Think globally,
act locally
...Maryville
Global Connection
NAFSA Award
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| Think globally, |
NAFSA Award
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My wife and I have learned over more than a dozen years that developing relationships with students -- especially college-age -- and journalists from around the world is a satisfying and rewarding experience.
In fact, when we moved to Maryville, Tenn., in June 2000 we found that we longed for the contact with international students that we had enjoyed in our "previous life" in La Crosse, Wis.
Through my work as a newspaper reporter with the La Crosse Tribune, Ethel and I also hosted each summer a journalist participating in the
World Press Institute program of Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn.
The combination of both programs brought into our home more than 30 students and journalists who became part of our family. Our two sons and a daughter and their children -- all of whom live away from us -- had opportunities to meet many of their new international siblings.
All of us have been enriched.
Through birthday parties, shared meals, shopping, quiet chats, holiday celebrations, sight-seeing excursions, etc., we learned first-hand the customs of other regions, the lifestyles and the expectations and frustrations of living, studying, working, surviving in a foreign land. News from the four corners of the world became more real, took on more meaning, when we could place a face and a name in that otherwise distant spot.
We have since visited some of those students who have returned to their home countries, and we have kept in touch with most through e-mail and other means.
Soon after Ethel and I arrived in Maryville, we stopped in the international education office of Maryville College. Maryville is a small (about 1,000 students), private, church-supported four-year institution. Most of its 30 or so international
students are enrolled in the college's one-semester English language program. A few remain for more language training or a bachelor's degree; others transfer to other colleges to continue their education; most return home.
In a meeeting with the "International House" director Kelly Franklin, we described our experiences in La Crosse and asked if Maryville had a similar program of matching students with local families. Franklin said no, but he and his staff would appreciate, encourage and support any attempt we made to develop such a program.
I talked with the new students -- they came from Japan, Korea, Venezuela, Colombia, Iran, and elsewhere -- during their orientation week at Maryville in September and explained the proposed program. Twenty said they would be interested in having a local family.
Although we were new in the community, we started calling people who had previously shown interested in international connections through hosting students for holiday weekends or short-term programs at the college. We found a family for every one of the students who wanted one. Some families accepted more than one student.
Almost as important, Ethel and I developed ties with Alfonso from Colombia, Julio from Puerto Rico, and Zuyeli and Karol from Venezuela. And they learned something about the United States and how some people live in this area.
We will keep it going -- with those people, with new students and with local families who want to build cultural bridges.
Long the motto of environmentalists, this credo also can be applied to building cultural bridges...And it will be the underlying message here.
Beginning in 1989 we were actively involved in an organization called "La Crosse Friends of International Students," which matched interested students at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse with local families on a friendship -- not a live-in -- basis.
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