Leaving home and moving to college is often a difficult transition for students. This transition, however, is even harder for students who attend college outside of their native country — particularly if they never lived abroad.
The Lehigh International Peer Program is a pilot program implemented with the purpose of helping international students ease into the new environment they face in the United States. Lehigh students serve as mentors and assist international students through their cultural transition into college.
The program attracts students who are interested in learning about different cultures and international affairs. Domestic and international students benefit because it provides an opportunity to meet students of different ethnic and social backgrounds.
The program mentors befriend people from other countries, understand the difficulties international students may face in the United States and have a desire to help students with these issues.
Ileana Exaras, ’18, was inspired to create the program during her freshman year as she had experienced the difficulties of moving to a new country. Exaras was born in the U.S., but was raised in Greece until the age of 14, when she moved back to New York City.
“I wanted to make sure that no one had to go through that,” Exaras wrote in an email. “The mentality was very different and I had a hard time appreciating and seeing the beauty that a new place could offer.”
First-year international students can apply to be mentees in the beginning of May, and any Lehigh undergraduate interested in cross-cultural learning and international affairs can apply to be a mentor for the program. Once accepted into the program, both mentors and mentees are expected to fully commit through the duration of the semester and maintain good standing with the university.
Mentors will go through a two-hour intercultural training program. The training helps prepare students to deal with cultural differences that may arise. During the summer, mentors and mentees are paired based on similar interests. The number of mentees assigned to a mentor ultimately depends on how many incoming international students there are in a given year.
The program lasts one semester, during which mentors and mentees meet twice a week and participate in a range of activities, such as social events or studying together for classes. While the program only a lasts a semester, students are encouraged to stay in contact afterwards.
Havana Blehl, ’18, was interested in integrating international students into the Lehigh community and saw the Lehigh International Peer Program as a way to help others assimilate.
“I joined the program because I have traveled extensively and interacted with many people from many cultures, and have also experienced being in a different country with language barriers that were difficult to overcome,” Blehl wrote in an email. “Being a part of the peer program in its pilot year was the best way to exercise that passion.”
Some challenges the new program has faced is consistency among mentees and mentors. Nevertheless, Exaras is optimistic.
“The program is only a year old and we’ve had great turnout,” she said. “For next year, we’ve come up with new plans to encourage integration in the Lehigh community.”
Jennifer Topp, Lehigh’s manager of international connections, is also optimistic about the goals the program has for the future.
“We are still working out the program’s structure — our hope is that it expands to meeting more international students’ needs (including graduate students) and that it becomes more of a student-run program with our office acting in an advisory position,” Topp said. “We know that for a program to be sustainable, it has to have student buy-in and hopefully Lehigh’s commitment to globalization will influence students to want to mentor our incoming international population.”
One of the most successful events the program has hosted thus far has been Lehigh After Dark ice skating, which was attended by more than 100 students.
The Lehigh International Peer Program has served to help expand the interactions between international and American students. Exaras said the tendency observed across schools in America is that international students tend to stick with other international students only.
“Through the Lehigh International Peer Program, we’ve seen new friendships develop among various cultures, new ideas and information exchanged, and even a few new words in different languages learned,” Exaras said.
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