From Kiwi Land to Carlisle

Three international students share a hometown bond

October 7, 2008

Lisa Liu ’11 and Phillipa Draper ’12 enjoy an early fall afternoon on campus.

If you're a first-year student, chances are you'll run into at least one of your high-school peers in your classes or on campus. But if you're from Papanui High School in Christchurch, New Zealand, what are the odds of attending a liberal-arts college in Carlisle, Pa., with a former classmate?

For Phillippa Draper '12, it turns out that there are two other Dickinson students from her high school: sisters Li Jui "Michelle" '10 and Li-Yu "Lisa" Liu '11.

And they're all here thanks to a friendship forged between two families on opposite sides of the globe.

The connection began in 2002, when Tom Reed, professor of English, spent his sabbatical year in New Zealand. The Reed family settled in Christchurch after seeing all that the nearby University of Canterbury had to offer and finding a suitable high school for their daughter, Abigail. During their search, they talked with Denis Pyatt, the principal of Papanui High School.

"Denis just stood out by his welcoming tone, and Papanui High School has an egalitarian approach," says Tom's wife, Dottie, outreach program publicity coordinator for The Trout Gallery. "There's a lot of diversity there."

Over time, the Reed and Pyatt families grew close and began envisioning an academic link between Papanui and Dickinson. When Pyatt came to the United States to visit the Reeds in 2004, the idea became tangible. In 2006, with the assistance of a Global Campus Scholarship, Michelle Liu became the first student from Papanui High School to attend Dickinson.

She is now a neuroscience major who plans to attend graduate school in public health. Originally accepted to the pre-med program at the University of Otago in New Zealand, she says she jumped at the chance to study in the United States. "I love the diversity—the bookstores, the magazines, the explosion of information and knowledge here," she says.

Lisa Liu followed the year after. Also a neuroscience major, she is struck by the number of international students here and the opportunities that Dickinson has afforded her, including attending an international health conference last year with Associate Professor of Psychology Teresa Barber.

This fall, Draper is settling in nicely as a first-year student and enjoying the liberal-arts curriculum. "This semester I'm taking Chinese and chemistry, which I never would have had a chance to take at university at home," she says. "At home if you're doing science, you take science courses. If you're doing art, you take arts courses. Here you get to do everything, no matter what."

There's just one thing that the three young women can't get in the United States. "We all brought Marmite, which is a spray for toast and sandwiches that they don't have here," says Draper. "Everyone thinks it's really disgusting, like blecch."

Approximately 6 percent of Dickinson's student body is international, representing 55 countries. For more information about Dickinson's global campus, visit www.dickinson.edu/global.