Ball State University plans to increase the number of international students to five percent by 2012, according to the Center for International Programs.
Martin Bennett, director of the Rinker Center for International Programs, said Ball State was more than halfway through its admissions goals.
"The university's Strategic Plan is to expand the number of students from overseas," Bennett said. He said the recruitment efforts ' goals were to provide an opportunity for the students to learn about the world outside Indiana.
The university's international programs are designed to expand recruitment efforts, expand the number of partner universities and increase the number of students from overseas so the university could meet the target, he said.
Ball State has about 250 international students from more than 90 countries.
Bennett said that number would increase to about 575 by Fall Semester.
According to the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University Web site, the U.S. government was issuing 315,000 foreign student and exchange visitor visas. The Web site estimated the number of foreign students in the United States was about 1 million.
Jim Connolly, associate professor of history and director of the Center for Middletown Studies at Ball State, said international students constituted a significant presence at Ball State and in the community.
"The presence of international students brings an element of diversity to the community as well as to the campus," Connolly said.
But Connolly said the international students' effect outside the university was limited, and there was not much interaction between the international students and the residents who lived outside Ball State.
"I don't think residents of Muncie uniformly get a better picture of the outside world by having international students around," Connolly said.
He said the international students' presence on campus was noticeable. They have created their own networks and have become representatives of their culture, he said.
Hikoyat Salimova, a Ball State graduate student from Uzbekistan, said life as an international student was hard at the beginning.
"Coming to a new place, where I didn't know anybody, and I didn't have any friends," Salimova said. "It was hard to live the daily life and do well at school."
Bennett said Ball State was spending $1.2 million a year in funding international programs and providing financial aid and scholarship to the international students and study programs.
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