The Xavierite
Saint Xavier University has been anticipating the arrival of the Chinese foreign exchange students to the Chicago campus, and an estimated arrival date has been set.
Students planning to travel from China to study in the United States are expected to arrive at Saint Xavier University by Fall 2015.
This is according to Academic Affairs Provost Paul DeVito, who also points out that the university may also bring in a handful of Chinese transfer students before Fall of 2015 as well.
Before the new date of Fall 2015, the arrival of the Chinese students to Saint Xavier was Fall 2014.
This original arrival date did not work out due to unforeseen circumstances with the agency that Saint Xavier University worked with to help acquire these students to come study abroad.
As explained by DeVito, the agency known as Dragon Horse had been working with Saint Xavier to help organize a group of students to come to the university by Fall 2014.
Everything was on track according to DeVito, but two weeks before the arrival date, the university was notified that the agency had failed to acquire students to come to Saint Xavier University.
This surprising news was upsetting to DeVito, who then decided the next course of action would be to take a more direct approach to helping bring Chinese students to Saint Xavier.
The current course of action as explained by DeVito, is that Saint Xavier University is now working directly with other universities within China to help setup transfers who will be finishing their education here at Saint Xavier’s Chicago campus.
As DeVito explained, there is a great affinity for Chinese students to come to the United States to study abroad and pursue an education.
There is a clear demand for higher education institutions in the United States, but DeVito explains that the real challenge is to help provide students overseas information on Saint Xavier University.
This is the reason why DeVito believed it was important to have staff who could directly coordinate and market Saint Xavier to students overseas in China.
Han Xiao is the university’s coordinator for the Chinese program that has been developed at Saint Xavier university for the past year.
Xiao works on methods to market Saint Xavier to students overseas in China.
As mentioned by Xiao, this marketing effort is no easy task, since many search engines and social media sites we use in the United States are not available in China.
Xiao believes this presents a unique challenge, but anything that can be overcome when the right message is sent through the university’s marketing efforts.
Xiao pointed out that many Chinese students spend a great deal of time researching American higher learning institutions and often use many types of ranking systems to narrow down their choices.
With this knowledge, Xiao has been working on materials that points out Saint Xavier’s rankings in various aspects.
As well, Xiao mentioned that there is a strong desire for Chinese students to come to the United States and study near major cities, something Saint Xavier can easily market because of its distance to downtown Chicago.
As of right now Xiao is focusing a great deal of his energy preparing these marketing materials in various forms and mediums to be sent overseas to China.
Xiao even pointed out that he is working with media services on campus to help film footage for a short ad designed to be shown to Chinese students interested in attending Saint Xavier.
When asked about how his responsibilities will shift once students arrive in Fall 2015, Xiao explained that his goal is to provide the incoming students with all the resources they will need upon arriving at Saint Xavier.
Two main areas of focus that Xiao has is to help the Chinese students traverse the language barrier and also to help them socialize with students on Saint Xavier’s campus.
Xiao plans to keep an open door policy that will allow for the transfer students from China to be able to speak with him about any issues they might have with acclimating to their new environment.
There also has been a great deal of effort put in for staff to become trained on how to conduct classroom work with Chinese students.
The ultimate goal according to Xiao is that both the Chinese students learn something about American culture, while the student body at Saint Xavier learn something about Chinese culture.
Xiao excitedly stated, “There is over 4000 years of Chinese history people can learn from, I hope it is something students here on campus can be able to learn from these students.”
This excitement of a cultural exchange was also apparent when speaking with Senior Education Major Stephanie Naegele.
Naegele stated, “I believe that international learning and knowledge drives students towards acceptance and understanding an array of different cultural perspectives.”
As the university waits, there is surely more that will come forward and develop on this story about the arrival of the Chinese students.
To stay aware of all the happenings of the Chinese program continue to read the Xavierite for more information.
Jake Alleruzzo
Senior News Editor