Indiana University of Pennsylvania has earned the Open Doors 75 Seal of Excellence for its 75 years of collaboration with the international Open Doors program.
The Open Doors Report on International Educational Exchange is the only long-standing, comprehensive information resource on international students and scholars in the United States and on US students studying abroad for academic credit.
IUP has provided data to the Open Doors program on its work with international education since 1949, when it began hosting international students.
In fall 2023, IUP saw international student enrollment increase by 23 percent, for a total of 494 international students from 60 countries. This follows a 2 percent increase in international enrollment from fall 2021 to fall 2022 and is at its highest point since 2019.
Prior to the coronavirus pandemic, IUP had the greatest number of international students in the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education, welcoming more than 1,000 international students annually for study at IUP.
“IUP is very proud to host students from nations all over the world,” IUP President Michael Driscoll said. “Our international students bring new cultures, traditions, and perspectives to our university and community and help to build bridges of understanding and connections in countless ways,” he said.
“Increasingly, our students will be called on to think and work globally in their careers and lives, and experiences and positive relationships with international students is an important part of the educational experience at IUP,” he said. “As IUP looks forward to its sesquicentennial in 2025, it is very gratifying to know that international education has been a very significant part of our history and tradition,” he said. “We value this recognition, and I thank the IUP Office of International Education for its outstanding outreach to international students and its inspirational programming.”
Over the past 75 years, IUP has hosted tens of thousands of international students from almost every country in the world. The IUP Office of International Education, part of the Division of Academic Affairs, offers educational programs throughout the year for the IUP and the area community in addition to its hands-on work supporting international students and helping to coordinate scores of study-abroad experiences for current IUP students who wish to study abroad.
Michele Petrucci
The Office of International Education is directed by Associate Vice President for International Education and Global Engagement and Executive Director of the American Language Institute Michele Petrucci, who was recently honored for excellence by the Pennsylvania Council for International Education.
“While we knew IUP has been actively engaged in international education and student mobility for many decades, to recently learn from IIE that we have been welcoming international students to campus since 1949 was an unexpected and very pleasant revelation,” Petrucci said. “The impact on IUP and the Indiana community by these international students and their families from across the world is invaluable and reverberates throughout multiple generations.”
For the past 40 years, IUP’s ALI has provided intensive English programs for students from all over the world who want to improve their language proficiency and cultural understanding of the United States. Enrollment in the American Language Institute is up by more than 72 percent, with a total of 69 students.
In June, Petrucci and Emma Archer, director of IUP’s International Student and Scholar Services and the American Language Institute, were recognized by the Institute of International Education with certificates of appreciation from the Scholar Rescue Fund Alliance “with deep gratitude for your extraordinary efforts to preserve the life, ideas, and work of a threatened scholar from Afghanistan by providing a safe academic haven at IUP.”
Emma Archer
The Office of International Education has secured 15 Institute of International Education Emergency Student Fund scholarships for IUP international students over the past four years. These scholarships provide financial help to students who come from countries facing natural disasters, war, or other crises.
Over the past nine years, Petrucci has secured more than $2 million in funding from the US Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs-International Research and Exchanges Board for the Fulbright Educators program, which brings selected international primary and secondary educators who are Fulbright recipients in their home countries to the United States for months of study and outreach in western Pennsylvania school districts (Indiana and Pittsburgh). IUP has hosted more than 150 educators since the program began, and 10 of the educators have returned to IUP for graduate study.
In addition to directly working with students here and abroad, the Office of International Education does extensive outreach and educational programming for the IUP and the area community, including International Unity Day, International Lunch Hour, and International Education Week.
Since 2011, IUP has been host to a United States Customs and Immigration Service naturalization ceremony for new citizens as part of IUP’s International Education Week celebration.
The Office also offers the Conversation Partners program, which matches international students with American partners in an effort to promote global awareness, multicultural interaction, diversity, and friendship; and Culture Café, which brings together international and American students and provides opportunities to talk about each other’s languages and cultures, for networking, and to socialize with fun activities in an informal environment.
The Office of International Education also works with IUP’s National Achievement Scholarship Office and qualified students to help students secure international scholarships and awards, including Boren Fellowships, Fulbright awards, Freeman-Asia awards, and Gilman scholarships. Through their efforts, nine international students have secured an Emergency Student Fund Award from the Institute of International Education Emergency Fund since 2020.