Student Union
- By Pete Musto
Researching for Perfection at the University of Nevada Las Vegas
Dawid Mzyk and Marta Plominska have not always agreed on where their educational or career paths might take them.
Both students are from Poland. Mzyk was born 28 years ago in the city of Jaworzno. Plominska, age 25, was born in Radzionkow.
Both are musicians. Mzyk plays trombone, while Plominska plays another wind instrument, the flute.
The two had been in a relationship for several years when Mzyk earned a master’s degree at the Academy of Music in Kraków. He completed his studies in 2014.
Moving to the US
At that time, Plominska had a few years left in her own master’s degree program at the Academy of Music. But Mzyk could not wait to continue his education. He felt any delay would limit him from pushing his abilities as a musician even further.
About 10 years earlier, Mzyk had visited the United States and enjoyed his time there. So he decided he wanted to attend an American college or university. However, Plominska had no desire to leave Europe.
In the end, Mzyk was admitted to a two-year program at Columbus State University in Columbus, Georgia. He began studying there on his own in 2015.
But Mzyk and Plominska would not let their differences nor the distance end their relationship. In 2016, they decided to eventually get married. And once Plominska earned her master’s degree, she agreed to come to the U.S. and give its higher education system a try.
Culture shock
From her very first day in Georgia, Plominska says she had major difficulties to overcome. For example, Kraków has a large public transportation system, which many locals use, while Columbus has only a few buses. Without a car, she and Mzyk found it hard to do what, back in Poland, had been some of the simplest things, such as going to a store to buy food.
But Plominksa says she also noted a major difference in the behavior of Americans compared to the people back home.
“The people in the U.S. … they are really smiling a lot, I think. They smiling on the street when they pass you, and they usually can say, ‘Hi. How are you?’ which will never happen to you in Europe.”
Slowly, these and other qualities of life in the U.S. began to make Plominska enjoy herself, she says. Then, enjoying life as an international student became even more important. Both she and Mzyk agreed that they would need to continue their education after completing their studies at Columbus State in 2017.
Heading west
The two knew that to perfect their musical abilities and find university teaching positions or jobs as performers, they needed to earn doctoral degrees. That is when they learned about the University of Nevada Las Vegas, or UNLV.
UNLV is a public research university that was established in 1957. It serves about 30,400 students. The city of Las Vegas is well-known as a place for people to visit while on vacation, while Nevada is famous for its gaming industry.
Las Vegas has many casinos and large hotels, where some of the most popular entertainers from around the world perform. And there is a saying that expresses the culture of partying there: ‘What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.’
Mzyk admits that he had never heard of UNLV before he began considering doctoral degree programs. Yet he says he was pleased to find that many professors teaching at the school came from well-respected universities.
However, Mzyk says he and Plominksa had a difficult start in Nevada, just as they did in Georgia.
“We didn’t have the best start in Las Vegas, because our bikes were stolen after two weeks, I think, when we moved in. And then our neighbors … below, they were evicted because of some reasons we don’t know really.”
Las Vegas does not have the country’s highest crime rate. But the Federal Bureau of Investigation did report more than 4,900 violent crimes there in 2017. And Mzyk and Plominska say they did feel unsafe at times.
Similar experiences, concerns
Anastasia Motiti shares their concerns. The 23-year-old UNLV student is from Nicosia, the largest city of the island of Cyprus. Growing up, she says, her community was so closely connected that there was little fear of crime. So she felt a little unprepared for what life was like in Las Vegas.
In 2016, Motiti earned a bachelor’s degree at Emporia State University in Emporia, Kansas. Her degree program was in musical performance.
Like Plominska, Motiti plays the flute. She learned about the school through the Fulbright Program, the U.S. government’s main program for international student exchanges.
Motiti says she liked the American method of higher education, which lets students take classes in both their major and other subjects. So she decided to seek a master’s degree at UNLV immediately after completing her bachelor’s degree.
Once Motiti moved to Las Vegas, she says, it took her time to learn to pay close attention to her surroundings in order to stay safe. But she adds that life as a UNLV student soon made it so that she had little time to go anywhere or doing anything outside of schoolwork.
For music students, earning any sort of master’s or doctoral degree means hours and hours of playing one’s instrument, Motiti says. But more than that, she feels that her studies helped expand her knowledge and skills beyond just playing the flute. Now she has experience writing music and leading other performers.
Motiti recalls that one professor showed her kinds of music she had never enjoyed before.
“He introduced me to opera, which for me, now is much better than theater, than movies … because it combines everything, literally. … I was blind to it … and then suddenly I come here and this person just shows me how I want to continue.”
Intense program
Dawid Mzyk and Marta Plominska agree that they now spend much of their week on the grounds of UNLV, especially in the music building. They say that, in a way, it is good for their relationship since they are both studying in such an intense program.
Myzk and Plominska hold positions as teaching assistants at UNLV. They agree that teaching makes them look at the music and their own playing in ways they might not have considered a few years ago. And they say this adds to the list of ways the school helps them reach their goal of being the best musicians they can be.
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International students at De Anza College in Cupertino, California, talked about culture shock in an article in La Voz News, the student newspaper.
"It felt like a major culture shock. Everything was so different, from academics to mannerism," said a student from Mexico.
Read the full story here.
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- By Stella Hsu
Reports of visa checks, deportations worry Chinese STEM students in US
Geopolitical tensions and growing competition in tech between the United States and China appear to be spilling over into academia despite commitments from the world’s two biggest economies to boost people-to-people exchanges.
The United States remains the top choice for Chinese students seeking to study abroad with nearly 300,000 studying in American colleges and universities during the 2022-2023 school year. But reports of some cases that students and professors are facing extra scrutiny while passing through immigration and the deportation of others are raising concerns.
For Chen Xiaojin, a doctoral student studying semiconductor materials at a university in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, it has been six years since she returned to her hometown of Beijing.
At first, it was the COVID-19 pandemic that kept her from going home. But over the past two years, she has been deterred by accounts of Chinese students majoring in science and engineering being required to reapply for their visas upon returning to China.
She also says she is worried by reports over the past six months of Chinese students being deported, even at nearby Dulles Airport.
"My current research is relatively sensitive, and my boss [adviser] is getting funds from the U.S. Department of Defense, making it even more sensitive,” she told VOA. "I am afraid that I won't be able to return after I go back [to China]."
Chen says that if she did return to China, she would have to apply for a new visa.
In a report late last month, Bloomberg said it had found at least 20 Chinese students and scholars with valid visas who were deported at U.S. Customs since November and barred from reentry. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency does not release relevant data.
Immigration attorney Dan Berger represented one Chinese student who was deported late last year. He tells VOA Mandarin that the student studied biological sciences at Yale University and was about to complete her doctorate.
She visited her family in China and got a new visa but was deported by customs at Dulles Airport and barred from reentering the country for five years. Berger said he did not see anything suspicious in the transcript of the conversation between the student and the customs officer.
"We have seen what seems like a pattern over the last six months of Chinese PhD students being turned around…. more than I've seen in quite a while," he said.
Matthew Brazil, a fellow at the Jamestown Foundation, said neither country seems willing to explain the situation. However, he believes that in most cases, the United States must have valid reasons for blocking visa holders from entering the country.
In some cases, the student’s background may not match what is written on the visa application. In other cases, customs agents may also find something that the State Department missed, and once they see it, they are responsible for taking action.
"I wish the Chinese side would be specific about their students who were refused entry,” he said. “The fact that both sides are mum on details and that the Chinese side is engaged with the usual angry rhetoric means that each has security concerns. And that says to me that there was good reason for the U.S. to stop these particular applicants."
Brazil also sees a connection between the entry denials and export control regulations issued by the United States in October 2022 that restrict China's ability to obtain advanced computing chips, develop and maintain supercomputers, and manufacture advanced semiconductors.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection is one of the law enforcement agencies authorized to investigate violations of export control regulations, he said.
"Beijing's intelligence agencies are known to focus attention on PRC [People's Republic of China] students and scientists headed abroad who study or work on dual-use technologies controlled under the Export Administration Act — compelling Chinese students and scientists to report on what they've learned when they return to China on holiday,” he said. “This has been true for decades."
Bill Drexel, a fellow for the Technology and National Security Program at the Center for a New American Security, said the U.S. government did find some cases where students tried to steal strategic technology for China.
"I think it would both not be surprising that they found some really questionable or incriminating evidence for some students,” he said. “It would also not be surprising if, in their hunt for really solid evidence, they also may have made some mistakes on other students.”
Drexel adds that “it’s just kind of an unfortunate fact of the time that we live in and the tactics that the CCP uses when it comes to these measures."
In a post on X in early May, U.S. ambassador to China Nicholas Burns tried to dispel concerns about visas and entry to the United States for students and scholars. In the post, he said "99.9% of Chinese students holding visas encounter no issues upon entering the United States.”
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal Monday, Burns said it is China that is making it impossible to promote people-to-people ties. Burns told the Journal that students attending events sponsored by the United States in China have been interrogated and intimidated.
He also said that since U.S. President Joe Biden and China’s leader Xi Jinping held their summit in San Francisco last year, China’s Ministry of State Security and other agencies had interfered with Chinese citizens’ participation at some 61 events.
At a regular briefing on Wednesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning dismissed those accusations, saying that they did not “reflect reality" and that went against key understandings reached by both countries’ presidents in San Francisco.
“The United States, under the pretext of 'national security,' unjustifiably harasses, interrogates, and deports Chinese students in the U.S., causing them significant harm and creating a severe chilling effect,” Mao said. “The image of the United States in the minds of the Chinese people fundamentally depends on the actions of the United States itself.”
Drexel said he believes Burns’ comments about visas and students' willingness to study in the U.S. still ring true.
“On balance, it's still the case that American universities are overwhelmingly warm towards Chinese students and want them in large numbers," he said.
However, Berger, the immigration lawyer, is concerned about the chilling effect recent cases involving Chinese students could have.
"In general, we are being more careful about advising Chinese graduate students in STEM fields about traveling and letting them know that there is some small risk,” he said.
Even though the risk is small, it does seem to be real at the moment, he said.
Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report.
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