The history of the International Student Program

Students from abroad came to the University of Illinois almost from its start, and by 1910 they were coming in numbers, many from China.¹ The University named an adviser to foreign students by 1909.²³ The Y's first part was as a host. The foreign students' own Cosmopolitan Club held its receptions in the Y's parlor, and when the club's house burned in March 1910 the Y raised a fund for its members, some of whom had lost nearly everything.⁴⁵ In 1911 the Y's Student Volunteer Band entertained the Chinese and Japanese students in Association Hall; about 25 of the 45 came.⁶ When the Chinese Students' Alliance held its Midwest conference at Urbana in 1913, its delegates stayed in the Y building.⁷ Hannah writes that between 1900 and 1916 the Y's general secretaries, Philip Conard, Dwight Weist and Lloyd C. Douglas, "gradually formalized" a program.⁸

The Y began its own yearly welcome in 1915. B. Glen Hersman, a member of the Cosmopolitan Club, became general secretary that spring, and in October the Y held its "first annual reception" for every foreign student on campus, in the lobby of Association Hall. The next spring Hersman handed out the national directory of foreign students; Illinois had 129.⁹¹⁰¹¹

The work took its lasting shape in 1918. That July Henry Wilson brought in C. D. Hayes, who had spent six years with the YMCA in China and Japan, including work with the Chinese students' YMCA in Tokyo.⁸¹²¹³ A student Committee on Friendly Relations was formed, taking its name from the national YMCA committee that John R. Mott had founded in 1911 to befriend foreign students.¹⁴¹⁵ In 1919 there were 201 international students from 31 countries at Illinois.¹⁶ Wilson described the new work that fall: one secretary met the students on arrival, found them rooms and boarding places, introduced them and advised them.¹⁷

The committee set out a "five fold program": to render personal service, to open "Christian American homes" to the students, to bring them into the social life of the campus, to make friendships between them and American students, and to take them to student conferences.¹⁶

Friendly Relations and International Friendship, 1918–1949

Hayes, Hannah writes, visited foreign students in the hospital, helped them find rooms, arranged loans, had them as guests in his home and counseled them.⁸ In his first year, 133 of the 169 foreign students were entertained in American homes.¹⁸ A student from Peru, Manuel Fonseca, chaired the Friendly Relations committee and sat on the Y's board for the foreign students; the committee held International Nights and Sunday talks on foreign lands by the fireplace of the Y's hut.¹⁹²⁰²¹ From November 1920 the Y ran a class in English conversation for foreign students, free by 1921.²²²³ In March 1924 Urbana hosted a conference of Asian students from eight Midwest colleges, who stayed in local homes.²⁴ That year a national survey of 70 student YMCAs found only one with a full-time foreign-student secretary; Illinois had had one since 1918.²⁵

Hayes left because of illness in the summer of 1924, and a recent graduate covered some of his work for a year.²⁶²⁷ In September 1925 Melville T. Kennedy, who had spent twelve years at a students' hostel in Calcutta, took up the work.^28272930 When Kennedy left to become a pastor in February 1928, Roy D. Hudson, who had served with the YMCA in Manchuria, succeeded him and led the work into the early 1930s.³¹³² In 1927 the committee became the Committee on International Friendship.¹⁶³³ Through the 1930s a student chairman led it each year.³⁴

The committee's 1924–25 report lists its regular work: "finding rooms, boarding places and employment, loaning money, conducting social events, securing invitations into American homes at Thanksgiving and Christmas time, and conducting Bible classes." That year it began calling on foreign students in their rooming houses.²⁸ In 1930 a national YMCA magazine described the Illinois "policy of viewing those from abroad as students, not as foreigners."³⁵

Each year brought an International Dinner. The first International Banquet, held by the Friendly Relations committee at the Wesley Foundation on May 2, 1925, was meant "to become an annual affair"; Hannah counts 300 students from 29 nations. The Y's own numbering of the dinners counts from 1924. By 1936 the YMCA and YWCA held the dinner together.^836373839 In 1930–31 the committee began an International Forum of Saturday luncheons, which in 1932 became a weekly forum with the YWCA.⁴⁰⁴¹ Through the 1930s it also held teas with the YWCA's World Fellowship committee,⁴² a holiday party for students who stayed over Christmas, and "friendship tours" to Illinois towns: fourteen between January and March 1935.⁴³⁴⁴ In 1932 it joined the protest against a Labor Department ruling that barred foreign students from part-time work.⁴⁵ The committee's year settled into a round: an Ice Breaker luncheon each fall for new and returning students, a spring picnic at Crystal Lake, and each June a trip to the Lincoln shrines at Springfield and New Salem.^46474849

There were about 130 foreign students on campus in 1931 and 159 in 1934.⁵⁰⁵¹ The war reached the committee's guests. At the 1941 Ice Breaker, talk turned to the war in the homelands of about 25 of the 35 students present, and in 1942, "in spite of the war," 26 countries were still represented at the dinner.⁵²⁵³ The dinner kept going in the Y's new Latzer Hall: the 21st, in 1944, had 173 guests, and by 1945 it closed with a roll call of the nations.⁵⁴⁵⁵ From 1942 the committees also gave a Thanksgiving dinner at the Y; 43 students from abroad came in 1943.⁵⁶⁵⁷ From 1941 staff members again had charge of the committee: Phillip Morgan, who came that fall, and Laurence R. Cadwell, who joined the staff the same year and worked with the committee and the national student groups until 1950, apart from Red Cross service overseas.^58596061 After the war the committee ran a campaign for rooms for foreign students and found them places in local homes: 40 at Thanksgiving 1947, and at Christmas 1948 every student who asked.⁶²⁶³⁶⁴ By September 1948 a YMCA-YWCA international fellowship club held Sunday suppers at the Y. That fall, as the International Supper Club, it met every other Sunday in Latzer Hall, each night given by one country's students, who cooked the meal: a Double Ten dinner by the Chinese students, a salute to India and Pakistan, a fiesta by the Ibero-American association. In October 1949 it gave a night for the displaced persons studying on campus.^6566676869 In 1949 the joint YM-YW Friendship Committee wrote a guide for new foreign students, "Getting Acquainted," and that December the Y went on the radio to urge Illinoisans to invite students from the 59 countries on campus home for Christmas.⁷⁰⁷¹ By the summer of 1950 the committee served about 400 students from 50 countries and wrote to each new student before they left home.⁷²

John W. Price and the International Student Program, 1950–1968

In 1950 Pete Ingalls brought John W. Price from the University of Minnesota YMCA, where that spring he had taken 43 foreign students to spend a weekend as guests of a Minnesota village.⁷³⁷⁴⁷⁵ By February 1952 there were 461 international students from 60 nations at Illinois. The suppers drew more than 200 on alternate Sundays, and weekend and holiday tours took busloads of about 35 to farm homes in Whiteside County, to Streator and Peoria, and to Springfield.⁷⁶⁷⁷⁷⁸

In the fall of 1953, with a foundation grant, the Y launched "a full-fledged International Student Program" with Price and Vera Kochmann on its staff.⁷⁹⁸⁰ It wrote to new students before they arrived, met them at the depot, helped them find rooms and counseled them.⁷⁹⁸¹ That fall there were more than 600 international students from 62 nations.⁷⁹

The program's main parts were:

• International Suppers on alternate Sunday nights, run with the YWCA, which kept the supper club's country nights and made them much larger. Each night's food, music and dance came from one country and were prepared by its students, among them the Filipino students of what is now the Philippine Student Association. They drew 200 to 300 a night and 3,000 in 1953–54, and still about 175 a night in 1961–62.^7782818384
• The International Welcome Weekend, first held in October 1952 at the 4-H camp near Monticello. The Y counted 150 at the second, in 1953; later ones drew 200 to 300, sometimes more than Freshman Camp.^8586798287
• The Southern Tour, a spring-break bus tour of the Tennessee Valley Authority and Southern colleges. The first, at Easter 1952, took about 30 students; by 1967 it was a 1,700-mile trip for 41, and by 1968 more than 700 students had made it.^8880899091 In 1959, when a restaurant in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, refused to serve one of the students, the whole group of 38 walked out; the next spring, during the sit-ins, Price planned the route to avoid trouble.⁹²⁹³
• Holiday visits, among them Thanksgiving on Illinois farms, from 1951 in Whiteside County and by 1953 for more than 100 students in four counties, and a home-hospitality program that paired students with local families.^7894838195
• A Little United Nations, run with the YWCA from March 15, 1952. At first American students played the delegates; within two years students from abroad took the larger part, and Price stressed that it was "not a mock or model U.N." In May 1954 it brought Eleanor Roosevelt to campus to speak on the United Nations. It met five or six times a year, and in 1966 it sold almost 2,000 boxes of UNICEF cards.^{9697989910081101}
• Services: a directory of foreign students, welcome letters, temporary rooms and personal counseling.⁷⁷⁸¹
• Work abroad: an American Students Abroad program; a 40-day YMCA-YWCA tour of the Soviet Union for college students, which Price led in 1959; and, in 1966, an "Illini in India" work camp for 13 Illinois students.^10210381

The Y called itself "a pioneer and campus leader in its program for international students."¹⁰⁴ In 1961–62 the Y's board raised the money for Price and his wife, Elizabeth, to spend three months visiting former students; they met almost 400 alumni in 21 countries.^105106107 Not every student group welcomed his firm hand. In 1964 officers of the Association of International Students said he kept too much control over the Y's programs, among them his rule keeping the press out of the Little U.N. Price answered that students on government scholarships could be put at risk if they were quoted disagreeing with their own countries.¹⁰⁸¹⁰⁹

The Y's work with international students was, as Peters puts it, "one of the most important and longest lasting areas of work in the history of the University YMCA."¹⁴ For fifty years it was the main place on campus where a student from abroad could find a room, a friend, a family for Thanksgiving and a meal from home. Its welcome at arrival, its welcome weekends and its home hospitality came before the University offered such services.⁵⁹¹¹⁰

Its numbers were large. The suppers drew 3,000 in a single year, and by 1977 more than 1,200 students had made the Southern Tour.⁸²¹¹¹ When Price visited former students around the world in 1961–62, many told him that their time at the Y was among the most valuable of their years at Illinois.¹⁰⁵

It was also unusual. In 1924 Illinois was one of very few student YMCAs with a full-time foreign-student secretary.²⁵ In 1920 the Daily Illini wrote that Hayes did "what is regarded nationally as the best college work among foreign students," and members of the national study group that wrote The Foreign Student in America (1925), to which Hayes contributed, said the Illinois Y did the best work of its kind in the country.^11259113

The Y's friends abroad included Hachiro Yuasa, who as a student at Illinois became a friend of Hayes and a lifelong friend of the Y, and who later led Doshisha University and became the first president of the International Christian University in Japan.⁸¹¹⁴

The end of the program, 1968

The University took the work over in stages. In 1965 its Office of Foreign Student Affairs, which it had set up in the early 1960s, took over the Welcome Weekend.¹¹⁰¹¹⁵ In May 1968 Price left the Y to become a counselor in that office. "Part of the international program went with him," Hannah wrote. That fall the office took on the Y's winter-clothing service for new students, and from about 1970 to 1972 it ran the Southern Tour, with Price directing it.^{102105116117118119} The suppers stayed at the Y through 1969.¹²⁰

In 1972 the office cut Price's position, and a student committee took out ads in the Daily Illini to keep him. By the next spring the Southern Tour was the Y's again.^121122123 Price worked on at the University's Rehabilitation-Education Center and retired in 1976; students and friends saw him off with an open house at the Cosmopolitan Club before he moved to Colorado.¹²⁴¹²⁵ The Board's 1974 statement of objectives left international work out.¹²⁶

Its legacy

The International Student Program did not return, but its work carried on in other forms. In the fall of 1977, after University budget cuts to international services, the Y formed a new international committee.¹²⁷¹²⁸ It opened an International Place in Murphy Lounge and began a weekly coffee hour that became the noon International Hour. It arranged host families and added a Western Tour in 1978 to the Southern Tour and the Springfield weekend.^111129130 A half-time international program coordinator was hired in 1982.¹²⁷ In 1983 the University's International Fair broke down in quarrels over which groups could take part. The next spring the Y and the McKinley Foundation held an International Festival instead, with some 25 student associations and about 1,500 visitors, and closed it with an International Dinner on April 1, 1984.¹³¹¹³²

That dinner became the Y's yearly International Dinner, held by 1986 with the University's Office of International Student Affairs and the Cosmopolitan Club.¹³³ Under program director Maria Somma, from the late 1980s, the Y held coffee hours, receptions for new international students, forums on world affairs and the annual dinner, worked closely with the University's international student office, and ran dialogues on the Middle East with the Hillel Foundation and others.¹³⁴¹³⁵ In 2006 the dinner had more than 300 guests and food from nearly 40 countries, and each August the Y helped welcome about 600 new international students.¹³⁶¹³⁷ When the Cosmopolitan Club closed in 2010 it gave the Y $300,000, and its weekly coffee hours moved to the Y.¹³⁸¹³⁹

An International Programming Task Force in 2011 noted that international enrollment had risen from 4,287 in 2001 to 7,271 in 2010, and recommended that the Y one day again have a director of international programming, as John Price had been.¹⁴⁰ The Cosmopolitan Club's coffee hours ran at the Y as Cosmo Coffee Hours and then Cosmo Cultural Nights.¹³⁹¹⁴¹

In 2017 the Y opened the New American Welcome Center. It serves immigrant individuals and families in the community rather than students, but it carries on the Y's long commitment to welcome and belonging for people born abroad. That spring the Y presented its 34th International Dinner as a "welcoming" event, and the dinner later came under the Welcome Center.¹⁴²¹⁴³ The 40th International Dinner, on April 4, 2025, sold out.¹⁴⁴ The John W. Price Award for international understanding was founded in December 1988, the month Price died, with a fund whose earnings support the award and the Y's international programming. It has been given at the dinner every year since 1989.¹²⁴¹⁴⁵

The Y no longer has a separate international student program, staff or committee. The University's International Student and Scholar Services helps run the dinner, and the University's International Education office keeps a room in the Y's building.¹⁴⁶¹⁴⁷

• B. Glen Hersman, general secretary from 1915, who held the Y's first reception for all foreign students that October.⁹¹⁰
• C. D. Hayes, the Y's first foreign-student secretary, 1918–1924, later student secretary at the University of Nebraska.⁸¹²¹⁴⁸
• Henry Wilson, general secretary 1916–1946, who brought Hayes to the Y.⁸
• Manuel Fonseca, a student from Peru, chairman of the Friendly Relations committee and the foreign students' member of the Y board, 1919–20.¹⁹²⁰
• Melville T. Kennedy, foreign-student secretary, 1925–1928, formerly a missionary in Calcutta.²⁸²⁷²⁹
• Roy D. Hudson, associate secretary in charge of foreign students from 1928 into the early 1930s.³¹³²
• Phillip Morgan and Laurence R. Cadwell, staff members who worked with the International Friendship Committee in the 1940s.⁵⁸⁵⁹
• John W. Price (1909–1988), director of the International Student Program, 1950–1968. A Methodist minister trained at Yale Divinity School, he had led the student YMCAs at Caltech and the University of Minnesota. After the Y he worked in the University's Office of Foreign Student Affairs and then its Rehabilitation-Education Center, retiring in 1976.^73116124
• Vera Kochmann, who joined Price on the program's staff in 1953.⁷⁹
• Pete (Harold) Ingalls, general secretary, who brought Price to the Y in 1950.⁷³
• David Lindstrom and Anne Colgan, who formed the international committee in 1977.¹²⁸
• Willie Seid, director of the Y's International Program, who led the 1984 International Festival and left that year.¹³¹¹⁴⁹
• Maria Somma, a program director from the late 1980s into the 1990s, in the same years and role as Scott Peters.¹³⁴¹³⁵
• Student chairmen of the Friendly Relations and International Friendship committees, among them A. L. Aquino (1923–24), H. E. Ryerson (1927–28) and Fred W. Riggs (1936–38).^3433150

"In this way, an international mind could be developed among the students." — Paul K. Whang '24, writing from Shanghai to Henry Wilson in 1932 about the Y's International Forum¹⁵¹

"The best way to make friends is to really want to learn about other people and their countries." — Eleanor Roosevelt, speaking at the Little United Nations' invitation, 1954¹⁰⁰

"One of the greatest ventures for any college student can be yours—that of building a personal friendship." — John W. Price, 1955¹⁵²

"Differences in color, language, dress, and customs disappeared quickly at the International Welcome Week-end." — the Illio, 1961¹⁵³

"We recognized that the University dropped a number of programs for international students." — Anne Colgan, on the 1977 revival¹²⁸

"It is a platform where I can share my culture and also get to meet people in this community." — a cook at the International Dinner, 2019¹⁵⁴