By Liaohan (David) He -- IOSL
ISSS Blog Administrator’s Note:
The International Orientation Student Leaders program is a unique leadership and employment training opportunity, made possible through a partnership between International Student and Scholar Services (ISSS) and New Student Programs (NSP). We are currently recruiting for the 2015-2016 IOSL cohort and we invite all Illinois undergraduate students to apply. The position is not limited to international students as domestic students with a strong understanding of the international student population are invited to apply. For more information, please visit: http://isss.illinois.edu/involved/iosl.html.
Liaohan (David) He is a currently serving in the 2014-2015 IOSL cohort. The blog post below is edited excerpts from his description of the experience, reprinted here with his permission. The campus resource scavenger hunt he mentions was part of the Spring 2014 IOSL training.
I have come so far since March. It turns out that I did not know the school that well. There are millions of things to be discovered, fun and educational at the same time! I want to share all this information with all the international students to help them feel warm and at home [at the University of Illinois], just as I felt through the IOSL program.
This is the best work opportunity I have discovered so far on campus. I had the chance to finally work on campus, get paid and even acquire an SSN. But most importantly, I learned many new knowledge and resources and I made many friends who have the same goal as me: to help other international students. Being in the group, I felt that I was playing a communicative bridge with other IOSLs. We were strangers before, barely knew each other; now we are so lucky to be together, so that we need someone to fire up the atmosphere to sooner get to know each other. I spent enough time to know all my partners by talking to every one of them every time we had training. I even started another program with one of the IOSL.
In general, the thing I learned and valued the most about training is the campus resource scavenger hunt. I learned that the school offers many resources to very specific groups of students including minority student resources, team work, communication skills and being a good person internally.
I was learning to speak Italian at the moment when we visited La Casa Cultural Latina (link: http://oiir.illinois.edu/la-casa-cultural-latina) and I did not know that there is 75% similarity between Italian and Spanish. The person who was in charge of La Casa gave us the most friendly and warmest introduction of their culture, history and issues. La Casa has numerous events every week including new students, competitions, anniversaries and so on. The major 4 programs in La Casa are Meta, a pen pal program which students in college are able to connect with kids and help them with school and resources, lunch@ la casa, and dinner dialogue series. La Casa cooperates with different organizations in school. One thing I value the most is the student leadership and volunteer opportunities. Anyway, this is a great place that we discovered in the scavenger hunt!