BHC Spotlight: Skylar Mao '21

Major/Minor: Hispanic Studies with a minor in Business
Hometown: Ningbo, Zhejiang, China

Skylar Mao

Why you chose BHC (beyond the scholarship benefit)
It was my opportunity to leave my home country and have a full four year college experience in the United States. Also, the program sounded interesting and challenging.

What benefits have you gained from the BHC
The program gives us a lot of opportunities to explore the world. It gave me the chance to study in D.C. for a winter session about international studies and leadership. And I had 20 days of study abroad experience in Barcelona, which is a very great experience to have for my major. BHC also provides us with a good academic environment; I constantly get motivation from BHC to work harder in school.

Highlight a specific research, internship, or study abroad experience(s).
Internship: Influencer Agency “就是Cathy啊”. May 2020 - Current
Cathy Chen is an English blogger, lifestyle and fashion influencer who has more than 800 thousand subscribers on Chinese social media. My responsibility is to transcribe and translate the English videos and add subtitles and background music to the video, as well as edit articles in both English and Chinese for the official account on WeChat. In late June, the agency planned to establish an online English course, and I was lucky enough to be put in the position to write the course materials. I wrote the "Practical Spoken English" course based on my previous English teaching experience in China and my understanding of American English and American culture. I focused on introducing and explaining American culture to the Chinese students to better help them with their understanding of the English language. The course was taught in Live Stream format by Cathy Chen. The course was a big success, and brought a lot of profit to the agency. Now we are continuing to work on the new courses and come up with new ideas to contribute to the development of the agency.

How did the BHC curriculum or program prepare you for this experience?
BHC gave me the experience of living with people who have different backgrounds, and exploring Barcelona when I barely had any knowledge about Hispanic culture, which made me realize that culture plays an important part in our lives. Those experiences inspired me to include American culture when I wrote the course.

What do/did you hope to achieve/gain from this experience?
I learned how to use Adobe Premiere Pro because of this experience, which is a skill that I probably would not acquire if not because of this experience. It also made me realize that being open to new skills and new ideas always brings more opportunities.

List of things involved with on campus (sports teams, clubs, academic competitions/teams, positions held and description of duties)
I was a member of Alpha Phi Omega.

List any awards, recognitions, and/or conference presentations
Dean's list (3 years)

If you have any questions, feel free to contact me using the info below:

Skylar Mao
Email: ymao@vwu.edu
Instagram: skylar_mao