By Sean Bettam

First-year student Christopher Saw is having a much easier time with the transition to university than he otherwise might have, thanks to the addition of several groups for international students to the Faculty of Arts & Science’s popular First-Year Learning Communities (FLCs) program.

“Coming to Toronto alone was a mildly daunting experience,” said Saw, who arrived at U of T from Singapore barely three months ago. “The Economics FLC has provided a platform for me to meet other students. The peer support and advice I have received on topics such as stress management, study strategies and other academic matters have been invaluable to me.”

Nearly 10,000 students from more than 70 countries around the world arrive at U of T every September. For many of them, it is the first time living away from home and it can be difficult to adjust to a new school, a new city and a new country all at once.

Designed to improve the transitional experience for first-year students, the FLCs (pronounced “flics”) program provides the opportunity to meet others in the same classes, develop friendships, form study groups, and develop academic and personal skills, all under the guidance of an upper-year undergraduate peer mentor.

FLCs also introduce students to the resources, opportunities, activities, and features of the campus and the surrounding city. The new groups for international students studying actuarial science, life science and economics offer the added benefit of becoming accustomed to the cultural, social, academic and legal ways of their new home alongside fellow students facing the same challenges.

Marc Arnold, coordinator of transition and advising at U of T’s Centre for International Experience which sponsors the new groups, explained that the new FLCs aim to better integrate international students into the university. “We wanted to get domestic and international students to interact and provide opportunities for cross-cultural communications between them,” said Arnold. “We wanted to support a peer-mentoring method, so it made sense to partner with a pre-existing program.”

One peer mentor, Marjan Chudawala, said that there is an equal mix of international and domestic students in her group. “We don’t do anything too different from the other FLCs, though I am mindful of the fact that there are some students who will not be immediately familiar with some of our activities and topics,” said Chudawala, a fourth-year psychology and health and disease student from New College. “We played rock-paper-scissors for one of our early icebreakers and I immediately saw how some students had no idea what was going on. Now I know to keep this in mind when planning our sessions.”

Chudawala said the greatest benefit to the students is the consistency of having a familiar person to help them along the way and not relying on traditional authority figures in the university’s administration. “We can give them the student’s perspective on things,” she said. “They can text me at 10 o’clock at night about something and know that they’ll get an answer.”

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