Honors, international students to live together in Global Village
Working collaboratively to enrich the lives of Utah State University students by enhancing their cultural experience, USU Housing Services, Study Abroad, International Students and Scholars, and Honors advisers are implementing what they hope will be a close-knit multicultural community for Fall Semester.
To be known as Global Village, this community will consist of about 40 Honors students and 40 international students to reside in the San Juan residence hall under the direction of a resident faculty member with international interests.
“We are now in a global society,” said Interim Director of International Students and Scholars Craig LaRocco. “As a result, we should be training our students to live in such a society.”
This idea has been in the making for the past three-and-a-half years, said Director of Honors Program and Service Learning David Lancy.
“The Honors students wanted a further avenue to enhance their own cultural awareness,” LaRocco said.
He said that while the Global Village is a major goal in itself, it is also just part of a larger goal of improving the experience provided by on-campus housing at USU.
“This is a minor step in a larger educational process. The Global Village itself will be one of the crown jewels of student housing. Students will walk away from the experience having lived the culture.”
And residents of Global Village will indeed live the culture, Lancy said.
Activities for those living in Global Village as well as for all other Honors students and members of Foreign Student Associations will include ethnic food pot-lucks, cultural nights in which a specific nationality is spotlighted with traditional clothing, foods, and music, and foreign film nights.
Lancy said they are also planning on having faculty members and special guest speakers show slides of countries they have visited while teaching students a little about a specific culture.
Events such as folk dance classes, field trips to national parks and cultural events can also be looked forward to, Lancy said.
In addition to all of this, each resident will be encouraged to add to the colorful decorative scheme of the multicultural community, he said.
“We want to give students the desire to be on campus,” Lancy said. “One of the main reasons for doing this is to extend students’ education beyond the classroom.”
Coordinator for the Study Abroad Program Kay Forsyth said the international students will come primarily from the European countries of Spain, the Netherlands, France and England.
But Forsyth said she also expects students from Mexico, Japan, Africa and the Philippines to be among the residents.
“We would like to make campus more internationally diverse,” she said.
Forsyth feels Global Village will prove an asset to both Honors students and international students.
She said it will provide an environment where several nationalities can come together to grow and learn from each other, providing them with the unique opportunity to create a multicultural family while building essential personal connections and friendships.
Global Village will be coalesced with other learning communities Fall Semester, which will include Washakie and Circle of Dreams for students interested in Native America, Aldo Leopold for those with environmental interests, Vector for residents who wish to pursue an engineering career, World of Business for students with business interests, and The Life! for those in the College of Family Life who want to make a difference for others.
More information about USU’s academic housing programs and housing applications are available at webbie.hsg.usu.edu/housing.