Language Institute students, along with students from an Atlanta high school, recently finished painting a mural celebrating the diversity of our students.

About a year ago Language Institute students in a Team Leadership course and members of the LI student service organization, the One Project, decided to connect with a volunteer group at Mount Vernon High School to design and paint a wall mural at the Language Institute that would reflect the LI global community. Over several sessions, volunteers from these groups met together on weekends and evenings to complete the mural project.  The mural contains over 100 flags from each of the countries that the LI students have come from and can be found on three walls in the stairwell between the first and second floors of the O’Keefe Building, the GTLI’s main campus space.  The flags are all connected through ribbons that Buzz, the GT’s mascot is holding.  As students pass through this stairwell on their way to classes on the 2nd floor, the mural is a reminder of the welcoming spirit that Georgia Tech and the Language Institute have for international students.

The Language Institute and Georgia Tech are proud to be a community that is open and welcoming to all people, no matter what their religion, ethnicity, nationality, gender, or sexual orientation is.  Our core values at the Language Institute are community, accountability, respect, excellence, and service, and these values continue to be important parts of the character of all we do here.

In the past 5 years, students from over 90 countries have attended the Intensive English Program at the Language Institute. Although students come here for a wide variety of reasons: academic preparation for study at an American university, professional development, a cultural exchange, and personal enrichment, they all benefit from their experience being with a diverse group of students from around the world both inside and outside of the classroom. Students at the Language Institute learn to understand and appreciate other cultures and learn that real communication involves more than just words and sentences put together. Our students form a community of support for each other, which gives the mural words “The world comes together at the Georgia Tech Language Institute” a true meaning that we are proud to support.