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• Gallery: Marshall University International Festival

A few days ago, Clark Egnor was out recruiting students to come to West Virginia and to Marshall University for their education.

Egnor, executive director of Marshall's Center for International Programs, wasn't in Ohio, Kentucky or West Virginia.

He was in Turkey.

That kind of outreach to recruiting students from around the globe has helped Marshall's student body become a vibrant collage of cultures that now includes more than 478 international students from 60 countries, a 6 percent increase over fall semester 2008.

That diversity was in full bloom Sunday afternoon as Marshall kicked off International Education Week with its 46th annual International Festival.

Packed into the Don Morris Room at the Memorial Student Center on MU's campus, more than 1,000 students, faculty and community members came and went throughout the late afternoon enjoying a warm and wonderful cultural exchange of food and fellowship, as well as dancing, music and even a magic show.

Listening to a steel drummer, Minh Nguyen, a Vietnamese graduate student in Environmental Science, said he was one of about 100 students from Vietnam now at Marshall.

Nguyen, who has been here 3 1/2 years, said the International Festival was a great place to meet so many of the other international students on campus.

"Sometimes when you live here, you might just hang out with your own group, but now we know more of the other cultures here," Nguyen said. "When you study abroad, you don't know anybody at first, and it really helps to know people... In my country we look at relationships really serious and a friend, we treat him like a family member. Here, people try to be formal or polite, but in Vietnam we treat the friend or neighbor in a real serious way."

Winning friends and influencing people with their stick-twirling dance was a couple dozen Saudi Arabian male students. The dance hails from the cities of Jaddah, Makah and Madina, and can include up to 70 or more people back home.

Ayad Alabbasi, a senior in information systems, said it was the perfect dance for a big group to perform at a festive event such as a wedding.

"The three cities are all close to the beach and close to Africa, so it has those influences, and so now we make it our tradition," Alabassi said of the shuffling dance accentuated by handclaps and the twirling sticks.

The Saudis invited students to their booth, complete with a Saudi backdrop. It was next door to a bounty of traditional Vietnamese appetizers, entrees and desserts.

In addition to the MU student-made displays of food from such countries as Russia, Tunisia, Hungary, Cameroon, Colombia, Nigeria, Morocco, China, Bangladesh and Mali/Senegal, the Huntington High Japanese Club also set up a table with its Shateki game, in which students shot rubber band guns at origami figures for prizes.

Wall-to-wall with festival-goers for almost the entire four-hour run, the MU International Festival is close to outgrowing the spacious Don Morris Room, Egnor said.

In fact, he would love to see the International Festival grow and be embraced by the Tri-State community.

"This is a start, and we get people who come back every year, and we get people who have never been before that it blows their mind," Egnor said. "We've got to do something different, though, we've reached capacity on campus . It's too crowded, and that's a good thing in a way."

Although the festival is over, International Education Week has just started.

Marshall will display the flags of its students' respective countries in the lobby of the Memorial Student Center through November. From 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 17, Marshall will host the sixth annual MU Study Abroad Expo in the student center lobby with more than 20 study abroad providers expected to take part.

MU students and faculty will have the opportunity to discuss the programs directly with the providers, apply for a passport and get assistance with immunizations. Study abroad scholarships and other prizes will be given away at the fair.

The university sends about 150 students each year to study abroad. Marshall students can choose from more than 125 sites in 40 countries to study for a summer, semester or year at approximately the same cost as studying at home.

Egnor said Marshall has a fascinating history of growing cultural diversity that began with maybe 20 or 30 students in the 1960s-1970s with many of the students in the 1970s coming from Nigeria, Saudi Arabia and Iran when the Shah was in power.

"We've got a different demographic now, and our major demographic is China, Vietnam, Japan, Korea -- really all over Asia," Egnor said. "It shows how the population mirrors what's going on in the world in terms of political stability."

National Video

Mark Webb/The Herald-Dispatch

Students perform traditional dances during the 46th annual International Festival on Sunday, Nov. 15, 2009, in the Memorial Student Center at Marshall University.

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