SLIPPERY ROCK — Slippery Rock University honored its international graduates and international exchange and study abroad students who put together SRU's largest-ever class of graduating international students.

Wednesday night's ceremony honored 12 international students who are graduating this year; 18 international exchange students who will return home; and 13 American students who participated in SRU's long-term student abroad program.

The university enrolls 111 international students from more than 20 countries.

Noora Alie, SRU's international student advisor for the university's Office of Global Engagement, said the program breeds close friendships among the students and administrators like her, who are responsible for helping them get acclimated to life in the U.S.

“I'm their mom; I'm extremely close with my students,” Alie said. “It's really important, because they have no one here that's family. They picture the U.S. like a big city — like New York City. And then they come to Slippery Rock.”

Something as simple as a Pennsylvania winter can take some getting used to for international students.

Twenty-year-old Saheed Rizwan and his sister, Rikaza, had their first experience with snow two years ago, when they transferred to SRU together from their home of Colombo, the largest city and commercial capital of Sri Lanka, an island nation in the Indian Ocean.

The past two years have been a journey for the siblings, who say they plan to stay in the United States after graduation.

Rikasa, who is graduating with a degree in financing and accounting, is looking for jobs. Saheed, who came to SRU as a programming major but ultimately decided on psychology, has applied to the university's graduate program.

The Rizwans were on the brink of spending their final two years of college in Canada before meeting with administrators at SRU's program, and deciding to come to Western Pennsylvania. It's a decision Saheed said he'll always be glad he made.

“It was one of the best decisions we've ever made,” said Saheed. “There's a lot that goes on for (international students here) that people don't know. It's an amazing inter-cultural exchange that you probably couldn't get anywhere else in this part of the country.”

For Tamara Shawkatova of Slovakia, a 21-year-old graphic design major, the winter wasn't anything new. But Shawkatova, who came to SRU as an exchange student from the Academy of Arts and Design in Bratislava, wanted to brush up on her English speaking skills before returning home and finishing her education.

Many of Shawkatova's friends and high school classmates from Bratislava decided to take advantage of exchange programs in other parts of Europe, but she wanted to return to America for a longer stay, having visited in the past with her father, who is an architect and a professor at the academy.

In the process, Shawkatova said, she's found her passion in graphic design.

“I really like the process. You actually make stuff instead of just studying hundreds of books,” she said.

Tatiana Naomi of Brazil, whose surname is Kuroiva De Siqueira, said her experience was similar to Shawkatova's. She came out of high school in Sao Paulo, Brazil, not sure of what she wanted to do with her life. At SRU she's working on a major in information systems and cultivating a love of math and communications.

At the University of Sao Paulo, from which Naomi will eventually graduate, she studied with 90,000 students. That made SRU's relatively small campus a bit of a shock, she said.

In fact, so was ending up in Pennsylvania at all. Naomi didn't actually pick her destination herself. She said someone else did, though she's not quite sure who.

She'll be here until Aug. 15, when she'll return to Brazil and her family.

“I think I adapted really, really well,” she said.

For American students who lept at the chance to study outside the United States, SRU's long-term study aboard programs have left them with stories to share and memories to cherish.

Twenty-three-year-old Harmony Kasper, a journalism and creative writing major from Ellwood City who spent four months studying at the University of Limerick in Ireland, used the time to get back to her family's Irish roots.

Kasper visited tourist destinations around Ireland, and took in the country's St. Patty's Day celebration. But she also — with the help of her grandmother, Patricia Hahn — traced her family's heritage to the village of Newtownbutler in Northern Ireland, which she visited in search of the grave of an ancestor.

The search ultimately proved unsuccessful, but Kasper said she was aided by the community newspaper, the Fermanagh Herald, which ran a front page story on her search, and generated messages from residents who contacted her to offer pieces of information on the family's ancestral name, which is Murray.

Kasper said the experience left her feeling more connected than ever before to her family's roots across the Atlantic ocean.

“She (my grandmother) kind of instilled in me my love of Ireland,” Kasper said. “And this trip really reinforced that love.”

For Erie native Mack Bean, a 22-year-old healthcare administration and management major at SRU, the study abroad experience wasn't a return to his roots but a broadening of his horizons. Bean travelled to Costa Rico and spent a month last summer studying and speaking only Spanish with his host mother.

For Bean, who said he's always been “fascinated” by culture and diversity, it was a reminder that watching news reports on TV or reading about a country isn't a substitute for exploring a place for yourself.

He said he was surprised by the beauty and pristine quality of much of Costa Rico, despite many depictions of South American countries focusing on poverty and violence.

“I just advise a lot of people to study abroad or just get out of the United States,” Bean said. “Here, we only see what the U.S. wants us to see. Actually being there was definitely a different experience.”

SRU's graduate student commencement will be at 7 p.m. today. Ceremonies for undergraduates will be at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. Saturday. All the ceremonies are in Morrow Field House.