The Office of International Education is help­ing Ferris become more diverse and enrich­ing the lives of stu­dents such as Solomon Okiotorhoro.

Okiotorhoro is an inter­na­tional stu­dent from Nigeria who arrived at FSU six months ago. He is study­ing mechan­i­cal engi­neer­ing and has high hopes for his future.

Coming from Nigeria, Okiotorhoro is already rel­a­tively flu­ent in English. However, when he first arrived at his new home in Big Rapids, many peo­ple had a dif­fi­cult time under­stand­ing his words.

“Back home [in Nigeria] I took English, but it was a dif­fer­ent form of it. The accents are just dif­fer­ent,” Okiotorhoro said. “When I first got here, when I spoke to peo­ple they could not under­stand what I was try­ing to say because of the way I sounded.”

Although Okiotorhoro has faced a num­ber of chal­lenges com­ing from a dif­fer­ent coun­try, there have been pos­i­tive expe­ri­ences for him as well. The one thing that has sur­prised him the most is how nice the peo­ple are in Big Rapids.

“Once back at home, I was look­ing for a CD to buy and I was asked to leave the store because I was star­ing at the CDs for too long. Here, peo­ple are a lot nicer,” Okiotorhoro said.

He added, “When you want to buy some­thing from a store, they treat you more kindly than they do at home. I have just met so many nice peo­ple here.”

Included in the peo­ple who strive to help inter­na­tional stu­dents are those of the International Education Office, he added.

According to Dr. Piram Prakasam, direc­tor of the Office of International Education, the office is work­ing very hard with orga­ni­za­tions around cam­pus to get a more diverse group of peo­ple involved with help­ing stu­dents adapt.

“The International Office pairs up with dif­fer­ent depart­ments and offices around cam­pus to present dif­fer­ent oppor­tu­ni­ties for stu­dents,” Prakasam said. “We want them to learn from one another. That’s why we work so closely with many places.”

At the begin­ning of October, the Office of International Education put on the International Education Week. This week-long event offered things such as guest speak­ers, video pre­sen­ta­tions, the study abroad fair, and the Eve of Nations Dinner event.

It was a time for the office to talk about all of the ser­vices offered, as well as show­case where the inter­na­tional stu­dents are from and what is spe­cial to them.

FSU cur­rently has 235 inter­na­tional stu­dents from 40 dif­fer­ent countries–the increase being about 75 per­cent since spring 2010. Saudi Arabia, Canada, China, India, and Nigeria have the high­est num­ber of stu­dents study­ing at Ferris.

“Our hope is to increase to 600 inter­na­tional stu­dents and our goals are to glob­al­ize the cam­pus and to sup­port glob­al­iz­ing our cur­ricu­lum,” Prakasam said.