Going off to grad school can seem like entering a foreign country - especially to those coming from one.
The Graduate and Professional Student Assembly International Council is creating two programs to help international graduate students make this transition by connecting them with peer and alumni mentors.
One program will unite current international students with incoming international students to help them adjust to daily life at Penn. The mentor will provide useful information on things such as coursework, housing and transportation.
The other program will pair current international students with alumni who were international students but now reside in the United States and work in a variety of different industries.
Several other groups on campus - such as the Pan-Asian American Community House - have similar peer mentoring programs for specific groups of students.
GAPSA's new program, however, would not necessarily pair students who hail from the same native country.
Shiella Cervantes, associate director of PAACH, said their peer mentoring program currently serves solely the undergraduate community. She added that PAACH would consider expanding it to include graduate students only if the program could grow while maintaining the mission's original goals.
Peer mentoring programs are a good way to not only involve people in the community, but to transition them academically, mentally and socially, said Cervantes.
GAPSA vice chairman for international affairs and Engineering Masters student Omar Khan, who is heading both mentoring initiatives, said he hopes to unite incoming students with their peer mentors before the fall semester starts to make the transition for the newcomers as easy as possible.
He also expressed enthusiasm for the alumni mentoring program, though.
"I'm sure a lot of students will be interested," Khan said, "especially because the job situation right now is quite bad."
This program is different from other similar programs because of the specific group of alumni that it targets, said Elise Betz, Penn's executive director of Alumni Relations.
It also spans alumni from all graduate schools at Penn, rather than being limited to specific programs, she added.
Betz said people working at the Sweeten Alumni House will be involved in the program by providing GAPSA with data on over 3,000 alumni to help start the program. They will also assist with the program's future communications, marketing and data.
"It's going to be very successful," Betz said. "Our alumni love the chance to talk to current students and other young alumni."
Khan said his primary concern is informing students of the initiatives and gauging interest. To this end, he said he plans to contact other country-specific student groups to advertise and gain support for the programs.
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