Asian American / Asian Students: Aspects of Social Interaction – Workshop 1 General Session

Kyoko Toyama: My name is Kyoko Toyama, I’m a counseling faculty at [inaudible], LaGuardia Community College. I’m very excited to be here, as a part of the conference, and also I’m very excited to present [inaudible]. Who is going to talk about Asian American, Asian students, trends and concerns of Asians from national, CUNY, and local, namely Baruch College, so it’s a wonderful opportunity. I also get lonely at LaGuardia, because I’m still the only Asian faculty in my department for the last 18 years, and so every time we have a gathering or any other Asian American conference, I go there to get more information about our students, and it’s interesting, this week I was at a meeting at LaGuardia, I found out Asian students make up 20% of the entire student population, which is news to me, because I have been telling everybody, Asian American students make up 11.5[%]. And actually, in the last ten years, it jumped from 11.5% to 20%, and in terms [inaudible] so it’s a fact by institutional research. So I was very surprised, at the same time I felt very strengthened and I think we have a lot of work to do. In fact, LaGuardia’s president, Gail Mellow, there’s no more talk, the numbers are a very important fact to look at. Our president decided to set up the international passports of LaGuardia, a group of about 50 faculty or staff, who were recruited but also volunteered, who volunteered to look at the issues of international students and also students who are immigrants, and see if we can do something about the curriculum activities and policies.

So it’s a wonderful thing happening, and also, this is a little advertisement, but as a part of the Asian American Heritage Month activities, LaGuardia is going to have an Asian American Heritage day on May 26^th, a Wednesday, between 2 and 4. And we have the first Asian American council member, John Liu, he is confirmed to come, and we have other politicians in the Queens district, to speak out, students will be speaking too, with some performances, including Japanese-type performing and I’m going to be also part of it. So if you have time between 2 and 4, Wednesday, May 26^th, please come to visit LaGuardia Community College in Long Island City.

Today we have a wonderful panel, and they are researchers and clinicians and my colleague, Dr. Xiang Bo Wang and Dr. Cheryl Littman and Dr. David Cheng. They will be speaking about what’s happening in the national arena, and CUNY, and local, what’s happening with our students at local college, and I think it will be interesting, the information we’ll find out. I will be speaking more about these individuals as they speak, and also the format I’d like to see is, to have them present, and then at the end we will entertain your questions so that each person is not going to be cut short. Okay, so first presenter is Dr. Xiang Bo Wang. He is the senior psychometrician at The College Board, and a native Chinese, Xiang Bo Wang received his M.A. degree in Teaching English as a Second Language in 1987 and his PhD in Education Psychology in 1992 from the University of Hawaii. During the past 12 years, he has worked on a number of large scale educational, professional examinations at varying capacities, such as a research scientist on the law school admission test of the law school admission council, as a senior psychometrician on the test of english as a foreign language of the Educational Testing Service, and as the director of statistical analysis, in charge of a number of licensure certification examinations, [inaudible]. At the present, he is the senior psychometrician with the College Board working on SAT, [inaudible], and accu-placer testing programs. His research interests include that test performance, the minority test-takers, item-response theory, test equating, computer adaptive testing, and test-security investigation. So here is Dr. Wang.

Xiang Bo Wang: The topic of our presentation is, “12 Year Perspective on the SAT Performance of Asian American and Pacific Islander Students”. I wish to recognize my co-authors, Jennifer Coburn and Lee Jo. Next please. Also, I wish to thank Selena from the audience for her leadership in Asian initiative group at the College Board for [inaudible], engaging [inaudible]. And also, The College Board’s leadership for their strong support for community and ethnic group initiatives. These three people are my supervisors.

What I’m going to present today is part of a much larger study. The purpose of this study is to highlight SAT performance trends of Asian American Pacific Islanders, abbreviated as AAPI, students of the past 12 years, and then to compare such trends with their national counterparts. Please note, I may have to skip many detailed national comparisons due to time constraints.

Data. The data we used for this research is based on an extensive College Board database ranging from 1992-2003. We are going to explore the differences of a performance trend, SAT Verbal and Math. Conditions are based on family income, school location, language use.

Part 1: National Comparison and Overview. Question: What are the numbers of national Sat test takers and AAPI Sat test takers? This is the data arranged from 1992-2003, the top line is the number of national test takers, ranging from about a million annually to about 1.4 million. The second line is the AAPI student numbers in each year, so, ranging from 84,000 to 100,000. The numbers of AAPI [inaudible] also increase, they increase along with the national sample sizes of populations. The increase for national SAT test takers was steeper than that for AAPI test takers.

Question number 2: What are the SAT Verbal performance levels and trends among the five ethnic groups. Now let’s look at the top line. The top line are the mean scores of SAT for the white, white students. AAPI is this blue line. The pink line is the national mean, and the green line is Hispanic, and the yellow line is African Americans. So finally, among the five major ethnic groups, the mean SAT verbal scores of the AAPI test takers are secondary only to those of white students. Average scores are ranged from about 230 to 510, SAT SAT scale is from 200-800, if you remember. AAPI scores gradually increase, in parallel with the increase of white SAT test takers. In terms of means, they are only secondary, slightly below national average.

Next question: what does SAT Math performance levels and trends among the five major ethnic groups? Now, look, the top line is AAPI, this is the White line, see, Hispanic, and African-Americans. Okay, among the five major ethnic groups, the mean SAT Math scores of AAPI test takers rank the highest, about 40 points higher than those White SAT test takers. The mean score has been on the increase, sharpest increase among all the major, five of the major ethnic groups. So, the conclusion [inaudible] is although AAPI students constitute only about 13% of national SAT test taker population, the SAT performance of this group ranks among the highest, especially in math.

Part 2: The Relationship between AAPI students, SAT performance, and family income. We break down family income into three levels: low income is below 35,000, middle income is between 35,000 and 75,000, high income is 75,000. I know 70,000 is not considered very high here, but nationally it is, this is right. Our college board data is even more granular than this, for the sake of easy, distinct comparison, we break them down into these three levels.

Question: What is the trend of distributional traditional family income among AAPI students? The top line is percentage of low-income AAPI students. The green line is the middle income of AAPI students, and this is the high income. Okay, pay attention to the bottom line, this now is [inaudible] straight. Basically, those students, percentage of students who didn’t indicate their family incomes. [inaudible], next please.

Now I move to just talk about the non-response rates right now. As some of you might have known, about a month ago there was a paper published in the Washington Post pointing out the significant increase of the non-respondents with regards to demographic information. Basically, the reason is that, basically the point of the article was that since there are so many students didn’t indicate ethnicity and family income, College Board lacks the pack of data in reporting college-bound seniors’ performance, especially the gap between Whites and other ethnic minorities. The reason for this increase of non-response is that in 1996, we initiated web-based SAT registration, and many students, a lot more students skipped many demographic questions being asked on the survey than before when they had to register only on paper, so that caused an increase. Our research, our special research [inaudible] more detailed analysis on the impact of the non-response. Let’s please move back to the previous slide please, one back, one more back, yes. As you can see, the non-response rates shot up to about 41%, which is an alarming rate, to be sure. So as you can see, the trends between ’96 was floppy in terms of low income per AAPI, and suddenly dropped very sharply after 2001, so the author of that paper, of that article published in the Washington Post has a legitimate point, and we knew this along, so we changed it, changed the registration significantly this year so that the response rate will significantly be lower this year. [inaudible], and all these, all the following slides are impacted by the non-response break, I had to point it out because I’m not going into detail about the impact, but since today our purpose is to look at the trend, the trend is still valid, what I’m going to present, underline [inaudible] is still valid. Next please. Okay, next.

Finally, before 1996, roughly about 19% of AAPI are from a high-income family, 29% percent are from middle income, and 43% are from the low income.

Okay, what is the trend of national, of family income? Next please.

As you can see, it is also impacted by how the numbers between the middle and low, a little bit narrower than AAPI. America is mostly a middle-class country, so it is correct. Next.

Okay, I’m going to skip the details, next please. How differently do AAPI test takers of different family income levels perform on SAT verbal? Now, look at this. This is the mean performance on verbal, of high-income students. This is the middle, this is the low income students. Okay, so, high-income AAPI test takers score about 40 points higher than the middle income AAPI students. Middle income AAPI students score about 70 points higher than low income. The combined difference between the high and low income AAPI students is about 110 points, which is about one standard deviation, which is huge. This is substantial amount.

Okay, let’s look at the national trends as well. Next slide please. Similar, this is high income, middle income, and low income. Next please, next please. I’m going to skip the details, I just wanted to use this for brief comparison. Okay, next one, this is it. How different do AAPI test-takers that have different family income perform on the map? Okay, next please.

See, this is our map, this is high income, middle income, low income. Again, next, okay. High-income test-takers go down. 605 on the average, about 42 points higher than middle income, middle income is about 35 points higher than low income. The combined difference is about 70 [points]. National, this is high income, middle income, and low income. And the patterns are very consistent.

Conclusion: The higher the family income, the higher test takers score on SAT.

Part 3: Relationship between AAPI students’ SAT performance and school location. We have three types of schools: rural, city and urban, and suburban. What is [inaudible] AAPI students by school location? Okay, about the majority of city and urban, suburban is about 31-33%, rural is about, I would say, 4%, so the rural AAPI students is very small. Okay, next.

What is the national [inaudible] by school location? Similar here, city, urban, and rural. In comparison, AAPI students have a little bit fewer, the fewer AAPI students from the rural areas than the national level. Okay, next.

Now, let’s look at the differences on the SAT verbal by school locations. Alright, this is suburban, suburban AAPI students, city and urban, and rural, here. As you can see, there is a step function here, consistently. Suburban AAPI students performance is better than city and rural AAPI students, by about 30 points. City and urban AAPI students score about 10-15 points higher than the rural counterparts.

Okay, let’s look at the national level. Similar, suburban, city, and rural here. As you can see, the gap between city and the rural at the national level is slightly narrower than the AAPI. Next, next please.

So let’s look at AAPI students’ performance on SAT Math. This is more interesting, this is interesting. Alright. Suburban is right here, score the highest. Alright, and city is here, and rural. Next. Okay, next. Okay, next.

Now to look at national. Suburban, city, and rural. They are also parallel. Next. So, finally, next one please. So, suburban test takers consistently outperform city and urban test takers, who are in turn scoring higher than rural test takers. The effects of location is larger for SAT verbal than math. Apparently, language is much harder to teach, and math is principle discipline, principle, a little bit more [inaudible] to teach, so in this case I showed in our data, language education is impacted more by school locations.

Now, the third part, let’s look at relationship between AAPI students’ SAT performance with first-language used, which our previous keynote speaker has touched upon. We have three categories, English as a first language, English and another language as a first language, and another language as the first language, especially ESL students. Now, let’s look at the distribution of AAPI students by their first language used. Alright, most AAPI students are ESL students [inaudible], okay. English and another language, bilingual students, is the second group, okay, and English alone is similar to the [inaudible], okay, about similar, next one.

So, between 30-40% of AAPI test takers have a foreign language other than English as their first language. Only between 26-29% AAPI students report English as their first language. Between 26-34% of AAPI students report both English and another language as their first language.

Now, let’s look at their national distribution. It’s not surprising that most test takers on a national level use English as their first language. Okay, next one.

Now, let’s look at the AAPI test takers’ performance on SAT verbal based on first language use. Not surprising, if your first language is English, you have the highest scores, mean scores. That’s not surprising. However, English and another language mean scores are not that far apart. However, let’s look at the ESL test-takers, that are significantly different from these two groups. The performance difference between AAPI [inaudible] for English only and [inaudible] English and another language is very small, consistently about 5 points above. However, AAPI test takers whose first language is another language scored about 70-45 points lower. National, let’s quickly look at national comparison. Similar. Okay, next one please, next one.

How differently do AAPI students perform on the SAT Math? Very interesting, look at this. English as another language, another language, their math performance are very similar. However, they are consistently higher than the kids whose first language is English, okay. Okay, next slide. Next one. Next one.

On the national level, the difference is slightly smaller, okay, but however, the trend is the same. Next one. Next one.
Okay. First language used creates a slightly different row for AAPI students and national test-takers on SAT math and verbal.

Conclusion: AAPI students of different family income levels, school location and first language performed significantly differently on SAT as a whole.

A few notes. What we have presented here, OK, is not the SAT bad? [inaudible] On the contrary the SAT reveals the differences. [inaudible]. What we’re presenting here is not bias. Impact [inaudible] group differences [inaudible].

I just want to say that SAT is virtually [inaudible]-free, which is bias-free, from statistical standpoint. Alright, you may be surprised to hear that, but I can’t… basically ETS, our vendor, does an excellent job in terms of controlling and preventing bias on the exam. Also, SAT is one of the most reliable [inaudible] examinations for its purpose, as they say. Thank you very much.

Kyoko Toyama: [inaudible] move to the next presenter, Dr. Cheryl Littman, who is the manager of research in the Office of Institutional Research and Analysis where she oversees projects involving analysis and reporting of CUNY student data. Before coming to CUNY in the Spring of 2001, Dr. Littman worked as a research analyst for the Chicago public schools. In addition she has worked as a program evaluator and has held a variety of teaching positions. Dr. Littman earned a B.S. in Biology from Cornell University, an M.S. in Biology Education from Long Island University [inaudible], and a PhD from the Department of Education [inaudible] University of Chicago. Dr. Littman.

Cheryl Littman: Good morning. The first thing you may notice is that the title of my presentation on the screen does not match the title of the program, and those of you who’ve been to academic conferences may find that this happens quite often so I’ve decided to take advantage of that. Sorry. It’s somewhat expected even if it’s not appreciated.

So today I’m going to talk about demographic and social interaction indicators of CUNY’s undergraduate Asian population. The then and now refer to two points in time, 1995 is the then and the now is 2002 to 2003. Then and now are somewhat defined by some data that we had available for student experience surveys that the Office of Institutional Research and Analysis fielded in ’95 and in 2002. And we are just about to field the 2004 version of that survey. [inaudible] going to be talking about some results from those two surveys. The first, first I’d just like to give you an overview of who the Asian students are at CUNY. And I’m hoping that some of the information that I talk about in this short presentation will help provide a little bit of context, the quantitative context behind some of what I am guessing are going to be more qualitative discussions that take place later today during the conference. So you may have heard the statistic before, I believe someone earlier had mentioned it. Among CUNY undergraduates, 14% of the students are Asian, that’s Asian, either Asian immigrants or Asian international students or Asian Americans, second and third generations and so on. Next slide, please.

Just as a point of comparison, in 1995 just under 12% of undergraduates were Asian or Asian American at CUNY. So the proportion is increasing, but in addition to the proportion is just increasing, because that could mean that other ethnic groups, racial ethnic groups are declining, but enrolling is increasing across the board at CUNY and if we look particularly at Asians and Asian Americans, CUNY has enrolled more than 26,000 undergraduate students of Asian descent. From 1995 to 2003, the undergraduate Asian population increased 25%. And that’s compared to an overall increase of just about 2% for enrollment overall. Between just those two years there were a couple of ebbs and flows in enrollment during that time, just so that you get a sense of change between those two years. And also to provide a little bit of, more of a context in terms of national picture, between 1990 and 2000 [inaudible] census years, the Asian population in the U.S. increased faster than the total population. And again, just to, so you can view CUNY in the larger context of the U.S. and maybe more importantly New York City. I have some statistics here that show that Asians make up about 4% of the U.S. population and that there are over one million Asians residing in New York state. That’s the second highest proportion of Asians. California is first by proportion, but not by actual number of people. 9.8% of the New York city population is Asian American. Some of you who work with census statistics or may know something about the census, the U.S. census changed the way they’d ask about racial ethnic categories this past, the 2000 census, where now they allow you to respond for more than one racial/ethnic identity. So if we include those who responded a single race and those who responded Asian and some other race, then percentage is boosted up to about 10.9%, almost 11% there. And that means that over 870,000 Asians are living in the New York City. That’s the largest count, population in the U.S. and more than twice the Asian population of the next largest city, which is Los Angeles. Next, please.

So these are… here is the nationalities of the students who are enrolled at CUNY. These are undergraduate students and what I’m doing here, I’m hope this isn’t confusing you. So over here I have the 1995 nationalities in rank order from the most represented to the least represented of the top group. There are other Asian groups that I didn’t have space to show you here but I’m showing you the top. And in 2003 I’m showing you the top for that year too among CUNY’s undergraduates. And you’ll see there’s not a lot of difference in the rank order and really not that much difference in the proportion either. A couple of things to note, Chinese, Indian, Korean and Filipino highly represented in both years. Taiwanese. This is maybe a function of identity rather than immigration, some of you may know more about this. Whether students are tending not to identify as [inaudible] but choose Chinese, that I’m not sure about so that could explain why you see a difference here between the two years. Okay, but I’ll just give you a minute to absorb some of those statistics [inaudible]. And these include [inaudible] just the base population of CUNY’s Asian students. Next, please.

In comparison, here are the top nationalities based on U.S. census data for the U.S. total population and for New York City. One thing I’d like to point out, you don’t have to go back to the next slide, but in the previous slide, those percentages were based on just the Asian population whereas here, these percentages are based on the total U.S. population and the total New York City population, so the numbers are not really comparable from one slide to the next, I just want to point that out so it’s not confusing to you. But if you look at the U.S. versus New York City population this is not surprising to anybody, but obviously a larger proportion of Asians, particularly Chinese. So here are a few demographic characteristics of CUNY’s undergraduate Asian population. Actually, originally I had titled this slide “Changes in demographic characteristics”, but took a moment to actually look at some of the statistics and noticed that in many of these demographic characteristics there were not changes, in others there will be. Unfortunately I could not include income here because I didn’t have the information to compare from ’95 to 2002 but that would be an interesting number and also it would be interesting to look at this by generation, of course any of these statistics by generation would be interesting. I don’t have that for you here but perhaps in another presentation or some other data that we can put together.

So in 1995 there were 84% of the Asian undergraduates were foreign-born, and that number has, that percentage has since dropped to about 73%. About half of the Asian students at CUNY are first generation college-attenders and that has not really changed since ’95. About 12 to 14 per cent are married, it seems the percentage may be on a slight uptake, but because these statistics are generated from a survey which we surveyed a sample of students, there’s some sampling error and that sampling error could be anywhere, probably about 3 to 5 per cent so these are not statistically significant differences from one year to the next, at least as far as married goes. As far as foreign-born, I would say that that is significantly different. Fewer Asian students at CUNY are supporting children and about 30% are financially independent, as was the case in 1995.

The next set of indicators specifically comes from the student experience survey and here the focus was on looking at how CUNY students in general interact among each other and also with faculty at their campuses. So I have a couple of items from those two surveys where the items were either identical or at least comparable in 1995 and 2002, so we can look at the comparisons between social interactions. And I generated these statistics for the Asian population and also for the non-Asian population for comparison.

So, this first item that I’m going to talk about was an item that said, that asked students to rate their level of agreement or disagreement to the statement, “Generally, students at this college are friendly.” And the percentages shown here in this table are those who agree or strongly agree that students at this college are friendly. So let’s see, one thing we could say is perhaps students got friendlier, that must be [inaudible], don’t know if that is the case. But if you look at 1995, the Asian students, 82 % indicated that they thought students at their college were friendly, and the non-Asian students were just a little bit higher, not much, not significantly higher. And the same is the case for 2002 though in both, for both Asians and non-Asians the percentage is a little bit higher. So it looks like the gap is narrowing so this statistic doesn’t really tell us much in the way of interaction and differences.

But let me move on to the next one, because now you will start to see some differences between the Asian and non-Asian population. This item says, “I often feel out of place at this college,” and in 1995, significantly more Asians reported feeling out of place at their college than the non-Asians, and that really didn’t change very much in 2002. That Asian students still tend to feel a little bit out of place at their college, compared to their non-Asian counterparts. And the next slide is, “Students from different social groups get along well at this college.” And that’s a high percentage of students report that there’s a pretty decent racial harmony on the campuses. That’s a good thing, and again there’s a little bit of a difference in the Asian and non-Asian. Not a huge difference but that’s something to consider also.

And then the last social interaction that I’ll talk about, is a very interesting one, is “Most students at this college have values that are different from mine.” And you can see here that there is quite a bit of difference between Asian students and non-Asian students, and that though the gap has narrowed a little bit between 1995 and 2002, there’s still a significant difference between the two groups. And so that, I hope, will generate further discussion. I have two other slides.. I’m running out of time, so I just want to show the slides, I won’t really talk about these. The only thing I will say, these are interactions with each other surrounding academics, is the first slide, and I just want to point out that the questions weren’t the same so I want to caution you when you look at the comparison between 1995 and 2002. It’s better here to look at the differences between Asians and non-Asians, you can perhaps make some, draw some conclusions from that statistic because the questions were different. And the next one is interactions with faculty, just so you can take a look at that. And again the items were a bit different, so they’re not exactly comparable across years.

And with that I’ll just mention that our office has a website that has lots of information about CUNY and the individual colleges and some of it has racial-ethnic breakdowns, and that might be interesting to you so if I can just quickly give you the web address, it’s oira.cuny.edu, and thank you very much.

Kyoko Toyama: The last presenter is Dr. David Cheng who is going to talk about current mental health issues of Asian American students. And he was professor and director of counseling and psychological services and Baruch College. He also advise clinical psychologists and psychoanalysts in private practices. Before going to Baruch College, Dr. Cheng has served as [inaudible] psychologist and consultant for the New York City Police Department. And he is very modest about his [inaudible] he has been speaking all over the city, not only at CUNY, but also nation-wide, so he is a [inaudible] psychologist. We’re very glad to have him at CUNY. Dr. Cheng.

David Cheng: Thank you. I’m afraid that I didn’t bring in slides or statistics or numbers to show you, but I’m the local representative, I did bring a paper clipping which is a very disturbing one. I think some of you probably have seen this paper clipping. This is the front page article of the New York [inaudible], March 10^th, 2004, so it’s only a couple months ago. You can’t see it but since we’re going to have a break after my talk, maybe you can come up and look at it during the break and we can talk. This is a picture, this little insert here, is a picture of a young Asian woman and the [inaudible] picture shows woman falling from this high-rise building. And the caption, the headline, reads: “Death plunge number four, NYU grieves.” And under the picture it says, “the daughter of a silicon valley executive has become the fourth NYU to die in a plunge this academic year. Diana Chan, 19, jumped from the roof of her boyfriend’s 24^th story apartment building Saturday after a fight with him. ‘This is difficult news for our community that has known an unprecedented level of sadness this year’ an NYU official said.” Now some of you may remember that, just a few years ago Baruch College also had a series of suicide and we had three…Oh no more slides, we can see each other, great. We had three students that also committed suicide, they in buildings in campus, and two of the three students were Asian females. So at the time we really were very concerned and I did a lot of follow-up kind of with the college and also speaking in terms of trying to get more resources so that the Asian community and the population in general in the city should pay more attention to the issue of mental health. That it’s really something not frivolous, rather it’s a very important issue and it’s a matter of life and death, really. And in recent years we have seen, and I didn’t bring any numbers, but it’s pretty well documented that there is an increase in both the numbers of students seeking assistance from the University counseling center, and with the severity of the problems with which they present. Now the Asian population certainly exhibits the same range of problems that the general population…however the problems are further exacerbated by the additional pressures of acculturation and also familial expectations. Now I’m sure many of you that read the paper with [inaudible] in media by all these psychological terms like bi-polar disorder, the New York Magazine, they cover bi-polar disorders, OCD Obsessive-Compulsive disorders, Borderline Personality, Post-Traumatic Stress disorders. So many of you know these terms, and many of you hear about these terms, but really you don’t see a face behind these terms. And that is why today I’m trying to give you sort of a vignette of different cases of students that we see at the counseling center, Asian and Asian American students, that actually can help you kind of associate these labels or these diagnoses with the actual person. And know that I have 15 minutes to do six cases, maybe 12 right now. So I’ll do it very fast, like two minutes a case or something like that. But really it’s like a trailer of six feature films, you can see like two minutes of each film, that you really get a feel of some of the things that students say in their own words. And I’ll try to give you a little bit of what the counseling center can do and has done for them.

Because of the [inaudible] we all know that, about privacy, that it’s very important that we stress confidentiality so I really can’t give you the names of the students so I’ve changed the names and tried to disguise or modify some of the more personal details so that we can preserve the confidentiality of the cases.

Now the first case, let’s call him Lee. Lee is a 28 year-old, American-born Asian male in his tenth year as a part-time undeclared major. Now you think ten years and…[laughter] He lives at home with his family, his parents, grandparents and two other siblings, and he came in and he was presenting problem was that he feels maybe he has a learning disability. He says, “Well my performance in so poor, ten years in school and I’m still getting nowhere, still a sophomore.” So in further talking with Lee, we found out that Lee is working full-time and also financially responsible for his family, and is kept really busy with other things that he can’t focus in school. We gave him a test for learning disability and really the results showed that he has no learning disabilities. The only thing that we did find, though, was that from the interests and skills assessment test, we found that his profile is extremely low, and that usually is an indicator that someone is depressed, you know, that is why you are not interested in anything. I mean it’s all very low, no peak, no special categories that he’s interested in. So in working with him we really were able to identity his real problem [inaudible] learning disability problem, but rather he’s suffering from depression. And as the clinical diagnosis would say dystemic disorder. And in counseling we were not only to correct the poor study habits, but really focus on his feelings of loneliness and [inaudible] into personal relationships.

Now, moving on to the second case, let’s call her Jennifer. Jennifer is a 23 year-old American-born, Asian female. She is a full-time student and in her fifth year of college. Now, her chief complaints when she came in was that, “My friends and family think that I have a communication problem. They say I’m mean, short-tempered and when I’m angry I either ignore people or just kind of explode.” So she seems to have trouble managing her anger, according to her. And in the counseling process she explored her feelings of mistrust in relationships and trying to improve her interpersonal skills and anger management. However the diagnosis was personality disorder with avoidant and dependent features. Now, we can go into very deep analysis of her case but we have no time obviously. But, if you are interested, I hope this will wet your appetite [inaudible] further discuss each case.

Now moving on to the third case. Let’s call him Nathan. Nathan is an 18 year-old Asian male. He has been in the U.S. for about nine years. He is a full-time freshman, and his parents lost their jobs after 9/11. Initially Nathan came in asking for advice in finding a major, but when we started talking to him he felt uncomfortable speaking in English. He kept apologizing for not picking the right words or speaking freely. He said that he often gets sad and calls himself dumb and convinces himself not to cry. He’s always tired and sleeps long hours. He’s not doing well in classes because he doesn’t have the energy to concentrate or to do homework. He hates living in New York. In the subway he gets angry when are loud and talking about their private lives or [laughter]…he gets very, very incensed about that. And in working with him, we really found that Nathan was able to explore his self-esteem issue and socialize with other people better, trying to find new ways to do that. And he seems to show an interest in the approach of the congnitive behavioral therapy where you can learn to, some kinds of stress management techniques and so forth. His diagnosis was adjustment disorder with mixed emotional features.

The following case is Kim. Kim is a 25 year-old Asian female. She was referred to the counseling center by the International Students Office. She is a sophomore and came to the States four years ago. Her presenting problem was distressed mood and difficulty in class. In her own words she said, “Well I panic for no reason when I’m in class, or when studying at home.” And I’m not sure why she stayed in school since it’s very stressful to continue to study. She also reports behaviors of eating disorders. She has a tendency to binge when stressed, frequently experiences abdominal pains for which she has seen a physician many times, but was informed that she has no problem in terms of her stomach pain. In counseling, Kim was open to explore some of the early childhood experiences which were painful and traumatic, and she was able to make the connection between these earlier experiences with the current anxiety symptoms which were precipitated by the stress of school. Her diagnosis was anxiety disorder.

The fifth case is Anna. I only have one minute. Can I do the last two cases real fast? The fifth case is Anna and Anna is an impulsive, immature disorder person according to diagnosis. She is a 21 year-old senior, Asian American female. And born in the U.S. but moved back and forth between here and Asia. Her presenting problem when she first came in was that she was having financial difficulties because she was about five thousand dollars in credit card debt. She accumulated it [inaudible] by some kind of impulsive spending like shopping, or long-distance bills. And although her family supported her she is nervous about asking for money, more money. On the surface it’s a financial problem but as we talk more, it’s really more an impulse control problem. Anna really has a problem with obsessive compulsion, like skin picking, and she meets people on the internet and has unprotected sex, which is kind of disturbing. So I think the student really, in counseling, it’s important to talk about impulsive and destructive behavior.

Finally the case is Kay. Kay is a 28 year-old Asian female, sophomore, a returning student. She’s 28 but she’s still a sophomore because she took off school for a while and has come back. Has been in the United States for ten years. Kay’s presenting problem was that she had a major depressive episode about four years ago after she found about extra-marital affairs…her husband. And she was, subsequently attempted suicide twice. She was hospitalized twice, and after the hospitalization, Kay consulted with a psychiatrist and was on anti-depressants. She has dropped out of being on medication sometime in July of 2003 and she thought she was feeling better. Now she is saying that she is beginning to feel very depressed again. Upon seeing the counselor at the counseling center, Kay immediately…see one of our psychiatrists on the staff, and has resumed her psychotherapy and medication. Through the process Kay began to make sense of her ambivalence in developing close relationships with other people, and the treatment also consisted of helping her cope with the challenge she faced since moving to the States and readjusted to college life again. Additionally, her mental and emotional states have been closely monitored and checked for possible incurrence of suicidal ideations.

Now I have to end on a more, sort of lighter note. When I was coming today I saw a poster, big poster, next to the bus stop. And it sort of an add for the Wringling Brother, Barnum…the circus, remember? And the [inaudible] states, “Crazy – even for New York.”

Kyoko Toyama: [inaudible] We were able to sort of get the big picture with the statistics and national trends and able to see sort of the new basics and what’s going on [inaudible] the status really, what these sort of numbers [inaudible]. Because of time, sorry but we’ve really run out of time, and we don’t want people to miss their lunch and make sure that everybody’s going to be at the 12:00 workshop on time. So you have to very quickly eat and go. But since we don’t have time for questions, please identify these three presenters at the lunch and sit with them and ask questions. And also, those of you who are presiding, make sure to take notes because you are gonna be presenting the summary. Okay, so we’re going to the eighth floor to the luncheon, and please make sure to come back at twelve noon. Thank you very much.