Eric Chen, Zhouxiohan Fan, Yifei Wang, Yiyi Wei (Group 6)

April 26, 2013

Professor Choi
OBHR 3310-501
Chinese Student Association Analysis
The Chinese Student Association is a social club founded at the University of Texas at
Dallas back in September 2011. Its purpose is to promote awareness and appreciation of the
Chinese culture to its members and those on campus through school events. The organization has
the same structure as most others where there is a CEO/President chair, followed by a vice
president as second in command, then a wide branch of other positions to cover necessary
functions. The chairs include: cultural, volunteer, fundraiser, logistics, administration, secretary,
webmaster, sports coordinator, treasurer, and historian. There is no formal chain of command
present as it is a social club; but the structures for officers are set up as though there is. If there is
a need to make a decision between multiple options, a democratic voting system is used and only
members in attendance at the meeting have their votes counted. However, the president does
reserve the right to make an executive decision in certain cases.
The organization is very team oriented, which is reflected in both its overall structure
and events that are hosted. Though there is a more traditional structure for officers, there is a
separate structure that divides its members into groups called families. Each family is led by two
officers except for one, which is led by three due to an odd number of officers. Each family
contains roughly twenty members who are chosen based off their majors. This separation allow
for networking and making friends in the same field. Events that are hosted include social and
formal gatherings, sports events, and fundraisers, allowing members to gather together and bond.

Each family is awarded points for attending meetings, events, or by completing tasks and is
awarded cumulatively. There is a reward system in place and a different prize each semester.
Overall, the organization has a good structure and functionality, but as it is still relatively new
and with only one hundred members, there are issues that need to be fixed.
One major issue is that the events they host do not congruent with the critical task, which
is to promote awareness of Chinese culture to its members and UTD staff and students. However,
there is little that can be done to bring the culture of another country to a social organization.
Because based on an Americanized location, another major issue is that there is consistently a
considerable decline in organization activities as each semester goes on. Interest in joining any
organization is high at the beginning of each semester where there is more free time for students
but will inevitably decline as school work will take priority. Other remaining issues are rather
commonplace for any organization, especially if they are still newly founded and are based on a
social structure. The decision making process, though fair, is flawed. Only those in attendance at
the meeting get to have a vote, thus power can be given to the more active family. There is a
clear lack of communication between all members of CSA. Information travels very slowly,
which in turn causes a drop in overall performance. Coordinating events effectively requires
great communication and more often than not, initial performance falls short and there is a
scramble to raise it by the end. Additionally, the functional structure for officers is also weak.
Aside from the president and vice president, although administration is in charge of five officers,
each officer operates mostly independently without any support. There is also an underlying tone
of unprofessionalism which really harms overall performance, especially for officers as
responsibility and overall success do not hold as much meaning if CSA is viewed as just a social
club.

Most of the issues are cause and effect correlated, which acts as a double edged sword.
Solving some issues may take care of one or two others but create further problems for another.
The critical task itself serves as a foundation for the organization and contains an excellent goal;
however, the statement itself is unrealistic especially when all events are taken into
consideration. There are only two events that promoted Chinese culture the Chinese language
lessons hosted by the cultural chair, and the cook off which allowed only traditional Chinese
dishes. Both events included just members of CSA, thus no exposure was given to UTD staff or
students in general. Options for introducing culture is extremely limited to begin with and
require either the right members or enough funds, neither of which is currently met. In addition,
most, if not all, members and officers are American born, thus having limited exposure to
Chinese culture to bring to CSA. In the spring semesters, there is a great opportunity to showcase
Chinese culture by celebrating Chinese New Year which is traditionally a week-long event.
However, only a small piece may be shared given the limitations of living in America, which
would be the exchange of red envelopes and possibly the dragon dance. There is also the chance
to celebrate the Lunar Festival, but only with eating the moon cakes. Both events are very likely
already celebrated at home by CSA members, so it is nothing new and becomes only a social
gathering. However, it does allow a chance for UTD faculty and students to experience a piece of
Chinese culture.
The other major problem with lackluster performance and meeting participation is cause
and effect with all previously mentioned issues. Higher performance is out of reach due to poor
communication, weak functioned structure for officers, an unfair decision making process, and
lack of interest for events. The main factor is certainly lack of interest as events tend to repeat
themselves as the semester goes on and there is little to no incentive to attend meetings. At the

start of each semester, people socialize much more and will look for organizations to join, which
is the peak of interest. CSA is a social organization, thus members are given freedom to pick and
choose what they wish to do after their entry fee is paid. If there is no longer any interest in the
organization, then members will cease to attend. Event planning falls onto one officer, and ideas
are voted on only by those in attendance which can easily cause a monotonous tone of events as
the semester continues. The family reward system is also quite ineffective as an incentive to get
more participation for several reasons. The first is that being a family reward, it is something that
must be shared, meaning it will be small so that CSA can afford it, leading to the problem. If
member participation is low, fundraising events will not be as successful, thus automatically
lowering the value of the prize and in turn lowering member interest even further. Lastly, the
most common cause for members to join CSA to begin with is to simply meet new people and
make friends. This semester, the prize has not even been announced yet, let alone decided upon
which defeats the purpose of acting as an incentive.
Communication is the foundation functionality, and is clearly in need of improvement for
CSA. Officers are aware of many of the same issues that are occurring in CSA, but no
discussions of solving them were held. Lack of communication also causes poor event planning
and leads to disappointing results. At fundraising events, volunteers are asked to sign up in
advance in order to give the hosts an idea of what to expect in terms of help. One instance
resulted in a frantic call for help from members as one of the shifts was understaffed. This is also
in conjunction with previously mentioned lack of interest by members, as it is a fundraising
event for the organization that is held on a Saturday evening. Thus, only those who are interested
in seeing CSA grow or have funds for better events will attend (officers excluded).

The structure for officers is also inefficient as some roles overlap, many have no support,
and individual roles are unclear. There exists volunteer, treasurer, and fundraiser chair when they
can be combined in one role. There is also no general event coordinator other than a sports
coordinator who reports to administration. There is also a webmaster but there exists no official
page for CSA other than a Facebook group page where little to no information about the
organization posted. The cause of such problems is linked to the organizations nature of being a
social group comprised of a homogenous group of people (similar cultural backgrounds). As
previously mentioned, there exists a tone of unprofessionalism which removes any stress about
incremental improvements by deadlines. Moreover, the only real concerns that are addressed
publically are what events would be fun and how much money is required.
Our contact was Kenneth Yao, the president for the Chinese Student Association. As
president, he holds the most authority over the organization and knows its functionality the best.
The organization was created through his and some of his officers interest in seeing a student
organization for Chinese students since there already exists other organizations for other cultures.
He coordinates events for the semester, plans out meeting dates, and generally just keeps an eye
on the organization. He, along with the vice president, is in charge of one of the families. There
were several factors to take into consideration when discussing possible solutions for these
issues. The common factor is that there is no real obligation for members to do anything in terms
of improving CSA other than following set rules. Another is that meetings must be booked in
advance, thus predicting and setting a time and date must be done prior to any knowledge of
member schedules. Officer schedules are already taken into consideration as they would remain
for new semester unless they are graduating, as some are this semester and require replacements.
There are also two big competing organizations that have been on campus for much longer than

CSA, which are the FSA (Filipino Student Association) and the VSA (Vietnamese Student
Association). All three student organizations are essentially the same, with the only difference
being that they are based off different cultural backgrounds. Though there is mutual respect,
fundraising and maintaining members becomes a problem as students may enroll in all three
organizations and ultimately choose one to stand by. Essentially, in order for improvements to be
made, another issue may arise or some functionality in the organization must be revised.
To address these issues, most solutions were ideally meant to alter what is already in
place to minimize adaptation and compromise functionality while giving long term benefits for
the organization as a whole. In addressing the officer chair structure, a suggestion was made to
combine the idea that was implemented for creating families into the overall structure, which
results in removing the president and vice president as family heads and instead places them at a
higher level to promote more authority. In turn, each family would serve a function relative to the
officers assigned to them. For example, instead of having only a sports coordinator and no
official events chair, they should remove the sports coordinator and replace it with an events
chair and pair him with the cultural chair to create one family which is in charge of activities.
This way, each family has an actual functional purpose that promotes communication within
each individual family and across the entire organization while maintaining the opportunity for
members to find friends in the same field. In addition, the original structure still remains, only
modified to eliminate ambiguity due to similar positions and to promote communication between
families.
To maintain a high level of interest, a proposal was made for a drop box of suggestions to
be made. Although there is already a family in charge of activities, ideas should not be limited to
only them. A physical or electronic drop box should be implemented for all members to access

and share ideas for events or even suggestions to any changes. The next step would be to address
the unfair voting process. As stated previously, a democratic vote is used at meetings to finalize
decisions, but it is an unfair process due to the fact that only members that attend get a vote.
Since there is already a Facebook group page, polls may be created online to allow members to
vote, or they may choose to use another poll generating website and allow one or two days for
votes to be cast before closing the polls. It may also be used as backup for votes taken at
meetings by those in attendance. The electronic votes could allow members who did not attend
meetings a chance to vote, giving them a sense of involvement and importance to the outcome of
the organization.
Improving communication skills is an absolute necessity, both between officers and all
members. At the beginning of each semester, it is not an apparent issue as members will attend
meetings and events frequently. However, once exams begin to approach, attendance will drop
but some members will still want to be up to date. To address this, having an officer at meetings
in charge of summarizing what was discussed and posting it onto the organizations website so
everyone may view it. This way, messages and information will not be misconstrued by members
who attended but may not have been completely sure of what was discussed or forgotten a date
or time. There was a problem with low numbers of volunteers at fundraising events. Volunteering
at the Sonic car hop is a common event done by many organizations and is typically held during
peak hours on a weekend. Though it is a volunteer event, meaning low involvement is not an
issue because the manager schedules around what is submitted, higher turnout for the car hop
would benefit CSA greatly in the future by generating more funds to support better prizes and
events. Communicating the importance of volunteer and fundraising events is crucial towards
helping CSA grow and ultimately achieve its critical task of promoting Chinese culture.

The critical task of promoting Chinese culture to UTD is very difficult, considering on
how limited options are and the amount of exposure that can be achieved. Opportunities to host
cultural awareness events occur during the spring semester which is when all festivals occur.
However, the main celebration, the Lunar Festival, is also celebrated by many other Asian
organizations on campus which also include food and the exchange of red envelopes. However,
they are limited to one day whereas festivities continue for a week in China. During international
awareness week, a dragon dance is performed in collaboration with VSA as it is also a shared
custom. The only exposure to Chinese culture, handled by the cultural chair, is Chinese lessons.
However, only giving lessons about once a month is not nearly enough to allow anyone that is
learning to engage in conversation. A Chinese food cook-off was hosted this semester which is
good exposure for traditional home made food. A suggestion for hosting this event again in the
future would be to include some traditional games and teaching people how to properly eat with
chop sticks. Many members in CSA are American born, thus may not know how to use chop
sticks properly or not at all. There is a challenge to test the skills for use of chop sticks which is
to pick up a single grain of rice, which may be used as a mini game. Traditional Chinese games
that may be brought in include the shuttlecock, Chinese yo-yo, mah jong, and Chinese chess.
The critical task as it stands now is merely a faade and acts as an official motto to allow
the organization to exist. The true critical task seems to be more along the lines of being a fun
social group with a foundation of Chinese culture, not to promote and expose it. To truly get
more cultural exposure to members, CSA must enlist international students. Current members
most likely grew up more accustomed to a weaker Chinese cultural background compared to an
American cultural background. Having international students will bring noticeable differences to

the surface and also allows both to practice each others language and experience different
cultures.
In theory, functional changes face little challenge to implement as they are merely
modifications of what already exists and would ideally be implemented at the start of a new
semester. New officers have already been interviewed for the upcoming semester to replace those
who are graduating, thus implementing the remodeled officer structure would be ideal at this
time to get the best results. Restructuring before assigning detailed instructions for new chairs
will allow time for new and current officers to adjust for what will come. The challenge for the
new structure would be for officers to practice better communication between each other and
their family members. As of now, family members are not involved in planning aside from
voting at meetings and officers act almost entirely independently of each other until questions
from another department arise. Collaborating events from the beginning causes less friction and
lag when it comes to executing events.
The president has also mentioned that he wishes to schedule events more efficiently,
referring more so to meetings. However, we all agreed there is little to nothing that may be done
about setting meeting times other than setting up two meetings instead of one for the week of.
That suggestion was voted out due to time constraints for the president and officers. Instead, the
suggestion for including online polling and posting a summary of meeting topics was placed. The
obstacle still remains the same: interest level of members. There will always be members that are
just unwilling to participate in planning or meetings and simply just want to go to events. But,
for those who are truly prevented from attending due to scheduling, options will now be
available for their membership to have an effect and to be up to date without risk of misconstrued
information. There is also a risk of having members doing multiple votes should they have

access to other members Facebook accounts. However, the online poll serves two purposes: to
allow those who were unable to attend the meeting a chance to vote and it serves as confirmation
or comparison to the initial vote taken at the meeting. There will still be a vote taken at each
meeting in person to give officers an idea of what to expect, assuming there is an even split
between attendance from all families. Officers may also use online polls to suggest future
meeting dates. There is also a bigger risk for having an online summary of each meeting posted
for attendance to drop because members will have the mentality that there will be a summary
posted anyways. Thus, another incentive must be found to get members that are able to attend
meetings to actually attend and not simply skip out and read it later.
The critical task remains deemed as a faade as it is ambiguous towards what aspects of
Chinese culture they wish to promote and audience is essentially just members and their guests
on most events. Since there are very limited options for what can be done, the best choice is to
include some traditional Chinese games during the food events since normally members
participate in either soccer or basketball games. In addition, reaching out and enlisting more
international students will help generate awareness for CSA. They would help international
students adapt to American culture and UTD life while learning more about Chinese culture.