You’ve seen them wandering around the community in recent weeks. Maybe you’ve offered them some guidance or a kind word of welcome. More than a thousand new international students from scores of nations have arrived for study at Penn State.
But what are they thinking after arriving from countries as diverse as China, India and Saudi Arabia? And what are they feeling after leaving behind megacities like Shanghai, New Delhi and Jeddah for little ol’ State College?
I recently conducted mini-interviews with 15 international students from eight nations, and I’m delighted to share some of the highlights with you. In particular, I gleaned two points from their responses—one that’s truly significant and inspiring; another that’s quirky and fun.
First, as you’ll see below, these international students said they felt welcomed by our community. Way to go, Happy Valley. Nothing could make me prouder of my hometown.
Second, newly-arrived international students were clueless about the identity of our most famous citizen. When asked “Who is James Franklin?” none of the scholars I interviewed gave a correct answer. That’s right, they were 0-for-15.
But I’m not worried about these students becoming loyal fans of Franklin and his Nittany Lion gridders; they’ll soon get things figured out. I’m also not worried about James. I’m confident that his fame will spread across the globe when the Nittany Lions whip Ohio State on October 30. (Sorry, James. “Wisconsin, Wisconsin, Wisconsin.”)
WHO IS JAMES FRANKLIN?
It wasn’t just the lack of correct answers that struck me when I asked these internationals to identify James Franklin. It was also the nature of their failed attempts:
- A master’s student in law from China said, “He’s the guy on the money.” (Exactly seven students gave wrong answers that pointed toward Ben Franklin. So maybe Puff Daddy was right when he rapped, “It’s all about the Benjamins.”)
- An engineering grad student from the Middle East hopefully asked, “He’s not the first President, is he?” And an Indian grad student, also influenced by America’s greatest kite-flier, said, “He’s one of the founding fathers of the U.S.”
- A law student from Central Asia offered his best shot by saying, “I know an actor named James Franco…”
- And a new freshman from South Korea sought help by asking, “Is it a he or a she? Did this person graduate from here?”
By contrast, nine out of 15 students offered correct answers to my other personality question: “Who is Eric Barron?” Why this relatively high degree of success? I think the students were highly motivated to read emails from the university president, especially those that discussed COVID-19 policies.
However, not everyone had a clue about Penn State’s president. One Middle Easterner, after getting my input on James Franklin, hoped that information would lead him to the correct answer for Barron. Asked to identify Eric Barron, he said, “Is that a player on the team?”
FRIENDLY WELCOMES
And now on to a more important topic of my interviews. When asked what they liked most about State College, many international students mentioned the warm vibe they felt in our community.
“People here are extremely friendly,” said Saleh Al-Ghamdi, a new master’s student in architectural engineering. “I think that’s because they’re more educated. I think that reflects on their attitude and behavior. I haven’t had any bad experiences, and I’m sure I will not have any in the future.”
Jacob Ashish, a new Ph.D. student in industrial engineering, noticed Happy Valley’s warmth immediately after arriving here. “As soon as I landed,” said the man from Delhi, India, “I was randomly walking around and I could see people who didn’t know each other, greeting and saying, ‘Hi’ and ‘Good morning.’ It felt really nice; it felt very warm.”
Chin-Hsuan Peng, a Ph.D. student in atmospheric science from Taiwan, was struck by the differences between State College and his home city.
“There’s so many skyscrapers in my hometown,” he said in describing Taoyuan, a city of 2.25 million people. “Here, there’s so much nature and so many mountains. The life pace there is so fast, but here I found that it’s cozy and comfortable.” (I didn’t have the heart to tell Chin-Hsuan that State College seems headed toward a skyscraper approach rather than holding on to its cozy and comfortable appearance.)
The most inspiring summary of State College was provided by Simone Luchini, a native of Italy who earned his bachelor’s degree in London. Asked to describe the most notable feature of our region, the new Ph.D. student in cognitive psychology said, “The people.” And he added, “The support I’ve received, both from the university and from the outside community, has been amazing. Happy Valley is certainly the case because when I go to the store–people are smiling, they are kind. I have to say everybody from an Uber driver to my professor has been nice, really nice.”
FACING THEIR FEARS
But even when coming to a place like Happy Valley, every new international student will face some fears of the unknown. For example, COVID-19.
When I spoke to a pair of female freshmen from South Korea, both mentioned COVID-related concerns that they needed to overcome before leaving home. “The biggest difference,” Chaewon Kang said, “is that in Seoul everyone wears a mask, but here not everyone is wearing their mask. I was really scared to come here.”
Her friend, Julie Kim, noted that the people in State College “are very friendly and kind,” but with respect to COVID, “I was really scared, too.”
Another type of fear was felt by new students who hail from Asia. Would they encounter vitriol and violence from Americans who wanted someone to blame for the COVID pandemic?
I spoke with T.G. Enkhtor, a new LLM student in Penn State Law, and he mentioned watching coverage of hate crimes on CNN and Fox News while still in his homeland of Mongolia. Said Enkhtor, “I saw a lot of videos where Asian- Americans were being attacked just because they were Asian during the initial phase of COVID. Because of my skin color, I was kind of afraid that things would be the same for me.”
But while he was still weighing his options for study in America, the young Mongolian attorney got encouraging input from Stephen Barnes, an assistant dean of Penn State Law who travels the world in search of qualified graduate students.
“Steve Barnes reassured me that State College is the place for me to be,” explained Enkhtor. “People here are very welcoming and they’re polite. It’s not like New York or other big cities. Everything is very cool.”
IT SEEMED LIKE CALCULUS
Although I can’t speak for every individual, I’m confident that most new international students felt good about their initial days at Penn State. Not only do the friendly folks of State College deserve some credit for that, but Penn State leaders who provided an effective orientation program for international students should be commended.
Richard Spicer, Penn State’s global student engagement coordinator, spearheaded the International Student Orientation (ISO) process. And his orientation leaders—Penn State students, mostly from other nations—joined him in going the extra mile to help the newbie internationals. In all, 750 international graduate students participated in pre-semester orientation at the University Park campus along with 570 international undergraduates.
“It’s been very challenging,” said Spicer. “As I was describing it to some of my colleagues, it was like we were doing calculus, which I’m very poor at.”
Not surprisingly, the primary bugaboo of our age—COVID-19—was the factor that elevated the normal complexity of ISO into mind-numbing calculus. Because of COVID, U.S. embassies struggled to process visa applications in a timely fashion. According to Spicer, “The most challenging piece has been knowing if the students were going to be able to make it here or not with their visas.”
Of course, many other factors turned ISO into a guessing game of sorts. “We were doing virtual orientation all summer long for international students,” Spicer noted, “and it was going very well. But then, as the summer was going on, we realized we needed to plan an in-person orientation for students when they arrived so they could feel welcomed and know more about what they were doing.”
All of that would have been tough enough, but add the fact that university officials were struggling to determine their COVID policies for the fall semester. “It was a challenge to plan orientation since we weren’t sure what was going to be feasible,” Spicer said.
So what was the secret sauce behind ISO’s success? “It was our orientation leaders,” Spicer said. “We saw them step up. I got emails from them at all hours and times of day because they were supporting students in different time zones. And they found ways to give their students tours that weren’t planned. We’ve had many of them working all summer and now (during ISO), very intensely. I’m very proud of the efforts they’ve put in.”
