EXCHANGE, INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS AREN'T THE SAME

Exchange students. International students. They are basically the same thing, right?

Wrong, say the people who work with these students every day.

People often use these labels interchangeably, said George Dordoni, assistant director of the Campus Assistance Center at Southeast Missouri State University. But they are actually two different types of students.

"Exchange programs and international programs are two different things," said Dordoni, who oversees international student orientation and immigration advising. Dordoni said the Intensive English program at Southeast segments the groups even more, because its participants do not have to be enrolled as students.

As the term implies, exchange students are the result of an exchange between schools from different countries. Southeast students pay tuition and fees at home before they leave to attend school abroad, said Dordoni, which lessens the cost of study abroad programs.

International students are students who leave their home to attend school in another country. They are processed by the university just as an American student is processed. Services are available, however, to assist these students with paperwork, language barriers and adjusting to a new environment.

Gerd Sollid, who was one of the first international students to attend Southeast, is quick to point out the difference between the two groups.

"I was not an exchange student," she said. "I received a scholarship from the Missouri Association of Women's Clubs, and I paid the same as a regular student."

According to Margaret Popham, who was the first international student adviser at Southeast, Sollid would have been an unusual student during her attendance at the university. The international student flow into the United States did not begin until after World War II, Popham said, and it remained relatively low until the mid- to late '70s.

Sollid "would have been very unusual in 1951," she said.

The number of international students at the university has dwindled since the decentralization of the campus Center for International Studies in 1992. Dordoni said there are a couple of reasons for the decline.

"The market for international students coming to the U.S. has changed," said Dordoni, and the university has stopped recruiting international students through a centralized effort.

Now individual colleges within the university recruit international students, said Dordoni. Each college has a coordinator and international committee, he said, who are charged with internationalizing the curriculum of the colleges.

All programs need to have a curriculum with international appeal, and they should work to create or sustain exchange programs within their academic departments, said Dordoni.

Southeast's College of Education received an award earlier this month for their efforts to internationalize. The college received an honorable mention from the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education Award for Exemplary Practice in Global/International Teacher Education.

"We think that we have an exemplary program regarding the international education we've been putting together for 10 years," said Dr. Deborah Wooldridge, associate dean of the College of Education.

Woolridge said Southeast received the award for programs such as "Student Teaching in Wales," "Counseling in England," and "The Harrogate Educational Partnership Program" in England. All are exchange programs for education majors.