June 11, 2008

The attraction for students is obvious:

Study on a campus in a beautiful part of the Pacific Northwest, where the climate is mild and the rugged Pacific Coast and equally dramatic Cascade Mountains are less than two hours away. Enjoy small classes taught by professors who are highly qualified and easily approachable.

But there's more:

Be prepared to pay nearly three times the usual tuition, to speak and be taught in a language that is not your native tongue. Then, leave family and friends and all else that is familiar behind to travel across oceans and continents to a small town in rural Polk County, Oregon.

Despite these and other challenges, increasing numbers of students from around the world are choosing to study at Western Oregon University. They come from China, Germany, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Japan, Kenya, Norway, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Taiwan and United Arab Emirates.

From 59 international students in fall 2005, the number has grown to 280 this year. Next year's projection is more than 350. It's expected that the growth in the international student population on the WOU campus will continue at this rate because of the vision of WOU president John Minahan and the energy of Neng Yang, Western's director of international students and scholars affairs.

Both Minahan and Yang have focused a good deal of their effort on bringing Chinese students to study at Western Oregon. This year, there are 167 students from China on the Monmouth campus.

"It's a long tradition for Asian families to send students to study overseas," Yang explained. "And in China, the U.S. is the first priority for international study."

Adapting to English

Like many Chinese students, Yulin Kang has chosen an American first name to use in this country. Linda, as she calls herself, fits the profile of a non-traditional student.

She arrived from Beijing in 2006 and entered WOU as a sophomore at the age of 38 to study business.

She's married, though her husband has remained in China because of his job. He visited Linda here once and will return for her June 14 graduation from WOU.

"I never thought I would come to the U.S. at all," Kang said, "and get a true bachelor's degree."

There have been challenges along the way for Kang. Like many international students, she found quite a difference in the English she learned in the classroom in her home country and English as used on an American campus.

And, like other international students have done, when she arrived at WOU, Kang enrolled in the non-credit English as a Second Language program, or ESL, to sharpen her ability to understand and speak the language.

Kang's fellow countryman, Shengnan Wang, found the language less difficult.

"When I was in China, my major was English," she said.

A business major at WOU, Wang plans to find an internship in the U.S. to do her practical training after her graduation.

Reminders of home

While most international students have adapted well to their Oregon experience, they still miss reminders of home, like traditional meals.

Japanese student Keiko Maruo arrived at WOU after attending high school in New Zealand and Southwest Oregon Community College in Coos Bay. She still enjoys the Asian cooking of her homeland and has found a place in Salem to supply her with the ingredients she needs. She says she's fortunate to have a friend who has a car and can take her to Salem to shop.

Paying their way

Most international students pay full non-resident tuition and fees.

For example, a non-resident undergraduate with a course load of 12 credits will pay $4,439 academic year, compared to a resident who pays $1,571.

Some, like Kenyan Francis Kamweti have received help from an International Community Service Program scholarship.

"For the first two years, I didn't have a scholarship. My parents helped me out," Kamweti said.

But the help from his parents went away when the Kenyan economy slumped and the value of the country's currency fell dramatically compared to the U.S. dollar.

Like a majority of WOU students, Kamweti has helped pay his way through college.

He has worked in the dining halls during the academic year and as a campus custodian between terms.

He lives with three American roommates, helping to ease his living expenses. Still, he knows the effort is worth it.

"Life is all about new experiences," he said. "Like coming to a new country where there are good universities, a good quality of education."

Americans benefit

The study-abroad experience does more than benefit international student participants. It provides education in international society and culture for other WOU students and faculty.

Few Western Oregon students have had a travel-abroad experience, and most have come from towns where the there is little diversity in the population.

Ulrike Metzler has been accepted into the WOU College of Education and on graduation will return to Germany to teach English. She has found her American student counterparts willing to listen and learn and has found opportunities to educate them.

"My experience is that they're really open," she said. "They need to learn history; they can't connect me with the history of my country of the past."

Kamweti says he surprises his American classmates. His native language is Kikuyu, but he speaks perfect English with a British accent.

"They say, 'We were brought up thinking Africans can't speak English; you speak English better than us,'" Kamweti said.

Western Oregon's strong connection with China has been especially beneficial to students and faculty.

The 31 students in the WOU Chamber Choir performed in China last December, and music professor Solveig Holmquist will teach in China this fall.

Other WOU faculty members in art, speech, education, criminal justice and computer science already have experienced teaching and learning in China.

Future plans are for Western Oregon University students to become what Neng Yang calls student ambassadors.

They will travel to Korea, Japan and China to interact with the citizens of those countries, to learn from them and to represent American education and culture.

Leta Edwards is a freelance writer. You may contact her at (503) 399-7344 or lnkilp@comcast.net.