition. This is not only due to our high level of international education and diversified educational philosophy, but also showed that we have achieved a good result in morality education.”
Professor John Wilson,Principal and CEO of SBC, said: "Jimmy is an outstanding student. It is a huge challenge and an incredible achievement to win a prize when faced with such fierce competition, more than 700 contributions submitted for the Conference. His presentation showed avery high level of skills both in terms of content and presentation. Jimmy has undoubtedly benefited from his own efforts but also, as he acknowledges himself, from SBC’s unique British teaching mode. In SBC, the international study experience allows students to master not only particular professional skills but also to developa broader skill set.”
