In addition to two full-tuition , approximately 90 students also interviewed or auditioned with scholarship committees within several academic departments.

• After submitting an essay, prospective teachers met with faculty to talk about their goals and inspirations to make an impact in education.
• Before their interviews, prospective students planning to major in submitted a reference letter and responded to a prompt asking for reflection on how the program intersected with their values and long-term interests.
• Musicians who do not plan to be music majors auditioned for a variety of scholarships. Awards will be made to students participating in .
• Invited students interviewed for selection into the 91����Ƶ STEM Scholars Engaging in Local Problems (SSELP) program, which provides financial aid up to $10,000 to academically talented students with demonstrated financial need who will pursue employment, service or continued education in high-need STEM fields regionally and nationwide.
• Students who had submitted promising portfolios of photography, videography and/or digital media work were invited to interview with the faculty.

A big welcome on campus

Campus tours, meals, workshops for parents and opportunities to interact with current students, faculty, staff and alumni were scheduled.

“The weekend provided students from around the United States with a close-up view of what it might be like to be a part of the 91����Ƶ community,” said Director of Admissions . “Having such a talented group of prospective students on campus definitely makes everyone more conscious of what a tremendously rich and diverse place this is.”

Ruth was helped by a large team of 91����Ƶ supporters — from current students who hosted overnight stays to alumni speakers and several parents of current students who met with visiting parents.

Yoder Scholar Anisa Leonard, a sophomore social work major from Nairobi, Kenya, organized housing and led dinner-time activities. As an Exec Royal Ambassador, she spent most of the weekend giving campus tours.

“I loved getting to meet all the new students and seeing some familiar faces,” she said. “A lot of the students asked questions which were major specific about what they can expect from professors or in the classroom.”

Alumni highlight faculty, small size, deep discussions

Alumni Benjamin Bergey ’11, nearing the conclusion of his doctoral work in music at James Madison University, and Jessica Sarriot ‘11, a first-year graduate student at Princeton University, shared their 91����Ƶ experiences with prospective honors students.

Bergey chose 91����Ƶ for several reasons, including its “holistic learning environment in and out of the classroom,” the “amazing faculty who are quality professors but also mentors and friends,” and the small size.

“It’s large enough to have an array of excellent programs, but small enough that students can participate in many of them with room to create other experiences,” he told students.

Sarriot, who was raised in three different countries as a “,” talked about how her (she also minored in and ) prepared her for four years of international and national development work, followed by an intense seven-month research project in which she explored community organizing practices by interviewing 60 community leaders in Colombia, Mauritania, South Africa, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Iraq.

Her graduate studies at Princeton are fully funded.

“When I think of my four years on campus, the times I remember the best were times I was actively engaging the two questions at the center of my being: How do I do justice and who is God?” she said. “…If you are holding some profound questions in your head and heart, there will be professors, mentors, classmates and an ethos at this institution that will allow you to explore those questions, that will enrich and nurture your process of answering them, and that will stay with you.”

“We wanted to hear from outside the community how this abuse is manifested and focus on how we can better support those who have experienced it,” said senior Katrina Poplett, who led the program planning for the second year with senior Jonatan Moser.

In an opening event focused on intersectionality, representatives from five campus groups — , , the , and — were invited to share “stories and statistics about how sexual assault affected that particular group,” said Poplett. “It was powerful and personal and we closed with a candlelight vigil as a witnessing.”

Take Back the Night events are held around the United States and around the world. The first march was held in 1975, commemorating the death of a woman who was murdered while walking home alone at night in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

91����Ƶ has a long tradition of hosting the annual program, according to Professor , faculty advisor to the planning committee.

TBTN hosted several events around campus, including a Wednesday chapel that involved the sharing of stories and poetry.

91����Ƶ 20 participants in the men’s only discussion Wednesday evening “took the conversation to some really interesting and insightful places,” said Ben Rush, who co-hosted “How Language Legitimizes: A Second Look At What We Don’t Think of Twice” with Joseph Mumaw and Professor . “Our goals were to take the conversation away from the overt, symptomatic examples of sexual violence and point it towards a conversation about the way subtle things embedded in language and societal assumptions contribute to the problem.” [Read Ben’s blog post about leading this event.]

A Thursday coffee house offered space for expressive arts and sharing, followed by a session with the playback theater group. Sarah Regan and Ana Hunter-Nickels, representatives of the Social Work is People (SWIP) club, were the hosts.

Friday’s chapel, planned by the 91����Ƶ , featured Sabrina Dorman, executive director of the local anti-sex trafficking organization New Creation, Inc. This was followed by a walk-through reflective exhibit in the Campus Center.

Eastern Mennonite Seminary also hosted a Tuesday chapel service to engage with themes of #metoo and #Ibelieve you.

This year’s TBTN events were in the second year of a three-year thematic exploration of sexual violence at the micro-, meso- and macro levels, Poplett and Moser said.

“Last year was on a micro-level, focused on what was going on here on campus, opening a space for conversations we didn’t see happening,” Poplett said. “This year, we’re focusing on the meso-level, with organizations and community, and next year will be more of a macro level.”

The leaders situated TBTN events within recent national events, including U.S. Department of Education decisions related to Title IX.

At all events, counseling center staff were present and other resources were available if students or community members were in need of support.

Many of the students involved in Take Back the Night come to their volunteer work by learning more about systemic issues in their coursework and through clubs such as SWIP or . Moser, a double major in and , says a combination of factors raised his awareness as a first-year student.

“I had just learned about sexual violence and sexism and how often it happened and I was really horrified by that,” Moser said. “Getting involved in Take Back the Night has been a way to give back.”

Poplett, a major who is also in the accelerated MA in restorative justice program, began attending TBTN events her first year on campus and became a leader as a sophomore.

“I think a lot of my passion lies in giving voice to people whose stories aren’t normally told,” she said.

“It was rough,” Brenneman recalls of her family’s return to Hesston, Kansas, in time for her senior year. “What was important when I came back was the car you drove and the clothes you wore. Those were not important at all when I was at Woodstock.”

Having that extended experience outside of her home culture while growing up makes Brenneman what’s known as a . The “third-culture” label acknowledges the mixed cultural identity a TCK often develops, in which they can feel neither completely at home in the culture they were born into nor the one(s) in which they spent considerable amounts of time.

“I found that I identified more with kids who had had the same experience [of living overseas] after I returned home,” says Brenneman, one of about 20 current 91����Ƶ faculty and staff who identify as TCKs. (Although the “TCK” label includes the word “kid,” the effects of growing up in more than one culture are often life-long.)

Brenneman’s background later inspired the direction of her academic career. After graduating from 91����Ƶ with a degree in psychology, she went on to get a doctorate from the University of Pittsburgh. She wrote her dissertation on the well-being and adjustment of American kids living in Korea.

Often, Brenneman says, the most challenging part of being a TCK is not living abroad – it’s adjusting to life after returning to their home culture.

“Part of the adjustment [for TCKs] is trying to figure out where they fit in. They [might be] American, but they don’t feel completely American,” says Brenneman. “It’s hard for people who haven’t been in that experience to understand it.”

A dozen TCKs on campus

That’s something first-year student Cela Hoefle knows well. When she was 11, Hoefle’s family moved to a city in northern Thailand, where she lived until she finished high school. She started at 91����Ƶ in the fall of 2015. Hoefle is one of more than a dozen TCKs, including her older sister, enrolled in 91����Ƶ’s traditional undergrad programs.

“When people first see me they expect me to just blend back in,” says Hoefle, who has been active in both the Third-culture Kids Club on campus (her sister, Nika, was co-president of the group before graduating this spring) and the International Student Organization.

[Read Nika’s op-ed in the Weather Vane campus newspaper on being a Third-culture Kid and more about Third Culture Kids .]

A psychology major, Hoefle quickly connected with Brenneman as a fellow TCK. Before long, Hoefle began assisting Brenneman with an ongoing research project on the psychological impact of 91����Ƶ’s on students.

The goal, Brenneman says, is to understand and quantify what students mean when they say – as they often do – that their experiences on the university’s cross-cultural programs were “life-changing.” One of Hoefle’s roles in the project is helping with data collection by interviewing students after they return from studying abroad.

“As a TCK, I’m still just trying to figure out what that experience means to me,” Hoefle says. “Seeing [these changes] in other people helps me understand myself in some ways.”

‘Globally knowledgeable’ students help with transition for TCKs

Although 91����Ƶ’s cross-cultural study programs give many students an often-profound first taste of life in unfamiliar parts of the world, it’s a far different experience from that of being a TCK.

One of the distinctions that Brenneman has observed between the groups is that TCKs tend to focus on the similarities between cultures, while students who experience life outside the United States for the first time through a cross-cultural tend to focus on differences.

Those tendencies aside, Brenneman says the prevalence of cross-cultural education throughout the curriculum, along with 91����Ƶ’s emphasis on becoming more “globally knowledgeable and accepting,” help create a supportive atmosphere for TCKs at the university.

At the same time, she adds, the relatively large group of TCKs on campus contributes significantly to that same globally-aware environment that 91����Ƶ prizes.

“TCKs bring strengths to the 91����Ƶ community as a result of their experiences,” Brenneman says. “They help bring out the global emphasis that we have.”

For students like Nika Hoefle, whose family had moved from Minnesota to a small city in northern Thailand when she was 14, that question doesn’t quite work like the simple ice-breaker it’s supposed to be. Telling people she’s from Thailand – which she considers home – can be awkward. It can almost come off arrogant. It often just brings the conversation to a halt.

“People don’t really know how to interact with you,” says Hoefle, a senior majoring in as well as . “The questions that people ask once they’ve figured out that you’ve lived abroad can be vague and difficult to answer.”

E.g: “Oh… What was that like?”

How are you supposed to answer something like that?

Hoefle is what’s known as a , or TCK. The term was coined decades ago to describe someone who’s spent a “significant part” of their formative years living in a country or culture different from their parents’. The “third-culture” bit refers to the mixed identities they develop as a result, neither fully belonging to their parents’ culture, nor to the one(s) in which they’ve lived.*

91����Ƶ dozen on campus

The definition of a TCK is somewhat nebulous, and 91����Ƶ doesn’t track official enrollment numbers of students who consider themselves to be TCKs. But based on participation in a special orientation held prior to the start of each academic year, more than a dozen TCKs are now studying at 91����Ƶ.

One of Hoefle’s classmates and fellow TCKs, Alena Yoder, lived in Kenya from second to seventh grade. Though the two lived overseas in entirely different parts of the world, they share the experience of feeling like outsiders, at times, in the country where they hold citizenship.

“For a long time, I just didn’t fit in,” says Yoder, a senior history major.

She struggled to make friends and recalls her eighth-grade year after her family’s return to Indiana as the worst of her life.

Hoefle and Yoder are co-presidents of a that meets monthly on campus to discuss their experiences of adjustment, challenge and growth. 91����Ƶ 10 students have been active in the club this year.

“It’s definitely a support group,” says Hoefle. “What we try to do as a club is be a safe place for people to talk about what’s going on … Without that strong support group at 91����Ƶ, I don’t know how my transition would have gone. I can’t really imagine it without those people, even though we were from such different places.”

More than 20 TCKs among faculty and staff

, an education professor and faculty sponsor of the TCK club, said the group “provides that safe space for challenging each other but also for providing support during the challenging times.”

“I think it is [also] a place where they can experience a sense of home – home that lies in relationships, not in geographical location,” she added.

Leaman co-sponsors the club with her husband, , a business professor who grew up in East Africa and is among the nearly 20 91����Ƶ faculty and staff who are TCKs. Lori Leaman says the large presence of TCKs across the entire university community, along with the focus on cross-cultural understanding that permeates the curriculum, makes 91����Ƶ a particularly supportive place for TCK students. (The Leamans also spent 12 years in Nairobi, Kenya, where both of their children were born.)

“I think the emphasis on ‘the common good’ for every single person on this globe resonates with TCKs,” she continues.

A ‘comfortable’ place

As their graduation rapidly approaches, Yoder and Hoefle both say they’ve had great experiences at 91����Ƶ.

“There are people here on this campus who very much understand that TCK narrative,” says Yoder, who plans to stay in Harrisonburg after graduation. “It feels comfortable here to be a TCK.”

As a legacy of her past, Hoefle expects she’ll always have an unconventional notion of “home,” one that’s not necessarily rooted to one specific place.  Sometimes, she says, she’s jealous of peers who have deep, deep roots in one particular community. Other times, she’s grateful that her life has been so varied.

“I don’t think it’s better or worse to have lived abroad,” Hoefle says. “It just depends on what you do with it in the end.”

Read Hoefle’s opinion piece published in the Weather Vane, “The Truth 91����Ƶ Being a Third Culture Kid.”

* Definition adapted from: Pollock, David C. “Being a Third-Culture Kid: A Profile.” Raising Resilient MKs: Resources for Caregivers, Parents, and Teachers. Colorado Springs, CO: Association of Christian Schools International, 1998. 45-53.

A “third culture kid,” Horst spent much of her childhood in Italy while her parents were missionaries. She attended Hesston College and transferred to 91����Ƶ, where she majored in social work. Horst also earned a graduate degree at Eastern Mennonite Seminary. In this interview, Horst notes that “Being in seminary has really provided a context for listening through a pastoral care lens.”

Horst is executive director of in Harrisonburg, Virginia, which was founded by Susannah Lepley, 91����Ƶ’s and international student services.  Horst worships with The Table in Harrisonburg.

“Coming from an African culture, your parents are in charge,” says Mensah. “You may have an opinion, but they have the final say. They know what’s best for you.”

A , Mensah received his bachelor’s degree from 91����Ƶ on April 27. His mother, a 2007 MA graduate of 91����Ƶ who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011, was the speaker.

When he first saw the small quiet campus, Mensah had doubts about his mother’s choice. “I’ve always lived in cities. I envisioned a larger place. My first impression was – ‘What is this?’”

Mensah’s family is currently centered in New York City. He takes annual trips to Ghana and Liberia to reconnect with extended family and “refresh my culture.”

He readily identifies with “” raised in multiple countries and cultural settings. “I notice things, subtle differences that others might miss. I describe myself as an introvert-extrovert. I get energy from people, but I like thinking, collecting ideas, analyzing.”

Mensah hopes to return to Africa to share what he’s learned with his generation of budding artists after completing his cross-cultural requirement at this summer.

“I want to be an entrepreneur, do business after college. I feel like I have the right ideas,” says Mensah. “I want to take this newfound love for media, visual communications, and apply it back to Liberia and Ghana.”

This spring, for example, Mensah was part of a group of student videographers who produced “,” a documentary that linked a chemical spill in West Virginia’s Elk River in early 2014 to pollution feared from a proposed 4.5-mile open-pit iron mine in Wisconsin’s Penokee Hills.

Mensah says he wants to “re-teach, share what I’ve learned at 91����Ƶ and not just make money off of it” by opening a photo studio and offering classes “as a way to bring young people into this line of work.”

Mensah’s artistic skills were apparent at a young age. In high school he began hand-painting designs onto white t-shirts. He now has a line of international urban clothing which he sells through /.

The street word “dub” is the brand name Mensah chose for his business venture. “It can mean a number of things. It could mean twenty, it could mean to win, as in ‘we got the W.’ Dub means a re-mixed Jamaican song. I think it’s a special word. I took that word and I put another meaning to it. And it still means we are winning, we are champions. We’re pushing something good.”

During his junior year in the only business class he took at 91����Ƶ, Mensah parlayed his idea for an app to a weekend at James Madison University. He convincingly communicated the concept for his event finder and planner app, which he named “Vite-us,” to the win the “silver medal” among 24 competitors. He also won a business plan competition among students taught by 91����Ƶ business professor Tony Smith.

Mensah’s multiple talents were on display in the he created for his senior show in early April, an original song “Beauty” to celebrate the life of a high school friend who died earlier this year in Ghana.

Combining original lyrics, collaborative music by a high school friend and a kaleidoscopic montage of double-exposure video, Mensah’s capstone project showcased his visual and musical abilities.

“What pushed me to make this project – I’d hear people say, ‘Oh, your friend was so beautiful.’ I felt like they didn’t know how beautiful she really was. They only saw the physical beauty,” says Mensah.

“You can’t rely on how you look to sustain you. What is fundamentally beautiful is compassion for yourself and your people,” is the Lupita Nyong’o quote he chose for the opening lines.

Gbowee’s advice to her son during his college years? “Work hard…and focus. Focus, that’s the one word I try to remember,” says Mensah.

Focus… and a strong dose of optimism and wonder. “Life is so crazy. God is so mysterious. He’s wonderful,” says Mensah. “When I think about how my life is unfolding, it’s motivation to keep moving forward, to think positive for the future.”

John Kratz, director of International Student Services and David Muscan, Hillside RD discuss at the culture shock meeting. (Photo: Morgan Porter and Chelsie Gordon)

Cameroon, Ethiopia, Egypt, Lebanon, Paraguay, Germany, Hungary, China; so many different countries, so many different cultures, so many different experiences. Twenty students and staff gathered in Maplewood lounge on Thursday night, Oct. 29, to talk about their experiences with different cultures. The group included Americans that have traveled overseas, international students who are studying here, Americans who grew up in other countries, and others who are experiencing 91����Ƶ as a culture shock.

Each person shared their best and worst experiences in another culture. Csilla Muscan, a Resident Director at Hillside shared about the teasing that occurred when she moved from Romania to Hungary. “The other kids would make fun of my accent because I didn’t sound Hungarian.” She also had some good things to say, and talked about an experience in Scotland, where her host “treated her like royalty.”

Similar stories were heard around the group about the kindness and generosity of people from other cultures. Many people talked about feeling welcome, explaining that the hospitality they experienced was unlike any other. “Guatemalans are very hospitable people,” said junior Leah Risser, who made the trek to Guatemala when she was in high school. “Even in the indigenous regions where they have little money, they always offered you something to drink, at least.”

International students talked about the differences between the culture they came from and American culture. The individuality that is stressed in this country is something that was brought up a lot. “The focus seems to be on ‘me,'” said David Muscan, Resident Director of Hillside. “You hear phrases like, ‘be the master of your own destiny,’ and ‘chase your dreams.’ In my culture, it would be more like, ‘chase your dreams, but keep your family and society in mind.'”

For Muigai Ndoka, a CJP student at 91����Ƶ, he feels like his identity is being imposed on him. “Here at 91����Ƶ, I am a foreigner, a student,” he explained. “Now I have to deal with the identity I’ve been given.” Hearing these perspectives was helpful for the American students present. “The most helpful thing was to hear the international students’ point of view of coming to America,” said Risser. “For me, it was going to a third world country, and for them it was sort of the opposite.”

This is not the first year for students to talk about their experiences, but it is a first time for all students to be invited. “There is something like this every year, but it is usually for the international students only, to let them know they’re not alone,” said Muscan. “It is helpful for everyone to know about the steps you might go through when experiencing a new culture.”