{"id":42833,"date":"2018-12-12T16:16:48","date_gmt":"2018-12-12T22:16:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/?p=42833"},"modified":"2018-12-12T16:17:19","modified_gmt":"2018-12-12T22:17:19","slug":"sharing-american-holiday-customs-with-international-students-at-fort-hays-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/?p=42833","title":{"rendered":"Sharing American holiday customs with international students at Fort Hays State"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Diane Gasper-O\u2019Brien <\/strong>
\nUniversity Relations and Marketing <\/em>
\nIn an effort to familiarize international graduate students with some of the American holiday customs, the Fort Hays State University Graduate School sponsored a holiday reception for those students in the Memorial Union Monday.<\/p>\n

Dr. Jennifer Bonds-Raacke, dean of the Graduate School, said she and her staff were brainstorming one day and came up with the idea of building ginger bread houses. So she ordered several kits that included everything to build a house, including a large tube of frosting and a variety of tiny candies for decoration.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were thinking what would be fun for our international students to experience some of the traditional holiday culture,\u201d she said. \u201cI think it\u2019s going pretty well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed.<\/p>\n

Fatimah Alhazmy, a graduate student from Saudia Arabia, was taking a little ribbing about how professional her ginger bread house looked.<\/p>\n

Alhazmy, a fine arts major with an emphasis in ceramics, was part of a team that included Linda Ganstrom, professor in the Department of Art and Design.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re just a construction crew here,\u201d Ganstrom said as all four people at her table took turns adding their personal touches to their house.<\/p>\n

A table nearby with hot chocolate and other holiday goodies helped provide a festive atmosphere for the students.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to make shutters for our windows,\u201d Aminata Diarra said as she worked on a house with Leslie Paige, director of the Office of Scholarship and Sponsored Projects in the Graduate School.<\/p>\n

Diarra \u2013 a native of Mali, a country in West Africa \u2013 is a freshman who now lives in Denver. She said she chose Fort Hays State because her older sister, Yamoudji, is a current FHSU student and has had a good experience here.<\/p>\n

While Diarra is not a graduate student, all international students were welcome to participate. Diarra said that when she heard about the event, she thought it would be a good way to take a break from studying for finals.<\/p>\n

Diarra already had taken two finals and said, \u201cThis is relaxing before I go study for more.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said she had never made a ginger bread house before but that this wouldn\u2019t be her last.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is pretty cool,\u201d Diarra said. \u201cMaybe I\u2019ll go buy one. This could be something for our family to do together.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are 67 international students enrolled in on-campus graduate programs at FHSU this fall. That is 20 percent of all on-campus graduate students. Nearly two dozen of those participated in Monday\u2019s event.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe really want our international students to know they are wanted at FHSU. Our international students make the Graduate School complete,\u201d Bonds-Raacke said. \u201cOur one goal of this event was to show them how much they are valued.\u201d<\/p>\n

Native countries of other students participating in the event included Germany, England and Brazil and represented majors ranging from biology to music to clinical psychology.<\/p>\n

During the house building, personnel from the Graduate School helped created a \u201chope chain,\u201d where students, faculty and staff responded to questions such as \u201cWhat is your favorite part about FHSU?\u201d The responses on black and gold paper were linked together and hung in the Graduate School.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe hope this activity helped remind everyone of what really matters, especially at a stressful time during the semester,\u201d Bonds-Raacke said.<\/p>\n

The faculty and staff seemed to enjoy the event as much as the students.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a great opportunity to connect informally with our students,\u201d Bonds-Raacke said, \u201cand learn more about them on a personal level.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Diane Gasper-O\u2019Brien University Relations and Marketing In an effort to familiarize international graduate students with some of the American holiday customs, the Fort Hays… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":42834,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11722],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-press-releases"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/tigermedianet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/grad-school-holiday.jpeg?fit=3475%2C3016&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42833"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42833\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42835,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42833\/revisions\/42835"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/42834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}