By Wendi Wheeler ’06

Walk past the student lounge in Christensen Center on any given afternoon, and it becomes clear that Asian American students make up a sizeable portion of the Augsburg student body. The lounge is a popular hangout for students—a place for them to study, relax, and connect with each other.

To hear some stories of Asian American students at Augsburg, attend the Augsburg Theater Department production of Inside Out. In collaboration with Mu Performing Arts and Pan Asian Student Services, Augsburg will present Inside Out Nov. 18-20.

Inside Out was created and is directed by Rick Shiomi, artistic director of Mu Performing Arts of St. Paul, Minn. The project began when Shiomi interviewed several Asian American students at Augsburg. Based on the interviews, Shiomi developed a series of short scenes that reflect their experiences. The performance also includes additional scenes created by students.

Shiomi said this project is part of Mu’s outreach programming and a continuation of a longstanding relationship with Augsburg. “In the last three or four years, the number and profile of Asian American students [at Augsburg] has been growing rapidly,” Shiomi said. “We wanted to create a project that would engage some of those students in the theatrical process, to understand that their stories are important, to see that they can be presented on stage, and to get some experience on stage.”

In fact, the number of students in the undergraduate day program who identify as Asian American has grown from 6 percent in 2008 to 8.2 percent in 2011. According to Penh Lo, director of Pan Asian student services, the largest percentage of students are Hmong American (41 percent) followed by Vietnamese, Korean, and Laotian. Overall, 14 different cultures are represented in the Asian American student population at Augsburg.

Shiomi said he has been impressed with the enthusiasm of the cast members and with the wide range of experiences they worked with in the production. “Certainly there are the challenges of the immigrant experience, but there are a whole number of issues that came into play in this production, like dealing with mixed race parents, dealing with racism, and establishing an identity.”

Lo believes allowing students to tell their stories is a powerful way to connect them to each other. “Whether the stories are similar or different, there is a connection. It is people telling others, ‘This is how I came to be,'” he said.

One of the actors is Mai Choua “MC” Thao ’11 [above right], a business major and a Hmong woman who said she has always had a passion for acting. “What I have been stressing to my friends is that not a lot of Asian Americans are out there telling stories about their personal lives,” she said. “This will be a good way for others to hear the voices of the everyday struggles that Asian American students are going through.”

This production is part of the Theater Department’s move to explore ways to engage the entire campus community and to establish relationships with Cedar-Riverside neighborhood organizations. The department has created a statement expressing its intention to “engage with our diverse campus community in regards to the representation of culture, race, ethnicity, national origin, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, socio-economic class, religion, disability, and age on and off stage.”

Performances are November 18 and 19 at 7 p.m. and November 20 at 3 p.m. Go to the Theater website for tickets.

Photo by Stephen Geffre

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A double major in biology and English, Nou sees the CIEE program as an opportunity to learn about the education system and the medical practices of another culture, to interact with Koreans and learn specifically about the people and culture, to attend a prestigious university, and to enhance her overall college experience. In her scholarship application essay she wrote, “The program will contribute to my college experience in that it will make me a more rounded person to go out into the world as an educated leader in the community.”

In her blog, “Seoul: An Asian American perspective of South Korea,” Nou shares her experience, including her reasons for studying in South Korea and the exhilaration and frustration she feels as a U.S. American in another country.

Out of all the places, why South Korea? There’s the pop culture, kimchi, bibimbap…yet, what really drew me to South Korea was its reputation to adopt its children. [The] United States contains the largest Korean adoptee population in the world. My interest in South Korea’s health system as well as its orphanages drew me to explore and understand the Korean culture in a deeper level. So here I am–the motherland. I hope to gain a better understanding of Korea and most importantly I hope this journey will help strengthen my vocation.

Nou writes about her frustration at not being able to understand people or to read the signs but says she is becoming more independent and learning to discipline her spending habits. At the beginning of her experience, she writes, “After being in Seoul for a week, I feel better and more confident in my surroundings. I still feel like I am lost in this big city. There’s so many things to do–touring, shopping, etc–but the problem is that I don’t know any Korean so I can’t ask questions or bargain. I don’t even know how to say ‘where is the bathroom?’!”

She has a ten-minute break between her classes, and they are on opposite sides of the campus separated by a hill with steep steps. She writes that walking up the hill at Yonsei University nearly brings her to tears. “I could use the workout but it’s just that my backpack is so heavy!” She is glad to have packed sturdy tennis shoes but marvels at the women who climb the hills wearing high heels.

Two weeks after her arrival, Nou was visited by Ashley Stoffers, an Augsburg student teaching in English in South Korea on a Fulbright Scholarship. Ashley brought Nou an early birthday present–a “Korean survival package.” Nou wrote that the visit and the gift helped cheer her up after having a “not so good” first couple of weeks.

To complete her program, Nou will create a film documenting her experience and that of other students in South Korea. “I hope to show my peers in the states the daily life of an “American student” studying in South Korea through film…” She hopes to dispel myths surrounding the study abroad experience and that her film will educate potential students and encourage them to pursue study abroad opportunities.

“My film will be proof that a Hmong American student was able to successfully complete a semester away from home with the help of the Gilman Scholarship. I believe that my film will help fuel the Hmong college students’ flame to study abroad. It will also help dissipate any lingering doubts concerning living abroad.”

To read more about Nou’s experience, go to http://nou-southkorea08.blogspot.com/. For information on study abroad, go to www.augsburg.edu/augsburgabroad.

The Gilman International Scholarship Program offers a competition for awards for undergraduate study abroad and was established by the International Academic Opportunity Act of 2000. This scholarship provides awards for U.S. undergraduate students who are receiving federal Pell Grant funding to participate in study abroad programs worldwide. A new $3,000 Critical Need Language Supplement available to students studying a critical need language. The online application is now open to eligible students studying abroad during the Spring 2009 semester. www.iie.org//programs/gilman/index.html

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