International faculty members are adding diversity and providing new perspectives at Iowa State, ISU officials said.

Provost Rollin Richmond said international faculty members choose to come to Iowa State for several reasons.

“It’s a good university. I think faculty members are attracted to the quality of the colleagues they might have,” he said. “Second, I think the university has been well supported historically by the state, and people are also anxious to be a part of a university that has the resources to be as strong as it can be.”

Jane Edwards, international student and scholar program coordinator, said many times current ISU faculty have met the international faculty at various conferences and have formed links.

Edwards said the 553 international faculty members at Iowa State include people who have spent most of their lives in the United States or were educated here, as well as people who came directly from another country. She said there are also many visiting scholars who stay for only a few months or years to research rather than teach.

Richmond said Iowa State opens faculty positions up internationally.

“Certainly whenever we have a faculty opening, we in no means restrict it to recruiting people who are Americans,” he said.

However, Edwards said international faculty are not specifically recruited.

“ISU recruits excellent faculty, and some of them happen to be foreign or international faculty,” she said. “I think we often look for someone who has skills or knowledge in a certain area, and it happens that the person who has those skills or knowledge is from another country.”

Edwards said international faculty members add to the diversity on campus. “It opens all of our eyes to the fact that there are different ways to doing and thinking about things,” she said.

Richmond said there are many benefits in having a diverse faculty and staff.

“First of all, it gives students a chance to interact with people who have been raised in a different culture and climate. It does the same thing for faculty,” he said. “It provides a broader opportunity to understand the world, and given the increasing emphasis on the world market and the Internet, it’s increasingly important to have international faculty.”

Vitalij Pecharsky, professor of materials science and engineering from the Ukraine, said he first came to campus in 1989 as an exchange visitor and spent 10 months at the Ames Laboratory. He said he came back in April 1993 as a visiting scientist at Ames Laboratory and then became a faculty member in 1998.

“Basically I liked the place, the facilities, the equipment, so I decided to come back,” he said.

Pecharsky said he decided to become a faculty member at Iowa State because he had been a faculty member in the Ukraine.

“I liked doing teaching all the time, and that’s what happened later on,” he said.

While she has had trouble adjusting to the language, Tatiana Spektor, assistant professor of Russian from Siberia, said she enjoys the atmosphere at Iowa State.

“I like that the administration supports all of my efforts in expanding the program of Russian studies. I like my students — they are hard-working and interested in many things,” she said. “I like Ames and the people here, their friendliness and warmth.”