Last month the East-West Center hosted the first in-person International Graduate Student Conference (IGSC) since the pandemic. Cheyenne Prater, a second-year Graduate Degree Fellow (GDF) pursuing an MA in Asian Studies at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa (UHM), and the rest of the IGSC planning team are currently celebrating the success of the conference in bringing over 87 scholars from around the world together online and in person to share each other’s research. To pull off such a large event with so many moving parts takes a team of many talents. Cheyenne says, “I was able to learn more about teamwork and the perseverance that you gain through planning something so big. I learned how to work and understand what everyone as a team can bring to planning such an event.”

In addition to the tireless enthusiasm and dedication that she brought to the planning of the IGSC along with her studies, Cheyenne has been actively involved for the past two years with the International Student Association on the UHM campus. “I’ve been spending a lot of time being involved with the UH international community and integrating them with the international community of EWC.” There are a lot of opportunities for these two communities to grow and work together.

Exchange and collaboration are values that are very important to Cheyenne and her experience at EWC. The biggest highlights for her at the Center have not been any particular event, but the “recurring moments” of living at Hale Mānoa and spending time in her kitchen with fellow EWC residents. “[The] culture of just sharing and feeding each other and experiencing each other’s lives, first and foremost through food, is a really big part of living at EWC.”

The people that Cheyenne has met through being a GDF and living in the EWC community have become extremely formative in her professional life and what she plans to do after graduating. Growing her network has reaffirmed her belief that meeting people from diverse backgrounds “opens doors to experience something new”. She notes that “I’ve just found different avenues of my life that I would have never considered if it weren’t for the people that I’ve met through EWC. These everyday interactions are leading me down a path of life that I didn’t think I would ever go down.”

Cheyenne wants to pursue a career in the field of international education, specifically in fostering youth leadership. “The environment that I was placed into as a GDF is the kind of environment I want to create for other people. Wanting to work in international education, that’s not something that I knew for a fact that I wanted to do for the rest of my life until I spent so much time interacting with international students.

Cheyenne mentioned that as an introvert, being a GDF had helped her grow out of her comfort zone by having the chance to interact with so many people she normally would not have, and to also be able to actively take on leadership roles. “Being a GDF has helped me discover who I am as a professional, what I’m good at, and what I want to do for the rest of my life.”