Students and board members of United Protestant Campus Ministries at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, gather after Sunday dinner church on Dec. 7. The campus ministry has placed 12 international students with host families, including three who are Episcopalians, during the school’s winter break. Photo: Courtesy of Amanda Powell
[Episcopal News Service] Twelve international students at the Cleveland, Ohio-based Case Western Reserve University will spend their winter break with area host families, three of whom are Episcopalians, thanks to the efforts of a campus ministry group.
United Protestant Campus Ministries, which includes seven denominations including The Episcopal Church, has arranged housing for student participants of the Davis UWC Scholars Program through United World Colleges, which helps poor, high-performing students, primarily from Africa and the Middle East, attend college in the United States.
The students, some of “the best and brightest” from their countries, are in “intense” majors, including bioscience and engineering, Amanda Powell, the group’s campus minister, told Episcopal News Service.
They can’t afford the $1,000 it costs to stay in a dorm over the four-week winter break, and a trip home would cost even more. By staying in Ohio, she said they also were heeding the university’s suggestion, first issued this spring, that international students remain on campus during breaks because of what it called “political considerations” in their home countries and in the U.S.
When Powell learned that 12 students were seeking winter break hosts, Episcopalians were among the most eager to offer, she said. Beside the three Episcopal families or individuals who were matched with a student, four are on a waiting list, should more ask for a place to stay.
She interviewed each student and potential host who applied and then “played matchmaker” for them.
One of the hosts is Courtney Steer-Massaro, a member of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland Heights, who has an 11-year-old daughter and a 4-year-old son. She learned about the need through emails from the church, and she was eager to sign up.
“I am grateful for everything I have,” she told ENS. “I have a house and extra space… and students need housing. It’s my honor to do that.”
Beyond that, she said that when she has lived in other countries, she was treated with great kindness. Hosting an international student not only lets her children meet and learn from a person from outside the U.S., “it pays back the kindness I received.”
Her family will be hosting Thando, a second-year student from Zimbabwe. Steer-Massaro’s daughter, who was born in and adopted from Lesotho, was very excited to have another African in the house, she said.
After what she called a “a chaotic Zoom” where she and her children met Thando, the kids were very worried that she wouldn’t have a stocking to hang with theirs or any presents. She assured them she would have a stocking and presents, as well as Christmas pajamas.
Thando told them she has two brothers back home, who are 17 and 5, so she was looking forward to being around Steer-Massaro’s young son.
Powell said a woman from Trinity Cathedral in Cleveland has talked with the student she will be hosting, and they already have made plans to bake Christmas cookies together, cook special meals and watch movies.
A few students had been placed with host families during the 2025 summer break, Powell said, and without being asked, the families reached out to their students to see if they would join them again during winter break.
The Rev. Gabriel Lawrence, assistant rector at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland Heights, serves on campus ministry’s board of trustees. He told ENS that when he learned about the Episcopalians who were serving as hosts, he was thrilled but not surprised. “I know a lot of the folks who were opening their homes for these students. It is wonderful to see.”
— Melodie Woerman is an Episcopal News Service freelance reporter based in Kansas.