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Mentors help students acclimate to UB
International student Jun Byung Park, right, poses in Niagara Square in downtown Buffalo with his mentor, Anthony Glaraga, an architecture major and study abroad student.
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“We’d been concerned for some time about some international students who become extremely isolated.”
Leaving family and friends to travel halfway around the world to a strange culture and environment can become an isolating experience for the many international students who enter UB each year. To help stem that feeling and provide more of a welcome mat, the International Student Mentoring Program was implemented during the fall semester. The initial responses are a welcome sign.
“The mentoring program gave me lots of valuable things during my first semester,” says mentee Jun Byung Park, a South Korean native who found through his research that UB is the optimal school to pursue the study of law. “When I came to UB a few months ago, many things, such as culture of America, university life, are not familiar to me. However, my mentor and professors helped me to live at UB very comfortably. My mentor helped me to reduce the culture gap between USA and my country through introducing lots of valuable American culture and society.”
Park’s comments were among the many evaluations that gave high marks to the new program, a joint effort of the Office of International Student and Scholar Services (ISSS) and Counseling Services.
“We’d been concerned for some time about some international students who become extremely isolated,” explains Ellen Dussourd, ISSS director. “Counseling Services has observed international students in counseling who lack social support, and as a result become depressed. Students who leave behind their families and friends have to come here and form new support systems, and not everyone is outgoing enough to do that. We’re hoping through this program to provide social programs where students would meet other people.”
The program was adapted to UB based on a model that Xuhua Qin, Counseling Services psychologist and mentoring program advisor, helped develop as a graduate student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. After she came to UB a year and a half ago, she proposed the idea to ISSS. “I see this program as a bridge for international students to develop new social connections, helping them to become more familiar with the academic culture,” says Qin.
The intent of the program was to gather a maximum of 50 mentors, each of whom would be paired with two newly arrived international students. The mentors would include professional staff members, domestic students who have demonstrated an interest in learning about other cultures, such as those in Study Abroad programs, and students whose academic and career goals may be enhanced through participation in such a program.
The first semester of the program brought together 42 mentors with 83 mentees. The mentors included 19 professional staff members, 15 returning Study Abroad students, and eight junior and senior psychology students. The majority of mentees were Chinese, with the rest from South Korea, India, Germany, Malaysia, Pakistan, Peru and Japan.
Jessica Ereiz, international student advisor in ISSS, is mentoring program coordinator. She is involved in matching mentors with mentees according to their responses on application forms and during focus groups, trying to determine the best pairings personality-wise. The mentoring groups were asked to meet once every two weeks during the semester, with a variety of activities suggested.
“The initial response was very good, especially from professional staff mentors, as well as our returning Study Abroad students,” says Ereiz. “The big difficulty that many people faced was organizing a time to meet. Some met with their mentees a few times for lunch during the semester, others took trips to Niagara Falls, went to the mall, walked around towns in the area from Williamsville to Lewiston, even went ice fishing, and some (mentees) were invited to Thanksgiving dinner.”
Melanie Buhrmaster-Bunch, director of corporate relations in the Office of Development, says she volunteered to become a mentor because of her love of travel and felt that this was a great way to learn about different cultures. She was paired with two Chinese students, but ended up having three when one of the girls’ roommates came along on most of the activities.
“My girls are of more of a traditional Chinese mindset, not at all Americanized. They were looking at everything about American culture, from food to hobbies,” says Buhrmaster-Bunch. “Their English is impeccable. They’ve been speaking English since middle school—it’s a requirement. Little by little, I’m learning Chinese—a very hard language to learn, but they help me.”
She says they met seven times during the semester, engaging in such activities as visiting the Albright-Knox Art Gallery and shopping for winter boots. One of the girls who did not return home during winter break was invited to Buhrmaster-Bunch’s house for Christmas Eve. “She had never celebrated Christmas before, so she was really interested in seeing what we do.”
Julie Ficarra, an international studies and anthropology major, has been in Study Abroad programs in Tanzania, England and the Czech Republic. “I know how it feels to be in a place totally foreign to you and it would have been nice to have a local mentor when I was abroad. So I thought if I could provide that support to an international student at UB, then why not,” she says.
The graduate students she mentored were invited to her house for a taco dinner, and they all went to a pumpkin patch to choose pumpkins for carving. “One of my mentees came to a few parties with me and my friends, then came to my house a few weeks later and cooked this amazing Chinese feast for me and my housemates,” says Ficarra. “It was an amazing experience overall. I really think we helped each other. I look forward to continuing the program next semester and strongly encourage others to consider it.”
Sean Brodfuehrer, coordinator of the Graphics & Presentations Department, Capital Facilities and Space Planning, remembers when he was a Study Abroad student in the School of Architecture and Planning and had one journey to Rome that was challenging without a mentor. “We met about once a week,” he says of his UB mentees. “We also took the bus and train so they could become familiar with using the transit system to get around. I knew many people who spent four or five years in Buffalo but never actually went off or far from campus to explore the benefits the region has to offer. The history, architecture and culture of Western New York are something that we should show off.”
Ci Fu, a biological sciences major from middle China and one of Brodfuehrer’s mentees, says his experience was very helpful. “We discussed all kinds of problems we had during our daily living and studying. Sean helped us solve a lot of questions.”
Yuan Li, an urban planning major from Beijing, concurs about the mentorship with Brodfuehrer. “He helped me to know more about traditions, culture, people, buildings, history and food here. You know this means a lot to a student in urban planning.”
While the program has enough mentors for the upcoming spring semester, Ereiz emphasizes the need for more volunteers next fall when the majority of new international students arrive. Staff members who do not normally have contact with students are especially encouraged to apply since a secondary goal of the program is to foster a global mindset in staff through meaningful interaction and shared experiences with international students.
“The experience was wonderful, and I would totally advocate it for students in the future,” says Madeeha Shams, a biophysical sciences major from Pakistan. “I felt a much stronger sense of belonging by being able to communicate so comfortably with an American.”
Those interested in becoming a mentor can click here to access the mentor application. For more information about the program, call 645-2258 or e-mail Ereiz at jlkumro@buffalo.edu.
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