More Than a Meal: Creating Home for International Students at Taylor

Always buzzing with chatter and filled with aromas of food and the hum of music, the Office of Intercultural Programs (OIP) is a harmony of culture, language and individuality—tucked in the heart of the Boren Campus Center. 

“The OIP is one of the only offices on campus that draws students in just to hang out,” Nate Chu, Executive Director of Spiritual Life and Intercultural Leadership, said.  

This year, Chu and his team welcomed 134 international students. That’s 26 more than last year and includes students whose backgrounds differ not only from most students’ experiences but also from one another’s.  

Chu and his team—four staff members together with several student leaders—cultivate an atmosphere of belonging within their office, making it both a place of refuge and a resource. It’s designed to serve as a launching point for meaningful community involvement. And the holiday season is a time when this involvement takes the forefront. 

Finding Home Far From Home

For many international students, going home for Thanksgiving and Christmas break—something that domestic students do each year without a second thought—is simply not an option, and a number of international students have expressed a desire to stay on campus for break. Upland becomes a common meeting point between travels or a place to rest more deeply than during the semester.  

“I think every student gets to a point where Taylor becomes home,” Chu said. “For a lot of international students, Taylor is home.” 

And over the years, professors and students’ families have opened their own homes during breaks to provide an international student with a place to stay, welcoming them into their holiday traditions and investing in newfound friendships.  

“The ability to cook and eat around a table together is crucial for community formation,” Chu said.  

This opportunity represents something bigger than a meal; it’s an expanded definition of home. Several international students are invited by friends on their wing or floor to come home with their families.  

Sooik Park is a sophomore at Taylor this year, a Korean student who has spent several breaks with friends. Park has enjoyed engaging with the different home cultures fostered within the families he’s stayed with, even joining family traditions like opening Christmas gifts together orwatching movies over Easter. 

Something Park said he’s been blessed to learn from these opportunities is that “home” often is a space for building relationships.   

Extending the Taylor Welcome

This year, the International Student Society, a division of the OIP, is establishing a system in which Taylor’s broader alumni and parent network can sign up to host students in their homes, offering a chance to become even more connected with what God is doing in and through the Taylor community around the world. 

Families interested in serving Taylor’s international students in this way can email Nate Chu and his team at nathan_chu@taylor.edu or isp@taylor.edu.  

It only takes a short time of being around the Taylor family to recognize that it’s not limited by the bounds of blood or border, but that it’s a family creating space for intercultural connections—even beyond the friendships formed inside the OIP.