Foreign students given new housing option at Pitt

Kamel Pages chose to come to Pittsburgh to learn English not only because of the program… Kamel Pages chose to come to Pittsburgh to learn English not only because of the program offered, but because he had a family connection that made finding a place to live easy.

But for many of Pitt’s English Language Institute students, finding housing is not all that simple.

Pages is 25 and has been away from his home in Paris for five months. He plans to leave Pittsburgh in April.

Coming from across an ocean without much background in American culture or the English language makes it difficult for international students to find housing for the ELI’s program, which often only keeps students here for a few months.

But now, the ELI has joined with OvECS — Overseas Educational Consulting and Services — to provide a program that will match international students with local families during their stays.

Pages said he would have liked to have had an option like this.

“It’s a better option because you have to speak English every day,” he said.

OvEC’s Homestay program began at Arizona State University in 1999 and has expanded to 17 universities across the nation. The program has become a recruitment tool of sorts for English language programs because it is like “living in a classroom situation,” said Jim Sickles, OvEC director.

The program at Pitt will begin in May.

Students in the ELI program are usually only in Pittsburgh for a few months, so finding a short-term apartment is often difficult. And Pitt can’t house ELI students except during the summer months.

“We don’t have the capacity,” said Pitt spokeswoman Trish White. “These students aren’t in a degree program, so our housing capacity is just not big enough.”

Kathleen Forsythe, who worked with Pitt’s Semester at Sea program, has become the Homestay recruiting coordinator. She has already begun fielding requests from potential host families.

Forsythe’s time traveling with Semester at Sea led her to become interested in programs like this one for international students.

“I have visited many colleges and universities overseas, and I have seen the need to bridge cultures one person at a time,” she said.

Forsythe will be in charge of screening families and matching them with the international students. She will meet each interested family and interview them and examine the extensive student applications before matching families and students.

Each family receives $450 every four weeks while the student stays with them and they are required to live within 30 to 40 minutes of Pitt’s campus — within walking distance or near a public transportation route.

Dorolyn Smith, associate director of the ELI, sees the program as completely necessary, and something they had been unable to do earlier because of a lack of manpower and time.

“The student is interacting with a family and they have to do it in English,” she said. “And when they are in apartments [with other international students] they don’t make much language improvement.”

With the option of spending holidays with their American host family and meeting their network of friends and relatives, the student will also benefit by learning about American culture, Smith said.

“And it’s a support system as well,” she said. “They can ask questions, and they’ll always have somebody to go to.”

Halil Atabey is from Turkey and has been in Pittsburgh for a year and a half. He is a part of the ELI program and like Pages, he came here because he had a friend in town.

But the Homestay program will be a huge benefit for students that weren’t as lucky as he was, he said.

“If you don’t know anybody it’s hard to find a cheap place, and you don’t have anybody to give you advice,” Atabey said.

By having OvECS as a kind of professional mediator instead of having the program run by the ELI itself, Atabey said, issues with family placement can be handled by a neutral party. If there is a problem, it can be dealt with by a company with experience that is uninvolved personally with the student.

With this partnership, the students will improve their learning, and the students’ families at home can rest assured that their children have a safe place to stay and the host family will learn a thing or two, Forsythe said.

“The world is becoming a smaller place, and this way to house a student and learn about their culture is just as rewarding to the family as it is to the student,” she said.