The Asia University America Program (AUAP) gives students from Asia University a chance to come to America and immerse themselves in new cultures. It is a study abroad program where the students learn communication skills through content instruction. Each week the AUAP Friends Club has a different event in the Black Hall 202 for the students to kick back and hang out with their new friends they have made at CWU.
The first meeting of the quarter was origami night, where many students alike were showcasing their artistic abilities through making art with paper. Over 15 students made their way to Black Hall as they all sat down with smiles on their faces eating snacks, folding origami and talking amongst one another.
President of the AUAP Friends Club Reyhaneh Bagherian elaborated more on what the club is all about. “The purpose of our club is that our students are coming here to Japan and staying here for almost five months. They are mostly here to learn American culture and everything related to America,” Bagherian said. “The mission of the club is that we have an environment for all students, CWU students and AUAP students to just engage and have space for themselves.
“It’s really interesting because they are coming from a totally different culture, and it is totally different with US culture. So, the most important part for me personally is sharing different cultures and seeing the differences in our cultures,” Bagherian said.
Intercultural Communications Professor Josh Nelson-Ichido, highlighted the importance of Wildcats on campus to befriending the AUAP students who are likely farther away from home than they have ever been. “For the AUAP students, having domestic students who are eager to engage with them and are willing to actively accommodate to their communications styles and actually think. ‘Okay I want this person to feel welcome, to feel comfortable, I want to make sure that they feel understood or at least valued,’ that stuff is hugely important for a second language learner who is now in a foreign country.”
“Some of my favorite moments have been seeing students of mine who have never heard of AUAP, never done anything with intercultural groups or even thinking interculturally at all. Once they start to interact with AUAP and they do these joint classes or the classroom volunteering, it becomes a passion for them. They become very interested and involved with AUAP,” Nelson-Ichido said.
In the Intercultural Communications class, Nelson-Ichido has the students volunteer to have an in person experience with communicating interculturally.
“It can be very hard to drive home some of the elements because people often have that mentality that ‘oh well intercultural only applies when I’m interacting with someone from a different country or somebody who speaks another language,’ which it is obviously not but it is very hard to drive that home for a lot of students,” Nelson-Ichido said. “Having the option or opportunity to be able to get our students involved with and interact with people from very different cultural and national backgrounds can really highlight some of the concepts that we’re talking about in class that we might not see in their day to day intercultural interactions.”
The AUAP Friends Club will continue to host interactive events throughout the quarter on Thursdays where all students alike have the opportunity to get to know our AUAP Wildcats.
