New tuition policy draws international students to Allen

The Allen Community College of 2018 is a more diverse, culturally rich, many-accented place than it was last year. Over the summer, the ACC board of trustees agreed to radically cut its cost of tuition for international students. By dropping its rate per credit hour from $147 to $60, ACC became one of the few, if not the only, community college in the state to offer a flat tuition to all of its students, whether in-state, out-of-state, or foreign-born.

Since the change, ACC’s international population has jumped from six students in 2017 to 20 students this year, and the college is scheduled to welcome a new crew of international enrollees next semester.

THE DECISION has been a long time coming. “I’ve wished for a number of years that we could increase our numbers of international students,” explained ACC president John Masterson. “They just add another dimension of diversity and fun to the college. And when you’ve got kids from Colony and Le Roy and Iola meeting kids from Nigeria and Saudi Arabia, it helps them to see that the world is a pretty big place.”

When Masterson first arrived at ACC, in 1973, one of his many roles was as international student advisor. At that time, recalled Masterson, there were 30 or more international students enrolled at the Iola campus. But he’s watched that number dwindle ever since.

Recently, however, Masterson has found, in his desire to increase campus diversity, an ally in the athletic department. As the makeup of college sports teams became increasingly international, Allen’s coaches began to encourage the college’s administration to look for ways to make ACC a more attractive option for potential international student-athletes.

It’s not a case of wanting to stack the various rosters with international students, said Masterson — who confesses to “a little heartburn when community colleges have to resort totally to international students to keep competitive” — but, likewise, he doesn’t want to do anything to injure his coaches’ ability to match strength with the other schools in their league.

Athletics also provides the student abroad with a ready-made peer structure from the moment he or she arrives. A fact, says Masterson, which is key to assimilating this group of students since ACC doesn’t employ extra staff devoted to the needs of international students. “One of the nice things about athletics,” said Masterson, “is that it doesn’t make a difference if you’re a kid from Nigeria or New York, you come in and you’ve got a group that you belong to. … That’s one of the things I’ve always loved about college sports, just that very fact that I can go a long way from home and be a part of something immediately, and the people there are rooting for me to stay and be happy. I think that helps.”

Currently, 15 out of the college’s 20 international students are athletes.

There are two additional preconditions all international students must meet before signing on the Red Devil dotted line. For starters, they must have demonstrated a proficiency in English or hail from a country in which English is the primary language. The college currently lacks an English-as-a-second-language program. Secondly, students arriving from abroad must secure the purchase of their own stateside health insurance plan before they start classes.

Masterson recalled a moment 40-plus years ago when a young student from Nigeria — a passionate student, an enthusiastic coed — missed two consecutive days of classes. “That just wasn’t like him,” said Masterson. “Education was extremely important to this kid.” Masterson found where the student was living — the top floor of an old three-story house on North Jefferson. The future college president climbed the stairs and knocked on the man’s door, and heard a weak voice call out, “Come in.”

Inside, Masterson found the man on the floor, huddled under a blanket, a small heater nearby. The young Nigerian was visibly in the throes of a fever but without available medicine and without the money to seek medical care. Masterson pulled a few strings and arranged for the man to see a local doctor.  “We finally worked our way through it,” recalled Masterson, “but I thought, ‘Well, that isn’t fair to that kid and it isn’t fair to us.’ And so we got a lot better at it.”

LAST WEDNESDAY, 10 ACC men’s soccer players — four from Australia, two from Brazil, two from Scotland, one from England, and one from Kingston, Jamaica — gathered on campus to discuss their transition from home country to host country. Nikki Peters, ACC’s Director of Advising and Enrollment, was there, too. Peters is in charge of issuing international students their I-20 forms, helping them coordinate their travel to Iola, enrolling them once they get here, and, in most cases, acting as their advisor until the day they leave. More crucially, perhaps, Peters is in some ways, by her own description, their ACC “campus mom.”

“They don’t have family here,” said Peters. “They don’t have someone they can call in an emergency. I try to make myself available, so that if they ever have an issue, we can handle it. If they have a US cell phone, they probably have my cell phone number. It can be anything from ‘I injured my hand. I’m at the hospital. Can you get my insurance card?’ to ‘What are those things called that we hang our clothes on in the closet, and where do I find those at Walmart?’ It varies. But it’s always fun.”