Despite the chaos that engulfs the Middle East, students from those areas are looking to get a good education.
That is why Marty Bennett, director of international services at Ball State University's Rinker Center for International Programs, is looking to recruit students from Middle Eastern countries to study at Ball State. Students and employers from these countries value an American education, and Ball State students could use more contact with Middle Eastern students to help eliminate misperceptions based on recent terrorism and insurgency, Bennett said.
"There's a disconnect between the people over there and what we see on the news," he said. "We need to be more connected because we need to understand each other."
In his efforts to make Ball State a more diverse campus - 90 percent of its students are from Indiana - Bennett developed the Live Video College Fair, a chance for universities around Indiana to communicate via video Internet connections to students in the Middle Eastern countries of Libya, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman and the United Arab Emirates. The second annual Live Video College Fair will be from 6 a.m. to 11 a.m. today.
Bennett wanted to use Ball State's technology to connect with students around the world and recruit them to study at the university. Another goal is to allow smaller schools in Indiana that don't have the money to actively recruit international students the chance to connect with students from the Middle East.
"This is a great way for us to recruit students without having to travel," said Frank Adams, director of international communications at the Rinker Center.
Last year's fair turned out well despite some students' initial hesitation at communicating in a different language, Bennett said.
"Everybody was really unsure how it would go, but it went well," he said.
A few Middle Eastern schools find it too expensive to participate in the fair because they have to send video through phone lines, causing a large phone bill, he said.
Other Indiana schools that will participate in the fair include Indiana University, Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis, DePauw University, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology and Valparaiso University. Each school will get an allotted amount of time to talk with students in each country. Bennett plans to show the Middle Eastern students a recruitment video he developed in Arabic and will have some Arab students on hand to answer questions.
The college fair is sponsored by Destination Indiana, of which Ball State is a founding member, Bennett said. Destination Indiana's goal is to elevate Indiana as a destination for international students, Bennett said. It partners with EducationUSA, an organization sponsored in part by the U.S. State Department to promote U.S. education to international students.
"[Arab countries] were our initial target because those are places that our Destination Indiana group wanted to make more connections in," Bennett said.
Ball State can especially benefit from a more diverse campus because many Ball State students come from small towns in Indiana that don't have much diversity, Bennett said.
"If you grow up in a very homogenized culture, you don't have a very wide view of the world," he said. "With the fair, you are giving them the opportunity to interact and say 'Hey, this person is kind of like me.'"
The liberal arts emphasis in U.S. education would benefit international students, he said. In many foreign countries, students are groomed from a young age to follow a certain career path without much opportunity to explore other areas. International students value U.S. education because it gives them those multiple opportunities, as well as higher living standards, he said.
Ball State should be especially appealing to participants in the college fair because the Rinker Center eases their adjustment to college life in the United States, Bennett said.
"We are kind of a one-stop shop for international students," he said. "Our goal is to make them feel like they are valued here."
With the fair, Bennett said he aimed to promote the idea that the world in which we live is multicultural.
"We are so much more connected than we realize," he said. "The world isn't getting any bigger; it's getting smaller."
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