When Nicholas Jackson noticed Shelley Wang looking over the bus schedules in E.S. Bird Library, he thought she looked a little confused.

Jackson, who spent over a year teaching in China, thought he would help and started speaking to her in Chinese. Wang, an international student from China, was amazed he had reached out.

Wang finds it easy to get along with her American peers. ‘But sometimes I feel kind of lonely,’ she said.

Despite the almost 3,000 international students studying at Syracuse University, foreign students and their American peers say there is still a lack of integration. With the university campaigning for more geographic diversity, the number of international students is on the rise. This year’s addition of 299 first-year and transfer international students — 130 alone from China — has caused university programs to try to do more to ease the transition, even as they face a strain in resources.

At SU’s Lillian and Emanuel Slutzker Center for International Services, students are invited to socialize with people from various cultures. For students who do not have a solid grasp of English, they may attend group meetings to go over the language.

In the Slutzker Center’s downstairs lounge Wednesday, an instructor went over American idioms to a group of about 10 foreign students.

‘Going Dutch,’ the leader of the session said, pausing for students to offer a reply. ‘It’s terribly American,’ he said before describing the phrase as the cultural habit of going out to eat and sharing the expense.

Pat Burak, director of the Slutzker Center, said it has been preparing since the summer to handle the increased number of students. The center received funding for a fall semester program, Connections, that provides additional mentors to reach out to new students.

But the request for an additional foreign student adviser filed in August has gone unmet, Burak said. Already her staff is working more than 40 hours a week.

The beginning of the year is the most difficult, as the center workers must make sure SU’s records match with all the students here through a student visa, Burak said. Should the university ever be under a government audit and be found to have neglected this paperwork, SU could lose its student visa privilege.

International students have resources at SU, but they should also explore campus, Burak said.

‘Open yourself up to all the new experiences, don’t seclude yourself from new experiences because you’re afraid or because you might not fit in,’ Burak said.

But often, students — Americans and internationals — will form cliques, she said.

Jackson, who reached out to Wang in the library, received a doctorate from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs in European history and political thought in 2006, but he is still frequently at Bird doing research on Sino-Western relations. He said he has many international friends.

‘I’ve found that the international students will tend to congregate with each other because it’s difficult to break into circles of Americans,’ Jackson said.

But the issue is a two-way street. Jackson said it can be hard for anyone at college to make friends and that it is often magnified by the pre-formed campus cliques.

‘How are we going to make friends with the basketball players or the boy in fraternity X or the girl in sorority Y?’ he said.

Interacting with others all depends on the person, said Wang, a sophomore television, radio and film major from Shanghai. Wang said she tries to become involved on campus and is part of CitrusTV and the Renee Crown University Honors Program. And many other international students she knows from China are not involved in greek life, she said.

She said spending time with fellow international students helped her cope with sometimes being lonely. On the weekends, Wang said she will likely go to the movies or out to dinner with other Chinese students. She said she has seen that it is hard for Chinese students to interact with the American students because the Chinese students might have learned English in grade school, but they did not learn about American culture.

This year she is living with other Chinese students, but next year she plans to live with her freshman-year roommate, Devon Beebe, a sophomore communication sciences and disorders major from New Jersey.

Last Thanksgiving, Wang went with Beebe to New Jersey for the school holiday. Beebe, who is currently studying abroad in France, requested to live in an International Living-Learning Community. She said when she discovered her roommate would be from Shanghai, she was excited the two would be able to learn about things from another perspective.

‘Meeting people from different countries helps me to realize how large the world is, how many views on issues there are, how many ways there are to express oneself and how much more open I must be to cultures, languages and points of view in order to be successful in this world,’ Beebe said in an e-mail from France.

The secret to living abroad is admitting you have something to learn, said Brian Sheehan, an associate professor in advertising and part of the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communication’s diversity community.

Sheehan worked abroad with the Saatchi and Saatchi advertising firm in Japan, Hong Kong and Australia. He said living abroad can be rewarding if the person chooses to open him or herself up to new experiences and find common ground in a new place. The same can be said about American and international students at SU.

‘It’s challenging on both sides,’ Sheehan said. ‘Often American students misunderstand the quietness of international students.’

American students should make the effort to meet international students, Sheehan said. He said interacting with an international student could be more interesting than meeting another American.

But integration is not always easy. Isabel Dong, a sophomore advertising major, said she typically spends time with other Korean students, who she said she has more in common with and more to talk about. Although she was born in the United States, her first language is Korean, and she has lived in South Korea since she was 8 years old.

‘When you go into the dining hall, you can see the race groups interacting with each other,’ Dong said.

But Burak, director of the Slutzker Center, said there is cultural interaction all over campus. This weekend will be an event to celebrate Diwali, Indians and Hindus’ festival of light. She said the annual event typically sells out of the 600 tickets available.

Burak said she knows she is optimistic about getting different cultures to interact with each other. Someone can’t be forced to go to a Chinese New Year celebration or documentary on world water issues, she said. She said she would like to see students hold onto their own culture while exploring many others.

Burak said she found the balance between gaining cultural knowledge and holding onto one’s background is best described in a poem by Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko.

‘‘Absorb all cultures, forget not your own,” Burak said. ‘And I think this is a great motto to live by.’

dkmcbrid@syr.edu

Published on November 3, 2010 at 12:00 pm

Contact Dara: dkmcbrid@syr.edu | @daramcbride