The international student group Pangea is seeking to expand and increase its activity on campus by co-hosting events with other groups and making the group more inclusive.

Pangea is comprised of every international student on campus in that all international students receive emails from the Pangea email group. For Co-Chair Patrick Chiarawongse ’13, one of the main goals for this and the upcoming year is changing what he described as the assumed Asian identity of the group.

“Pangea is viewed as a very Asian community and it has a very Asian identity,” Chiarawongse said. “This year we wanted to incorporate all international students rather than just Asian students.”

The group’s board is comprised of eight members, among these are Co-Chairs Chiarawongse and Arcan Chirathivat ’13 and Events Co-Managers Kar-Anne Tan ’14 and Sandy Lee ’14 . Tan hopes that by changing the image of Pangea, the group will play a greater role in the Wesleyan community.

“We’re hoping to change Pangea’s role in the student body,” Tan said.“Right now it’s been a bit inactive and were hoping to make it more of an umbrella organization to connect all the different cultural groups. We’re hoping to promote more dialogue between [student groups].”

According to Lee, Pangea has not been particularly active in previous years. For example, the Pangea website was recently updated for the first time in several years.

The committee members met with President Michael Roth to discuss the mission and goals of the group. Both Chirathivat and Tan said that Roth was very supportive of their future plans for the group.

“It was very interesting to me that [the members of Pangea] were trying to open up their community so that it wouldn’t be stereotyped or become too narrow,” Roth said. “That’s the thing I always find most heartening about Wesleyan—when people mix up their groups of friends and cross academic boundaries and cultural boundaries.”

Recently the group has focused on co-hosting events at program houses and fraternities, such as the Shades Party at Alpha Delta Phi this past Saturday. Chiarawongse also hopes to collaborate with WESU to make an international playlist, playing music from various cultures and countries. According to Chiarawongse, the committee hopes to work with various program houses and student groups, both to promote Pangea as a name on campus and increase student input.

Past events held by Pangea include the International Food Fair and Sushi-Making at the Usdan University Center. Lee said that this year the group has begun to document each event, specifically noting what went well and what areas need improvement in hopes of increasing attendance and positive student responses.

Pangea’s oldest and most successful program is WesSibs—a mentoring program that connects incoming freshmen with upperclassmen that have similar interests, in hopes of helping with the transitioning process. Next year the process will begin earlier, with mentor pairs being made over the summer instead of during International Student Orientation.

According to Chirathivat, members of Pangea are also working to bring more international students to campus through the Admissions Office, by making information more available and promoting the University’s image in other countries.

“Especially when you come from overseas you don’t really know much about Wesleyan,” Chiarawongse said. “We are trying to create an image of what Wesleyan is and portray it to the international community.”

Other strategies include writing personalized emails, creating multi-media presentations for prospective students, and promoting the University at current students’ former high schools.

Pangea also holds semiweekly open discussions in order to increase dialogue between group members and encourage student input.

“We’re going to try to make [Pangea] better with the new year,” Lee said. “We’re going to start with the new students and make them understand exactly what Pangea is. We want to change the current mindset, and then hopefully Pangea will become a much better system for students.”