Abroad in Newberg: GFU’s International Student Program
Reported By: Sophia Lumsdaine
Photographed By: Allison Martinet
Brian Abine comes from a village in rural Rwanda, but he lived in the slums of Rwanda's capital, Kigali, while he attended a private school. Alison Gamboa spent her childhood in the suburbs of the metropolis of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Alejandro Del Cid grew up in the bustling city of La Esperanza Intibucá high in the mountains of Honduras. Traveling thousands of miles from their home countries, these three students decided to attend George Fox University (GFU) in Newberg, Ore., immersing themselves in a foreign environment and culture.
For Gamboa in particular, who grew up attending an international school, studying abroad had been a long-term goal. Abine similarly expressed that living in the United States was a dream-turned-reality. According to Abine, coming to the U.S. was “like opening a book and then just jumping in.”
In the basement of Minthorn, a poster board displays colorful photos of the home countries of current GFU international students. The variety is extensive: Argentina, Canada, China, Denmark, El Salvador, France, Germany, Honduras, India, Indonesia, New Zealand, Nigeria, Rwanda, Swaziland, Switzerland, Taiwan, and Vietnam. Recently, GFU has had an average of 50 international students per year, which includes undergraduate, graduate, doctoral, and optional practical training populations. Though numbers are small, the diversity of countries present at GFU is robust.
The variety of nationalities currently represented diverges from GFU’s international student program of five or ten years ago. Previously, the program primarily catered to and recruited from one particular school in China. Each year, close to 100 students from this school would study at GFU. Though international students are no longer as numerous as they were during this period, students now come from all over the globe instead of just that school in China.
Kerry Ford, the associate director for International Student Services, is primarily responsible for ensuring that students’ immigration status is legal and that the university can legally accommodate them. In doing this, she walks incoming international students through the admissions process and holds meetings with each individual, making sure they are on top of their visa status. She also works to ensure that the university as a whole, and all programs within the university, are certified to instruct international students.
Despite the bureaucracy involved with her work, Ford believes that she gets “to work with the most incredible student population.” She continued: “I really feel like I have the best job on campus.”
Coming to GFU as an international student is not easy. Students must pass an English proficiency exam, be interviewed by a government agency, and come to an unfamiliar country by themselves. Once here, they must adapt to a new environment where even seemingly simple tasks, like working a job or getting a driver’s license, are complicated.
Abine, Gamboa, and Del Cid experienced varying degrees of difficulty in their transition, but all agree that their integration into the GFU community was fairly smooth. “The culture change was a lot,” Del Cid said. “But people were definitely very welcoming.” He added that other students “were very intrigued by my culture. It was not just me trying to adapt to their culture.”
Though GFU has an extensive recruitment program for domestic students, nothing of this sort exists to bring international students to the university. All three students interviewed agreed that increasing the international student body would be beneficial both for domestic students and students from other countries.
“It’s a privilege to study abroad,” Gamboa explained, so expanding the international program at GFU would open the doors for more students who might otherwise not have this opportunity. Abine noted that “many people here have a really narrow knowledge of what's actually going on out there [in the world].”
“It’s a two-way relationship,” he continued. With a strong international program, he said, “you’re helping [international students] achieve their dreams, and you’re helping yourself by exposing local students to that kind of environment.”