UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Penn State alumnus Kuna Krongboonying graduated from Penn State with a bachelor of science in electrical engineering in 1993. He went on to get his MBA from MIT Sloan, working in various capacities in the Asian financial sector before starting his own company in the education business. He currently lives in Thailand.
Penn State Global Programs recently chatted with Krongboonying about his experience at Penn State and how it prepared him for his career.
Penn State alumnus Kuna Krongboonying. Credit: Provided. All Rights Reserved.
Q: Can you tell us a little bit about your time here at Penn State as an undergraduate student?
Krongboonying: While I cannot say if I would have a better experience elsewhere, since I chose to attend Penn State, I can say for certain that it was indeed memorable, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I had so much fun with fellow Pinchot Hall dorm-mates during the first semester — experiences that ranged from watching a football game in the rain at Beaver Stadium, braving the cold and trekking across the snowy East parking lot to 8 a.m. classes, learning to eat leftover pizza taken out from the freezer from my American roommate, to being invited to visit a dorm-mate’s home in upstate New York during Thanksgiving weekend. It was almost a culture shock to an Asian teenager, but it was also a very good way to learn about the way of life of my host country.
Academically, I also had an unusual experience of switching dorms at the beginning of 2nd semester as part of being in the University Scholars Program. While I regret till this day not rounding off my entire freshman year with my first roommate, I am also eternally grateful for the unique opportunity to meet and make new friends at Atherton Hall, including my second roommate. To illustrate how this enriched my intellect — one friend who stayed a few doors down the hall stayed up until 4 a.m. to help me with my engineering assignment on negative electrical resistance simply to fulfill his curiosity, despite the fact that he has no direct benefits or incentives to do so. Another (older) friend I met, transferred to a medical school on the west coast shortly after our first meeting and would occasionally call long-distance to check on how I was doing, sometimes at 3 a.m. EST! These two individuals were a prime example of the high-caliber students that you can encounter in the Scholars Program and the interactions with them in many ways would also spur you to excel in your academic pursuit.
The other facets that I also very much came to appreciate is the availability of sports facilities and the subtle exposure to the arts within the University community, or even the town itself. Happy Valley truly lived up to its name!
Q: You volunteered in the Office of Global Programs and helped with the International Student Orientation. How was that experience?
Krongboonying: In short, it was very rewarding. Apart from meeting and interacting with lots of people and helping new students settle down, you get to learn many facets of real-life situations. Back then there were many more incoming graduate students than undergraduates, so the issues that I encountered while helping them were so different from the ones I faced. For example, the limited on-campus housing availability meant many had to turn to off-campus housing and I got to learn about borough regulations, lease agreements, money transfer, filing tax returns (many of them received graduate grants/assistantships) etc. In fact, the knowledge gathered came in handy later on when I had to file mine.
Apart from such hands-on involvement, there was also an often-overlooked benefit like the opportunity to learn about other cultures (other than American), albeit not exactly in-depth. There were instances like taking a Lebanese graduate student to the Bursar Office for help with paperwork, helping a Korean undergrad looking for off-campus housing because she did not want to stay on-campus, and sharing ideas with a fellow Malaysian engineering-major looking for summer internships.
Q: What made you choose Penn State for your undergraduate education?
Krongboonying: Initially, it was the reputation of the school of course, especially for engineering where we were highly ranked at the national level. But as time passed, I began to appreciate the support systems found almost everywhere within the University, and not just that of the Office of Global Programs, e.g., the University Health Services, the University Libraries network (bear in mind this was pre-Internet days), the Undergraduate Student Government, the Scholars Program and even our (dorm) Food Services which at that time was also among the best in the country. Such essential infrastructure was not mentioned or emphasized in any literature when I was researching universities. So, I was glad I made the right call.
Q: If you had to tell us about one memory from your time at Penn State, what would it be?
Krongboonying: Ironically, if I have to choose only one, it was the time I came back to visit a few months after graduation. I had a two-week technical training course in New Jersey, sponsored by my employer, and at the end of the trip I took the opportunity to come back to Penn State for a football game with friends, not realizing it was Homecoming weekend!
So, while this was very incidental it provided me with good closure to a phase of my then-young life. The weekend filled me with all the flashbacks of my four years spent at University Park — all the fun and the sometimes-not-so-fun (like late nights studying) times. It also gave me a sense of accomplishment — walking around campus again, this time as an alumnus. The feeling was very, very different from the student days and I’ll urge new grads to try it. I hope to visit again soon, this time some 30 years later!
Q: You have worked and studied in many different locations all over the world — Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Thailand, Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai. Did your time at Penn State prepare you for your global experiences? If so, how?
Krongboonying: Yes and no. No in the sense that we have to remember that Happy Valley then was located “in the middle of nowhere” to the extent that many of our sports competitors hated to visit us for their away games. State College was also a fairly sleepy, nice small town so life during the four years could be quite laid back. Luckily, I had always been a city kid so to gear myself back to robust, fast-paced life wasn’t exactly hard when I had to start my career.
While I worked mostly for Asian corporate, my work required substantial interactions with westerners. This was where my understanding and appreciation of the local culture and practices shown to me by American, as well as international, friends at Penn State helped to play a part as I navigated my way in the corporate world. This may sound trivial, but I learnt a lot about American food both while having meals and working at the dining halls. And it was such knowledge that could help you over important recruitment dinners when you tried to land a nice position at a global firm.
On a more serious note, coping with the often unpredictable weather at University Park and the sheer scale of the campus also taught me to always plan ahead, while retaining a certain degree of flexibility in the plan, and develop an ability to crunch huge amounts of data and present it visually at the big-picture level. For instance, when tasked with presenting our 3-year, 100 stores expansion plan in China with just the weekend to prepare, I replaced the University Park map with China’s, and with the help of technology, set the standard for company-wide presentation format. I also guided my team to develop in-house financial spreadsheets with cash-flow emphasis to support the expansion. I was happy to learn that the spreadsheets were still in use years after I left the firm and I credit it to the team as well as my own survival skills picked up during Penn State days.
Q: How has your experience at Penn State prepared you for your career after graduation?
Krongboonying: Two sub-programs came to mind – one was a pilot (I believe) workshop introduced by the College of Engineering my junior year called Workplace Integration Skills for Engineers (WISE). It essentially introduced us to various broad aspects and skills deemed necessary and complementary to the in-depth technical knowledge we learnt in the classroom that would enable us to function more effectively in the workplace. These topics were packaged together nicely and saved us a great amount of time to explore, by trial and error, other courses in humanities and/or social sciences electives.
If WISE laid the foundation, the second one by the University Scholars Program took it to the next level with a leadership module called Service Achievement in Leadership (SAIL) where selected students would take a course and learn the theoretical aspects of leadership, within context of service, and then put that into practice through volunteer work. What was unique about the course was the requirement that we needed to earn an A for completion, and no sub-par work was accepted. We were also required to pair up with a mentor of our choice that we thought would fit within the frame of leadership. I chose my physical education (squash) course instructor as my mentor and learnt a great deal about coaching from him.
At the microscopic level, there were instances outside the classroom like helping with the University’s telethon fundraising effort where student volunteers were briefed on how to call and approach prospective alumni donors. After I decided to quit the rat race and venture on my own, many friends asked how I developed my business and were surprised to learn that part of it was simply through making cold calls. If it wasn’t because of the telethon experience at Penn State, I’d perhaps never have thought of using such technique, let alone having the courage to do so. What was more valuable, in hindsight, was the mental strength developed that ultimately prepared me to handle the reality of entrepreneurship — that not all roads are paved with roses, and rejection (by many customers) is the norm.
Q: If you had one piece of advice to give to current or incoming international students at Penn State, what would it be?
Krongboonying: To many international students, superior academic performance is the road to career success, no doubt about that. Without downplaying the rigor and robustness of the school’s curricula, I’d also like to urge everyone to “smell the roses along the way” and enjoy what the University has to offer both in terms of leisure, multi-disciplinary or artistic/cultural events. I say this because to this day I still regret not re-scheduling one of my mid-terms so I could watch George Winston perform at Eisenhower Auditorium. The other time was when REO Speedwagon came to perform near State College, and it was the Saturday before final exams my sophomore year. If I could tell my younger self, I’d tell him to go and watch these two once-in-my-lifetime concerts. To the many others: You will still ace or survive the onslaught, but do not miss life’s occasional wonderful chances just because you think you have not worked hard enough. Carpe Diem!