The changing face of UB

She's sitting by South Lake on a cloudless spring day, the iconic UB pillars rising behind her. She's reading a book, her world right now is perfect, and she couldn't be prouder to be a UB student.

"Be unique," another poster says. "Stay longer, live larger." "True blue." This is your university.

We're told by university advertising that today UB is bigger, smarter, and more diverse than it's ever been before, and just like the fictitious girl by South Lake, we are supposed to be proud of that.

And while on one hand the hype is probably trying to boost your school spirit, get you out to a football game and to buy another sweatshirt from the bookstore, it happens to be true.

Many students cringe at President John Simpson's proposal to add another 5,000 students to campus - after all, where are they going to park? But Simpson has inherited a campus already on the rise.

In the last ten years, UB has grown by about 4,000 students, making Simpson's goal seem far from farfetched. Enrollment has been up every year since 1998. At nearly 28,000 students strong, UB hasn't been this big in 17 years.

This is the first part of a continuing series that will take a look at recent student population trends in gender, economics, education and ethnicity. Sure, we're slowly starting to figure out where Simpson wants to take this university, but who exactly is he taking with him?

The answer starts with Uthathya Chakravarti, and about 3,000 international students just like him.

Right next to Harvard

Uthathya Chakravarti found Buffalo in Calcutta. Amid the heat, humidity and monsoons of India, he found snow, frostbite and Lake Erie, and he says couldn't be happier living by Main Street.

During his undergraduate studies in India, one of Chakravarti's professors was from Rochester and recommended he apply to UB for graduate school. Several trips later to UB's Web site and Chakravarti, now a Ph.D. student in economics, was Buffalo-bound.

According to UB officials, Chakravarti is not alone in the way he arrived on North Campus. Last year, one of Singapore's main newspapers ran a list of the most popular American colleges, and at number eight, right below Harvard, Yale, and MIT, was SUNY Buffalo.

"When that story hit, we got so many hits on our Web site that we couldn't believe it," said Stephen Dunnett, vice provost for international education.

That UB ranked so high among Singapore's college-aged youth should come as no surprise, Dunnett said, since Singapore is one country where UB has strongly campaigned and recruited.

Through alumni relations, study abroad and exchange programs, and a number of active UB officials like Dunnett, UB has created for itself something of an academic celebrity status in several countries, especially in Asia, where economies are booming and they have "the need and desire to send their people overseas for advanced education."

According to Dunnett, about eight years ago, the international population at UB hit an all-time low around 1,100 students. That's when UB established the office of international enrollment management, and the downward trend took a U-turn.

Along with the new office, UB started to further rely on its international alumni to raise its profile and gain support. The ministers of education in China and Thailand, and vice minister of education in Taiwan are all Buffalo graduates.

UB also became known overseas as an especially friendly and accepting school.

"International students want that kind of environment," Dunnett said. "They don't want to be somewhere where they're going to be discriminated against or feel unwelcome."

And then there's the UB English Language Institute, through which Dunnett says thousands of students pass on their way to other schools and job opportunities, and to many students overseas it's practically "famous."

Bottom line - eight of the top ten countries represented at UB this year are Asian, with the other two being Canada and Nigeria.

This year's incoming freshman class has 156 international students, which is nearly double the amount there were five years ago, and over triple the number from ten years ago. In 1995, UB's incoming freshmen came from 23 different countries. This year, they come from 34 worldwide.

UB's international student population, undergrads and grads combined, represents 12 percent of the total UB population. That percentage is double what it was 20 years ago. In just five years, the international population has jumped by nearly 1,000, which is tremendous considering there were only about 1,000 total internationals at UB less than a decade ago.

A focus on education

By most accounts, having more international students is a good thing for UB.

"What interests me is to globalize the classroom or internationalize the university," Dunnett said, "to have young Americans be able to interact with people of other cultures, make friends with people from other countries and break down the barriers."

Few at UB will argue that the campus today isn't diverse, but many say there are still barriers.

Chakravarti said he generally hangs out with his other Indian friends, and when he's branched out to other groups he's met nothing but kindness, but he believes students need to make a better effort to reach out.

Jacques-David Sebban, a sophomore engineering major from France, said he's had a similar experience. As an exchange student in Dunkirk, N.Y., Sebban said he was looking for a solid, inexpensive college, and that ended up being UB.

As for making the effort for American and international students to become more integrated on campus, "It depends who you are," Sebban said.

"We have to do a better job of integrating international students into the mainstream," Dunnett said.

But while traveling and being abroad is part of the reason for finding a place like UB, Chakravarti said in the end it's all about the education. Undergrad programs in India are better than in the states, he said, but resources and access to information is much better here.

"In India, people do look up to the U.S.," he said. "A U.S. Ph.D. is preferable to an Indian Ph.D."

Dunnett said it's true that overseas undergrad programs have become better than American ones, which is why most of UB's international students are graduates.

"It's a sad indictment of secondary school education in this country," he said.

And while many international students are in the fields of engineering, business management and the sciences, slowly there are more turning to the humanities as developing countries create needs for psychologists and teachers, Dunnett said.

Dunnett added that only a select group of students come to the United States from overseas.

"(UB's students) represent the top one to two percent of their county as far as academic preparation goes," he said.

Competition ahead

If there are any cons to having more international students, it's having to accommodate their needs as non-natives and problems with adjusting to a new country and new culture.

But UB has met the challenge of creating proper programming to help and care for these students, Dunnett said, and in his opinion, the pros of a more international student body outweigh any negatives.

And by and large, UB students agree.

"It provides an opportunity to meet a wide variety of people from many different cultures, so we learn not only academics here, but life skills for interacting with many different people, and that's very important," said Ilia Nossov, a sophomore business administration major.

Whether UB can keep increasing its international population is a question of demand, finances, and politics.

"What has changed now is the competition, so we have to fight for every international student," Dunnett said. "All our peers are recruiting overseas just like we're doing."

Plus, Dunnett said nowadays wherever he goes, students ask him about U.S. policy in Iraq and its human rights abuses. New post-9/11 visa restrictions are also making Canada and Australia more popular study abroad choices.

But visas or not, the hotter issue is the price of petroleum. If that keeps rising, it will mean fewer students, both from and to the United States, will be able to afford to go overseas, Dunnett said.

"Those are my two big nightmares," he said.

Managing Editor Silas Rader did additional reporting for this story.