Seated in the center, Hiromi Saijo, from Japan, senior, international relations, with friends Min Sung Goo, on the left, a sophomore, electrical engineering, from South Korea, and Feras Al_Mansour, senior, business computer information systems, from Saudi Arabia.
Saijo participated in SCSU's study abroad program in South Korea in spring of 2006. Her Japanese citizenship was problematic for her during her stay in South Korea because of Japan's brutal colonization of Korea in the first half of the twentieth century, and because Korea and Japan were engaged in the Dokto/Takeshima island dispute at the time.
Saijo interned this summer in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, with the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality. She worked with development staff to help set up small-plot farmers with land, fencing and irrigation, and helped people rent government storefronts for start-up businesses such as a driving school and a car wash. Saijo graduated on December 16. She hopes to work with a human rights or development NGO after graduation.
