{"id":10934,"date":"2019-10-19T22:58:54","date_gmt":"2019-10-20T06:58:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wou.edu\/westernhowl\/?p=10934"},"modified":"2019-10-19T22:58:54","modified_gmt":"2019-10-20T06:58:54","slug":"interested-in-broadening-your-horizons-and-making-lasting-connections-consider-the-conversation-partner-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/interested-in-broadening-your-horizons-and-making-lasting-connections-consider-the-conversation-partner-program\/","title":{"rendered":"Interested in broadening your horizons and making lasting connections? Consider the Conversation Partner Program."},"content":{"rendered":"

Sage Kiernan-Sherrow<\/b><\/span> | News Editor<\/span><\/p>\n

How does one form community when they are on a foreign campus miles away from home? The conversation partners program at Western seeks to provide a solution by connecting international and domestic students together.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Currently, the international students of Western represent approximately 2.5% of the campus community. For their first term living at Western, they are automatically enrolled in the conversation partner\u2019s program. Director of International Student Academic Support and Linguistics Professor, Dr. Troyer, described the program as, \u201ca wealth of information for international students.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

It works like this: domestic students either volunteer independently or participate as a part of certain classes to become partners with an international student or two. Students are paired together based on their schedules and interests and once paired, they meet on a weekly basis to discuss anything of particular relevance, from music taste to language-learning skills to events happening on campus or in the surrounding valley. The goal, according to Dr. Troyer, \u201cis cultural connection \u2026 broadening your worldview and connecting with people, finding out why they are here, what their motivation is.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The program was established in 2007 and was much smaller then, almost doubling in size since its conception. However, the international student population has dwindled. Dr. Troyer cited \u201ceconomic changes (and) U.S policy and immigration issues\u201d as reasons, even mentioning gun violence as a consideration.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Despite this, Dr. Troyer asserts that the conversation partner program is still making positive changes in student\u2019s lives, recalling one particular student who \u201chad always lived in Oregon and towards the end of her freshman year had heard about the conversation partner program, signed up, and \u2026 completely changed her college and career trajectory \u2026 (she) went to China to teach \u2026 and is now working on her masters in TESOL at UofO.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

On a smaller scale, Dr. Troyer remembers a time where he went to Sing Fey\u2019s \u2014 a local downtown Chinese eatery \u2014 and observed \u201ca table with four girls talking and laughing, and it turned out they had all met through conversation partners.\u201d Troyer said, \u201cThat\u2019s the kind of thing that makes it worthwhile.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Students interested in signing up to be a conversation partner can do so by visiting wou.edu\/westernhowl\/ and clicking on the link for more information.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Contact the author at howlnews@wou.edu<\/a><\/i><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sage Kiernan-Sherrow | News Editor How does one form community when they are on a foreign campus miles away from home? The conversation partners program at Western seeks to provide a solution by connecting international and domestic students together.\u00a0 Currently, the international students of Western represent approximately 2.5% of the campus community. For their first […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1094,"featured_media":10024,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"modified_by":"The Western Howl","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1094"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10934"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10934\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}