Interviews contributed by Travon Ricketts
With diversity comes various cultures, beliefs and experiences, and WCU’s international student community serves as a prime example.
The international admissions counselor at Western, Scarlette Briones, wrote in an email that WCU has about 150 international students representing over 30 countries. The highest population comes from Saudi Arabia followed by various European and Asian countries. About 94 percent are undergraduate students and the remaining 6 percent are graduate students.
“As far as the percentage of international students at WCU, we come in at about 1.5 percent,” said Briones. “This percentage is typical for a regional and mid-size university like WCU, which would be 1-2 percent.”
According to Briones, the international student population can be broken down into three categories: degree seekers, exchange students and SKEMA exchange students.
Degree seeking students can be freshmen, transfer, graduate or doctoral students. These students can stay at WCU anywhere from a semester to four years.
The exchange students come from one of the 33 bilateral university partners or International Student Exchange Program (ISEP). These students stay for either one or two semesters.
SKEMA, a global business school, exchange students receive degrees from their home university and WCU. They usually stay at WCU for two years.
Among the international students, the most popular majors are electrical engineering, various business related majors and the emergency medical care (EMC) program.
Since international students make up a minority here on campus, we wanted to include their voice in our podcast series.
If you or anyone you know has faced discrimination or bias here on campus, you can report it online through the complaints and concerns website page or contact student affairs at (828) 227-7147.
If you would like to share your story, you can contact WCJ’s advisor at kspasovska@email.wcu.edu.
Click below to listen to our episode on international students.
Audio edited by Garrett Readling
