Yue Bian in an international scholar originally from China, MSU’s biggest international student group, which Yue describes as the “majority of the minority”. For Yue, the ways she registers others’ perceptions of her as an international student are complex. While she notes that people are accustomed to seeing Asian faces on campus, Chinese students (graduate students included) are often portrayed as the “money bags of higher education”. Yue has always felt she had a strong understanding of diversity and inclusion, and while she has always viewed herself as a person of color, she has received pushback from peers and colleagues. She understands the unique needs of her peers and what it’s like to deal with acculturation, being a non-native speaker, and coming to a country that is culturally and linguistically so different from her own. Yue says, “the foreignness of my face and how I perceive myself, and how we’re portrayed makes the learning experience very different.” In addition to her identity as an international student, Yue lived in East Lansing, a predominantly white community, as a graduate student; two other things that have impacted her greatly. She says, “it's complicated - the longer you stay the more you experience, and it's hard to unsee things.” In her time as a graduate student, Yue dealt with the frugality and sometimes poverty that often comes with being a graduate student in addition to discrimination and judgments based on her nationality, language, and immigration status. “Who we want to advocate for who we include in the discussion of minoritized groups - our vision can be broader. The U.S. is becoming much more diverse, so a lot of the issues we’ve had are becoming more complex than they used to be,” says Yue.

She recently completed her Ph.D. in the College of Education’s Curriculum, Instruction, and Teacher Education (CITE) program. After completing her Master’s degree at another Michigan institution where “their education program is even whiter, more homogenous”, Yue was looking for a more diverse campus where faculty were doing research she was interested in. While her first visit wasn’t the warm welcome she was hoping for, a structured orientation with her cohort mates, a diverse group of incoming Ph.D. students, was refreshing and helped Yue see the beauty of MSU’s campus. Her decision to pursue her doctoral studies here was reinforced by two main factors. One factor was the International Teaching Assistant Orientation, which helped Yue feel more comfortable and confident in navigating MSU. The second being her cohort’s faculty program coordinator, who had some experience teaching in China and could speak a little bit of Mandarin. This person “created an environment where [students] felt taken care of and takes a humanistic approach to research”.

For Yue, the experience of being a doctoral student at MSU has immersed her in research which has, in turn, had her thinking more critically about her positionality. Because Chinese culture is more collectivist where individualism is less appreciated, Yue has discovered a stronger sense of self in her time here. She now realizes that being more conscious of her own feelings is important, as is self-care. Yue is dedicated to expressing gratitude for and giving back to the community. She has volunteered at local school districts, refugee centers, and in MSU’s international programs as a way to learn about the communities around her and give back through her experiences and research.

As she talked with us, Yue was officially on the job market and reflected on the idea of being a global citizen. She doesn’t see a dichotomy in who she is as a person but instead is grappling with the balance between her U.S. education and her Chinese nationality. “Regardless of how long I’m here, I will always see myself as Chinese, receiving my education in the United States. That said, I also don’t want to focus too much on those boundaries. Migration is common and I am a global citizen,” say Yue. She contemplated the challenges of China’s only-child culture and the responsibilities that fall on her shoulders regarding her family along with the role of languages of her life. “In academia, I’m a native speaker of English. In life, I’m a native speaker of Chinese. It will be better to be at a place where I know my background and expertise is a plus, not a minus.” Yue has since accepted a position as an assistant professor in TESOL (Teaching English to speakers of other languages) at the University of Washington, Bothell.

Originally written and photographed by Makena Neal, 2019