Stevens Receives Grant to Promote Korean Awareness

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Helen L. Stevens, director of international students and scholar services at the University at Buffalo, has received a grant of approximately $9,000 from NAFSA: Association of International Educators to coordinate and host a three-day Korea workshop in Buffalo for international educators nationwide.

NAFSA, with funding from the U.S. Information Agency, is sponsoring the program to promote interest at UB and in the local community about contemporary Korea and to highlight the flourishing Korean Studies Program at UB. Additional resources for the program will come from the Fulbright Korean-American Educational Commission (KAEC) in Seoul, South Korea.

Scheduled for October, the workshop, "Korea In Transition: A Workshop for International Educators," will target those involved in international education, including foreign student and study-abroad advisors, teachers of English as a second language and admissions officers.

At UB, the number of Korean students has increased from 204 in 1988 to 350 this year, making it the university's largest international population for the current academic year. Approximately 36,000 Korean students attend U.S. colleges and universities nationwide, contributing to the need for Korean awareness in U.S. institutions of higher education.

Stevens, who came to UB in 1988, has traveled extensively abroad. Last spring she was one of six people nationwide awarded a grant to spend three weeks abroad as a guest of an Overseas Educational Advising Center, which she spent at the KAEC in Seoul.

Stevens holds a bachelor's degree from Georgetown College in Kentucky and a master's degree from the University of Kentucky.