Almost 3,800 international students from more than 100 countries are enrolled at Iowa State University this year. Wendy Wintersteen is dean of Iowa State University’s College of Agriculture.
“Over the last five years the number of international students studying at Iowa State University has increased 56 percent,” Wintersteen says. “It’s a tremendous increase in terms of numbers both for undergraduate and graduate students.” Those international students make up 11 percent of ISU’s total fall semester enrollment. In addition, there are about eight-hundred “visiting scholars” from around the globe.
“Those scholars they’re engaged in the classroom, they’re engaged in research, they’re engaged in learning about the United States, so it is an environment that allowed our students to be successful as they graduate and go out into the world,” Wintersteen says. “But it also gives Iowa an opportunity to retain some of the brightest, most creative and innovative students that study with us.” According to Wintersteen, 98 percent of the international students who earn a masters or doctorate at Iowa State University stay in the United States after graduation. About 10 percent of the students at the University of Iowa come from another country.