Yasue O’Neill, head of the Office of International Students went on an educational tour to recruit students from Latin America, a tour that lasted from May 1st to the 14th.
O’Neill went on this, as well as similar tours in a collaboration between Palomar and California State University San Marcos. The purpose of these tours is to recruit students from other countries so they can study abroad, specifically in our country.
This past month, O’Neill concluded her recruitment tour with AEO (American Education Office) Spring 2017 by visiting Malaysia, Vietnam, Singapore and Japan. The next trip for O’Niell is to head south towards Central America and South America, specifically: Panama, Colombia, and Argentina. That will be the Education USA forum and Education USA fair which will be from May 1-14, 2017.
The tours happen through a contact between American embassies and universities. They offer a pre-set package which include countries and then, the universities in collaboration with the embassies go out and reach to high schools and junior highs.
O’Neill stated that the countries selected for AEO are part of a pre-set package, and that she included Japan to the tour circuit as she visits there once per year contacting agencies and schools. Regarding Latin America, it was a collaboration with CSU San Marcos to participate in the tour they are creating as “Study California” and other universities also participate such as: San Francisco, Long Beach, Hanford.
“The person in charge of the Global Affairs office of CSU San Marcos has been contacting Education USA offices in Colombia, in cities such as: Medina and Bogotá.” O’Neill said while talking about Dr. Elizabeth Matthews, Chair of Global Studies Department of CSU San Marcos. “So she arranges visits to institutions such as High Schools, which are in addition to the forum and then, he also asked organizations in Panama to create small student fairs and short visits to high schools.”
Palomar is the only community college to be joining the CSU campuses in the tour around Central and South America. O’Neill said she has considered this an amazing opportunity to market the “2+2 Transfer System,” a system to transfer from a 2-year community college into a 4-year university.
The School granted her the funds through different accounts that are managed specifically for each of her travels around Asia and South America.
As far as how she has the educative panorama in Asia, O’Neill said that there are various countries that aren’t familiarized with the concept of a community college or of a transferring system, due to most countries’ students applying to prestigious universities right away.
“Concerning Latin America, I noticed that some of these Latin American countries are looking forward to opportunities for their citizens to get advanced technical skills,” O’Neill said. “My counterpart from CSU San Marcos was telling me about his experience in Brazil as how he brought the ‘2+2 system’ flyer and how Brazilians are really interested in that system.”
The number of International Students for this current semester is 280, the majority of whom come from Japan. The other significant international student groups come from China, South Korea, and Vietnam. There is also a rising number of students coming from Colombia.
A student from Japan, Alisa Yagi a 19 years old Business Major, said that she used an agent from HIUC (The Human International University College), a preparatory institution for studying abroad, to get information to study abroad. “While I was living in Japan, I used an agent that called the HIUC and later, he handed me a list of colleges and out of them, I selected Palomar College. It was also an opportunity to live and study here in California,” Yagi said.
