Word TravELS 011 July - December 2017

ELS Programs
Two APPEMI Cohorts
L
aughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship,
and it is far the best ending for one.”
When asked to reflect upon the APPEMI groups in the
latter half of 2017, Dr. Pamela Young responds with
the quote above by Oscar Wilde. “The CSC group
laughed together from their first meeting to their
graduation.”
The Advanced Professional Program in English-
Medium Instruction (APPEMI) is headed by Pam, the
Academic Team Lead for APPEMI. Pam is the face,
voice, mastermind, and trained dart-throwing ninja of
APPEMI. (More details on the ninja bit to follow.)
Between July and December of 2017, two cohorts with
vastly different backgrounds and characteristics participated
in APPEMI: the China Scholarship Council
(CSC) cohort from China and the Universidad Tecnológica
(UTEC) cohort from Uruguay.
The CSC cohort included professors
from a wide range of research areas—from
Thermal Engineering to
Comparative Literature; from Clinical
Acupuncture to Information Management
and Information Technology;
from Teaching of Chinese as a
Foreign Language to English Education;
from Aquatic Animal Nutrition
and Physiology to Accounting, just
to name a few.
So what do you get when you
put brilliant yet diverse minds
into the same room? As it
turns out: a lot of laughter.
At least that was the case for
the CSC cohort.
Pam recalls, “When they introduced
themselves to each
other…during their program
orientation, one of the young
men, whose name was Rui,
said that ‘Rui’ meant ‘wisdom’
in Mandarin. Later in the introductions,
a woman said
that her name was Rui Rui,
then added that this showed
she was twice as wise as
‘Single Ray.’ Everyone
laughed, and the nickname
‘Single Ray’ stuck, a gentle
poke at the young man’s ‘less
wise,’ as well as his unmarried,
status.”
“When I arrived to teach a
class with this group, I could
often hear them talking and
laughing from a long way
down the hall. During presentations
by their colleagues,
laughter was also common -
not in a mean way, but in the
spirit of enjoying each other’s company.”
“Another characteristic of this group was their cohesion
and support of each other,” Pam continues. “They
helped each other out with language challenges, and
gave helpful feedback to each other’s work.”
The APPEMI classes for the CSC cohort were all delivered
on campus at UAlberta. The participants had the
time and opportunity to explore both the university
and the city. In fact, one of the professors, a professor
of musicology and master qin player—a qin is a traditional
Chinese string instrument—had the opportunity
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