Globally engaged aviation program helps
developing countries spread wings

As one of the United States' top-three programs with a more than 60-year history of providing aviation education, Western Michigan University and its College of Aviation are contributing to the worldwide advancement of the aviation industry through degree programs for pilots, maintenance technicians and aerospace managers, and a certificate program for air traffic controllers.

Professor Gil Sinclair, who teaches and serves as faculty chair for the college, said many developing countries don't have the facilities to educate and train people in aviation, so they look to programs such as the ones offered at WMU to fill that need. He said that interest is often two-pronged: to identify a high-quality program to educate their students; and, to gain support for launching their own aviation programs.

Homeland development key outcome
for Afghan degree-seeker

The major point of earning a college degree for Ahmad Sear Rahimi is to gain an education that will enable him to contribute to the development of Afghanistan.

“I am proud to be from Afghanistan,” Rahimi said. “My country needs people who are highly educated and I hope to use the knowledge I am acquiring for the success of my country. My main passion in life is to work for the prosperity of my people and to develop the land that once used to be a beautiful and amazing place for people to live. I want to help Afghanistan become even better than the way it used to be before the war.”

German-born American new CELCIS activities coordinator

Living in Wurzburg, Germany for the first nine years of his life as the son of two U.S. Army officers well prepared Wayne Lee Bond II to serve as the activities coordinator in Western Michigan University's Center for English Language and Culture for International Students.

Bond said living overseas from birth, then moving to the states when he was nine years old gave him the opportunity to experience the transition international students make when they come to the United States to learn English. He has lived in multiple states and is accustomed to making new places feel like “home.”

Bond at the Wild West Horse Ranch in Allegan, Mich.

Growing global programs is key mission
for WMU international administrator

Being raised in a home where discussions about international topics were held daily inspired Dr. Jane Blyth Warren to study abroad in high school and college and to pursue a career in international education. Originally from a small town in upstate New York along the Erie Canal, Warren first studied abroad in France when she was 16 years old. Her lifelong study of Japanese language and culture began as an undergraduate, when she was an exchange student at Nanzan University in Nagoya, Japan.

That inspiration fueled Warren's attainment of advanced degrees in East Asian languages and cultures, linguistics, and language education, and a career teaching Japanese, linguistics, and English as a Second Language in Japan and the United States. She also served as a visiting researcher from 2008-2009 in the Faculty of Culture and Information Science at Doshisha University, in Kyoto Japan, conducting research on the use of online digital portfolios and podcasts to improve oral English skills in Japanese university students.

Georgian tennis ace scores on and off the court

One of the biggest challenges Nini Sujashvili experienced trying to improve her tennis game growing up in Tbilisi, Georgia, was finding opponents, because her high school offered no opportunities to play sports and her country was at war.

“After the South Ossetia war ended between Russia and my country in 2008, all the tournaments were cancelled and even fewer people were playing tennis,” said Sujashvili, a sophomore majoring in psychology. “It was very hard to keep playing tennis in that kind of situation, but with my parents' support I was able to continue playing and taking private lessons.”

International activity converges in Global Business Center

Exponential expansion of international activity in recent years at Western Michigan University's Haworth College of Business prompted the establishment of a hub in 2010 to aid the college in achieving its goal to internationalize the curriculum and to well prepare its graduates to enter a globalized workforce.

The college celebrated the opening of its Global Business Center in April 2010, with a primary focus to facilitate and enhance the internationalization of the curriculum, faculty and students through multiple opportunities, including international internships, study abroad programs, conferences, partnerships and speaker series.