Long before most of Canada knew there was a new university on the scene, Nadine Schoenfelder was flying the UNBC colours in her native Germany.
For that, she can thank her dad, a regular visitor to Prince George in the mid-1990s when the dust was just beginning to settle on the campus on Cranbrook Hill.
"He brought me one of the UNBC sweaters and he always said I should go there, but I never wanted to," said Schoenfelder, 33, a fourth-year student in human resource management at UNBC. "I've always seen his summer pictures from Prince George and I thought it was beautiful, but he's never been here in the winter."
Schoenfelder visited the city herself in the summer of 1993 when she was 14, a year before UNBC opened. Little did she know, 14 years later, she'd be back in the city as a student, contemplating permanent roots.
"I don't want to go back to Germany, my ultimate goal is to immigrate and stay here in Prince George," said Schoenfelder, a native of Boerssum, Germany. "I think I have great chances to work here in human resource management. I like the city. My friends are here, my boyfriend is here, it's home.
"Germany is very crowded and people are in such a hurry. People in northern B.C. are relaxed and take time to be polite to one another, which I greatly appreciate."
With only 12 students in most of her fourth-year classes, Schoenfelder likes the small class sizes at UNBC, which she says makes for a better learning environment. She gets funny looks from some people when she says she wants to settle in a place that carries a rough-around-the-edges reputation, but she's quick to come to the city's defence.
"People are still surprised that people want to come here voluntarily but they don't see what we've got here," she said. "We've got a city with all the amenities that you need, but you've also got the great outdoors right on your doorstep. We have winters up here, which I had never experienced, where you can make use of the snow conditions with the ski hills and sledding right in front of your door. But people take that for granted and think winter is more annoying than anything else."
Biology major Mette Heimdal didn't have to be sold on winter. Growing up in Honefoss, Norway, she grew to love skiing and going for walks in the woods, which Prince George has in abundance.
Heimdal's grandparents from Norway lived in Prince George for several years and she came to visit them when she was 10. Her grandfather works as a logger and was around for the opening of UNBC in August 1994. He mistakenly drew the ire of a policeman when he drove his vehicle onto the road just as Queen Elizabeth's motorcade was making its way up the hill for the inauguration ceremony.
"My grandpa was in Canada for 11 years and my grandma was here for five and they would come home every summer and they would talk about Prince George -- they're not here anymore, but they just love it here," said Heimdal. "I really like it here at the university, something's happening all the time. They put on events all the time."
Heimdal, 21, grew up watching movies and TV shows subtitled in Norwegian and has studied English since she was seven, so she had no problems picking up the language in her two years at UNBC.
"Canadians are different from Norwegians, they're so open," Heimdal said. "In Norway you don't really talk to people you don't know. Here, if you're just standing in a line people will talk to you. I think it's very nice and I appreciate it."
International students now make up nine per cent of UNBC's 2,970 student population. In the fall of 2011 there were 332 foreign students, 254 in undergraduate programs, 78 in graduate studies, and that number has risen steadily every year since 2005. China has sent 131 students to UNBC this school year, followed by Saudi Arabia (58), the United States (21) India (16), Nigeria (14) and Japan (11).
"We do some active recruitment, mostly in Asia, that has resulted in increases for us," said Carolyn Russell, UNBC's director of student success and international operations. "The English Language Studies [ELS] program does substantial recruitment in Asia and the Middle East and 90 per cent of those students [an annual average of 150 students] move into the undergraduate program at UNBC."
Students continue to receive language support while completing undergraduate or graduate studies and the school population is small enough to allow UNBC staff to maintain close relationships with foreign students.
Russell said many Asian parents of university students like the idea of sending them to a smaller city which doesn't have as many problems associated with organized crime and gang cultures more prevalent in cities like Vancouver.
"The families feel quite comfortable and they know they can phone my office when their kid hasn't phoned home and they are wondering if they're OK, and I know who they are talking about," said Russell. "They like the fact we know who their children are and I think the students find that quite comforting that they aren't just a number here."
Steven Xia arrived in Prince George from Beijing in 2007 barely able to speak a sentence in English. It was his parents' choice to send him to Prince George, and his first impressions were not comforting.
"When I first saw the airplane from Vancouver to here I thought my life is going to be crashing down because it looked a very small airplane," Xia laughed. "After I'd been here the first couple months I felt it was a really boring city with nothing to do, really, because I come from Beijing, a really big city. But after awhile I started getting used to the quiet environment and now I really enjoy it.
"What I like best in the university is the teachers. They gave me the biggest help in my first half-year here and taught me what to do here and how to live here. Loneliness was the hardest part for me. But they let me know what is the culture here and how to make friends and build relationships with others. I'd say that's the biggest thing this university has given to me."
Xia studied English in China but hated it and got poor marks. But soon after starting the two-year ELS program he realized learning the language was not such an impossible task. His instructors encouraged him to keep a daily diary and he learned conversational skills playing games with classmates, going to movies, and visiting museums and city parks.
"You're making friends around you and it becomes easier," Xia said.
"When you learn a language really well you think in that language and you don't need to translate it into your first language. That was very hard for me to change in that way. I don't even know how I did it and I'm not sure when it happened. Somehow I just got it."
Xia, 23, likes to work with people and that's reflected in his choice of study at UNBC. He started as a psychology major, switched to human resource management and is now majoring in international studies, on track to graduate in the spring of 2013.
"I want to stay in Prince George, it's my home now," he said. "I love rafting and snowboarding. Everything about how to live has been changed."
A year of ELS studies at UNBC broke down the language barrier and taught independent living to Behrooz Dalvandi, a native of Iran, and he's now enrolled in graduate studies in computer science. His older sister attends Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. After being turned down by SFU and UBC his application was accepted at UNBC, which, for Dalvandi, turned out a blessing in disguise. Unlike his sister, who can easily find fellow students fluent in her native language, Prince George has very few people who speak Persian.
"As long as you live with people who are similar to you, you don't see differences and you don't learn anything, but when you go to a multicultural country like Canada you have to change your life," Dalvandi said.
"In UNBC, most of the students are Canadian and that was really hard because you see everybody speaking English perfectly and you can't. After three weeks or a month I felt comfortable because Canadians are nice people. People are always smiling and treating you well. I never felt like I'm in a foreign country. That's why I never thought about going back [to Iran]. I feel like home here."
Dalvandi, 24, is an avid soccer player and he puts his computer skills to work at two jobs, one with Environment Canada as an aerological observer, and the other a programming position in the geospatial information systems labs at UNBC. His thesis project involves applying several psychological concepts to artificial intelligence.
He recently returned for a visit with his family in Tehran, where he was reminded of one of the benefits of being Iranian.
"The only thing I don't really like about Canada is the health system, it's too slow," Dalvandi said. "Here you have to go to a family doctor and it takes a few months to see a specialist. In my country, you can go to whatever specialist you want right away. I had some health issues and that was the first thing I did when I went back there."
