Feature: Chinese students intern at U.S. Illinois State Government

Wendy Xu beamed as she was posing for a picture with her internship mentor, office director Brandy Renfro at the podium of the Senate Gallery.

Wendy has just concluded her month-long internship program at the Communications Office of Illinois Senate President John Cullerton.

Wendy, a native of Chengdu, capital of Southwest China' s Sichuan Province, is a student from University of Hong Kong on an exchange program at Harvard University. Her work at the Senate President' s communication office is diverse: doing research on President Cullerton' s news and business information for senators in different districts; reading news articles; and analyzing and organizing data by day for the casual forecasting program.

"This is my first time working in the U.S. government, it' s been a really great experience," Wendy told Xinhua. "During the past 5 weeks, I met a lot of great people and learned a lot of useful skills."

Wendy said that by reading the news articles, she knew what' s happening in the United States and what' s happening in the other parts of the world. Most of all, she got to know how the U.S. government office works. "The experience is really valuable and important to me."

Renfro, Wendy' s mentor, is very satisfied with her work, saying "her first project included getting addresses and names of businesses in Senator Bush' s district to mail some items, and she had to cross-reference district boundaries with the map and the businesses." "It usually takes our staff about a week to do and she did it in one day, that was pretty impressive," Renfro said.

Wendy was not alone in her internship, Jiaxin Yang and Jiayun Li, both Chinese postgraduate students at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, worked as interns at Illinois State Treasurer' s Office at the same time.

Jiaxin worked at the Portfolio Operation of Illinois State Treasurer, a division that invests in a variety of different instruments in the capital market system, U.S. treasury, bills and notes, U.S. agency bills and notes, and corporate commercial paper. Jiaxin' s work is compiling information daily by going to different news sources, reading articles, summarizing those articles, and sending them to the portfolio operation team.

Robert Holley, portfolio manager and Director of Portfolio operations of Illinois State Treasurer, was pleased with Jiaxin' s work. "It (the information she provided) was very thorough, and a testament to what she' s learned not only at the university throughout her studies, but also hopefully what she' s picked up working with us in our fund, the Illinois fund," Holley said.

Jiayun worked at the Unclaimed Property of the Treasurer' s Office, where she set up claims to identify property, and reconcile dividends claims and the brokerage accounts. She also spent a lot of time dealing with the securities and reporting.

"I am very lucky to have this opportunity as an intern," Jiayun told Xinhua, saying the month at Springfield State Treasurer' s office has been a unique experience to her. "During this month of work, I learned to be delicate, patient and I also learned new ways of communication and cooperation skills," she said.

Jiayun compared her work at the treasurer' s office with that in a company. "I do feel the work here is a little stricter that what I had before in a company."

James Xue, initiator of the Chinese students' internship program at U.S. government agencies, told Xinhua the internships are designed to help students find careers in government agencies; help Chinese students increase knowledge, enrich experiences and enhance ability.

Xue said that the three points are essential to talents with a world vision. Besides knowledge and experiences, talents should also have the ability of trans-cultural collaboration.

Chinese students participating in the program are not limited to Chinese students now studying in the U.S., Chinese college students on the Chinese mainland can also apply for an internship.

Under the intership program, now in its third year of its initiation, a total of 100 Chinese students has so far been enrolled as interns in Illinois State Government, Chicago City Government and the U.S. Federal Government. Enditem