Newswise — Four Ithaca College faculty members and 21 student interns are spending seven weeks in Beijing this summer working with the Olympic News Service (ONS) and are willing to share their impressions of China and the Olympics with interested editors and reporters. Recruited by the ONS to work as flash quote reporters, the students arrived in Beijing for on-site training on July 7 and will return to the United States on August 27. The faculty members will stagger their stays abroad. The games run from August 8 to 24.
The ONS is the press agency serving the international media covering the Olympics—the rough equivalent of a sports information office. Assigned to cover team handball, fencing, and water polo, the students will be stationed next to the action, providing background information on athletes and competitions, and creating flash quotes (sound bites from the athletes) for the international press. The students will visit the Great Wall, the Summer Palace, and other landmarks and are already submitting their insights to a college-housed blog located at http://www.ithaca.edu/olympics08.
The students' intense Olympic training includes preparing to cover handball, a sport in which none of the competing countries feature English as their primary language. Other challenges include eating every meal—including breakfast—with chop sticks, shopping at a Chinese Wal-Mart, and learning useful Chinese phrases from a cab driver whose knowledge of English is limited to singing "Jingle Bells."
In addition to their blogs, the students and faculty would be willing to correspond with interested media as the students' schedules and workloads permit. They could not, however, share any of the sports information they are under contract to provide to the ONS.
The students are available by e-mail in China and are also willing to be interviewed when they return to the United States in August. The faculty members have the contact information. The faculty, too, are available for interviews.
The faculty contingent:"¢ Janet Wigglesworth, associate dean in the School of Health Sciences and Human Performance, will be in Beijing from July 7 to 25. She can talk about the months of preparation needed to get the students ready for their trip and the responses of American students to Chinese culture. She will be checking her e-mail overseas and will be available for interviews on her return to Ithaca.
"¢ Steve Mosher, professor of sport management and media—in Beijing from July 23 to August 9—is expert in social justice protests associated with the games, the history of the Olympic Movement, and how Chinese young people view the Olympics.
"¢ Steve Siconolfi, dean, School of Health Sciences and Human Performance—in Beijing July 23 to August 9; can discuss how Ithaca College students were chosen to intern for the ONS
"¢ Annemarie Farrell, assistant professor of sport management and media, will be in Beijing from August 8 to 27. Her areas of expertise are consumer behavior regarding the Olympics, women's sport, and sport and marketing.
Ithaca College is one of six institutions of higher education in the United States (and one of 13 English-speaking schools worldwide) to have been recruited by the ONS. The other American schools are Emerson College, Purdue University, and the Universities of Missouri, Iowa, and North Carolina. ONS has recruited roughly 300 students from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia.
Coeducational and nonsectarian, Ithaca College is a nationally recognized independent college of some 6,200 undergraduates and 400 graduate students. Offering over 100 degree programs, the college combines the individual attention of a small institution with the resources and offerings of a large university.
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