By taking on leadership roles, Pakistani students helped foster cross-cultural cooperation on the Missouri State University campus. Deepak and Fawad, Global UGRAD-Pakistan [3] students at Missouri State University [4] (MSU) in Springfield, Missouri, became leaders in the MSU Indian Student Association [5] (ISA) this fall. The organization, established in 2003, serves to unite Indian students and assist them in their transition to academia in a new environment. Last year, the organization expanded to include a more diverse group of international students, including Pakistanis.
“This experience helped me polish my leadership skills,” Deepak reflects. “It helped me to learn how to plan and organize events, how to delegate tasks among different people and bring out the best results from them, how to deal with sponsors and banks and also how to encourage people to participate in the events. It also helped me develop my social network.”
With Fawad elected as Vice President and Kumar as Treasurer, both of the fellows have been busy with their leadership roles in ISA. Fawad is responsible for event planning and management, creating an agenda for meetings, and providing some useful techniques for the promotion of the organization. Deepak is charged with the budgeting of events, sponsor relations, and tracking revenues and expenses. The students, with other ISA members, organized events such as, Cricket Night, Movie Night, and Diwali Night, all which helped educate and engage American students in South Asian culture.
Both Deepak and Fawad say that they look forward to applying lessons learned from their US leadership roles to their Pakistani communities. How to be an effective team player is something that has particularly resonated with the students. “By working over here on such a team, I can be a role model for the youth in Pakistan and I can share my experience with them in order to make them capable for future challenges,” Fawad says.
Through leading in their host community, these fellows serve as cultural ambassadors, dynamic team players, and proponents of unity between the United States and Pakistan. Deepak and Fawad will return to Pakistan at the end of the semester, where they will have the opportunity to take on new leadership roles and use the tools gained from their US experiences to inspire others to do the same.
The Global Undergraduate Exchange Program in Pakistan [3] is a program of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs [6] of the U.S. Department of State and is implemented by IREX.