Campus Connection

[caption id="attachment_3259" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Three Dax, France, siblings, from left, Loic, Gaelle and Yann Talhouarne selected UW-L for college. "][/caption]

Family from France calls UW-L home

Gaelle Talhouarne remembers fellow freshmen crying her first year at UW-La Crosse. Their parents lived an hour away. Her parents were six hours away — by plane. She missed them, but didn’t need them there by her side. The UW-L international student and her brothers, Loic and Yann, did a lot of growing up before college in youth summer camps. Every summer they left home in southwestern France to fly to U.S. cities such as Boston, San Antonio and Green Bay, Wis. They learned English — and independence. “We were so young, but it was fine. We are still alive,” says Gaelle joking. “Now we can go anywhere. We can push ourselves.” And they do. When Gaelle heard about the chance to study abroad at UW-L more than four years ago, she took it. She graduated Saturday, May 14. Her brother, Loic, will be a UW-L junior and the youngest, Yann, will be a UW-L freshman in the fall. Although Gaelle made some independent moves before college, she still had trouble adjusting. When she started school at UW-L American students “obsessed” about her accent, she says. In class it felt like it took her “forever” to read a simple passage because as a non-native speaker she was a slower reader than other students. But Gaelle quickly realized that UW-L was home to hundreds of other international students who knew what she was going through. Living in an international student residence hall was “the best experience I ever had. I met my best friends there,” she explains. She began to adapt to campus and American culture, embracing the hard work ethic she observed. She became a member of Student Senate, president of the International Student Organization, worked in the Office of International Education and participated in other extra curricular activities and undergraduate research. “When issues come up regarding international students, she has been that clear voice,” said Diane Sasaki, a student services coordinator in the Office of International Education. “She has been a real leader.” Biology Professor Scott Cooper conducted research on ground squirrels with Gaelle for three years. “She is just a natural experimentalist,” he says. “She seemed to think in terms of experiments — that’s not something you can teach someone. It’s like being a musician and having a sense of rhythm.” Her natural abilities and hard work paid off. Now Gaelle has a full ride scholarship to Johns Hopkins University in the fall where she plans to earn her doctorate in cellular, molecular and developmental biology. “It’s visible if you work hard you’re going to get what you deserve,” she notes. “I’ve been working very hard for four years and it worked for me.”