Try to remember sitting in the required English 151 (1510) class, complaining about the pointlessness of the work and loathing, scanning through the numerous comments and corrections from pretentious Ph.D. candidates specializing in eastern European Cold War-era literature or Renaissance-era iambic pentameter structure or any other strangely specific and arguably unnecessary topic. Remember looking over the seemingly endless list of corrections, empathizing with the overworked red pen. A poetic empathy.
Now try to imagine sitting through the boring English 1510 class without a full grasp of the English language.
Thousands of students from across the world choose to at-tend Ohio University every year for different reasons. Students from Asia, Europe, the Americas and the Middle East all study in Athens, joining hundreds of thousands of international students throughout the country.
Total international student enrollment in the United States increased six percent between 2011 and 2012, reaching a record high of 764,495 international students, according to a 2012 report released by the Institute of International Education. International students comprise nearly four percent of total students in higher education. Currently, 1,881 international students from across the globe study at Ohio University.
Krista McCallum Beatty, Director of the Ohio University International Student and Faculty Services, took interest in the global community as an undergraduate after playing in a chance pickup game of volley-ball with a group of Chinese graduate students.
“I didn’t speak any Mandarin; their English was okay, but we spoke volleyball,” McCallum Beatty said.
After developing friend-ships with many international students, McCallum Beatty decided to focus on helping international students at the college level as a career.
International Students and Faculty Services help students and faculty with immigration forms, visas, passports and other paperwork to legally study in the United States. They also offer advice for international students from finding off campus housing, buying car insurance and figuring out the United States health care system to connecting with domestic students, adapting to college life in the United States and learning English.
International students from China, India, South Korea, Sau-di Arabia and Canada comprise 56 percent of all international students in the United States. Nearly 200,000 international students throughout the United States come from China. With the number of Chinese students applying to colleges and fewer students gaining entrance to the top Chinese universities, students opt for a move to the United States.
Huan Li, the treasurer or the Ohio University International Student Union originally from Shiyan, a city in northwestern China, says Chinese students take English exams before applying to colleges in the United States. Li says many Chinese students look at universities in the United States.
“Of course, many of them want to go to United States or go abroad in some other country, but not all of us has the, can’t afford the tuition fee,” Li said. “But if they have the money, most of them will choose to study abroad.”
Business management and engineering, the most popular majors among international students, combine for at 22 percent and 19 percent of all international students, respectively. Li studies accounting and mathematics and looked at the University of St. Louis, Kent State and a university in New York in addition to Ohio University. With Ohio University slightly closer to major cities on the east coast and a higher ranking than Kent State, Li ended up in Athens. To keep in touch with family and friends back in China, Li uses Skype and the popular smart phone app, WeChat.
“Every Chinese (student) use WeChat,” Li says.
While little reminds Li of home, the lively college town inhabited mostly by students around the same age helped with the transition. Li also appreciates the beauty of the campus.
“I think the environment is the best,” Li says. “The buildings. I like the stairs and the sky in the United States is really blue.”
The hardest part of adapting to life in Athens proved to be the lack of convenient and quick public transportation. Luckily, with a bustling community of Chinese students at Ohio University, Li quickly made friends with cars willing to make the drive to Walmart or Kroger. McCallum Beatty says the transportation issue affects all students.
“That challenge isn’t that different for an undergrad coming from Columbus or Cleveland where they had their own car at home or, depending on the city, maybe more extensive public transportation,” McCallum Beatty said.
McCallum Beatty says many international students choose to study in the United States for reasons outside of academics. Liis Kullerkan comes from Estonia, a country bordering Russia and across the Baltic Sea from Sweden and Finland. The senior majors in international business and marketing and plays on the Ohio University Volleyball team. In fact, the outside hitter really only ever considered attending Ohio University after receiving a full athletic scholarship.
International students contributed nearly $23 billion to the United States economy in 2012, and 64 percent of international students rely on personal and family funds. Students in Estonia learn a little about universities in the United States in high school, but typically lack the financial means to cover the high cost of college tuition in the United States.
“Mostly (Estonians) come here for athletic scholarships,” Kullerkan says. “Otherwise it would be way too expensive for someone from Estonia to come here to study.”
Kullerkan says the only knowledge of college life in the United States came from a volleyball friend who studied and played on the volleyball team at the University of Arkansas.
“I talked to a couple of schools through connections, but my decision was solely that this was the only good option,” Kullerkan said.
Kullerkan fell in love with the beautiful campus and the students.
“People are much more friendly, open here,” Kullerkan said. “If you see someone in the street, they’re always ‘Hi, how are you?’ In Europe if you say that to someone you assume you stop on the street and keep the conversation going.”
The biggest adjustment to college life, interestingly enough, proved to be adjusting to a different style of volley-ball. However, playing on the volleyball team gives Kullerkan opportunities to see parts of the United States many domestic students rarely see. McCallum Beatty says being an international student athlete comes with several extra benefits.
“Being a collegiate athlete, a varsity athlete here, there are systems in place to help support that students, you know, from Athens or from Beijing don’t have,” McCallum Beatty said.
Kullerkan says students often complain of feeling homesick, but found a home away from home when the grandparents of a friend took her in.
“I’m going to be probably more sad to leave them versus like leaving home to come to college here when I go back,” Kullerkan said.
Still many students enjoy the rural campus and surrounding area of Ohio University.
“Athens is very, very rural for most of our international students,” McCallum Beatty said “Most of them actually love it. A common comment is, ‘Athens is a great place to be an international student, because there’s nothing else to do here but study.’ Which isn’t true, but I think it is a real advantage.”
American students also take advantage of increased globalization and the ability to travel throughout the world through study abroad programs. In 2012, nearly 274,000 students received academic credit for study abroad programs, most studying in the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, France or China. In 2011, 64 percent of all study abroad students were women. Nearly 26,000 U.S. students studied abroad in China in 2011.
“Not only do we have record numbers of students coming to the U.S., we have record numbers of students studying outside their home country, globally,” McCallum Beatty says.
The increased movement globally helps increase under-standing the embracement of other cultures. Person-to-person understanding benefits everyone and helps lead to a global society with common goals of peace and sustainability. McCallum Beatty remembers one student in particular who summed up the benefits of studying abroad as an international student in one sentence.
“The highlight of his experience was learning that Americans aren’t anything like what the media in his home country portrayed,” McCallum Beatty says.
Jacob Betzner 