Program helps college students adjust to unfamiliar surroundings

Trevor Hayes

Saturday, Dec. 25, 1999 | 11:28 a.m.

Finding a trustworthy mechanic, dentist, or hair dresser can be unnerving when moving to a new city. If that person is a teen-ager starting their first year of college, it's enough to cause most parents to worry.

So it was no surprise when Brandi Bobson decided to move nearly 2,000 miles away from her home in Marion, Ind., to go to college in Las Vegas, her mother was a bit apprehensive.

Then during the university's new student orientation, her mother discovered the Home Away From Home program. It matches students with area families, who provide students with an ally in this gambling mecca.

Sharlene Flushman got the idea for the program in 1991 after her two children went away to college.

"All of a sudden you're a parent and then everything stops," she said. "The whole parent mood you're in for years comes to a stop. I wanted to deal with this time in my life in a way that could be helpful to me as well as others."

The longing she felt to be among teen-agers was matched only by her concern for her own children.

Fortunately for Ms. Flushman there was a family friend in Phoenix, where both of her children attended Arizona State University. The friend was able to provide them with some occasional familial comforts and local insights.

"As a mother I just had this need in me," she said. "I just became concerned that even though my children are taken care of, there are many parents that don't have this situation and many students could have this need. I just had to do it."

So Ms. Flushman started the Home Away From Home program with nothing more than a vision and no funding.

"Since I was not a university person there was no funding, there was no room," she said. "They (administrators) had never heard of a program like this."

She found an ally at the university's interfaith center, where she was able to locate the program's on-campus headquarters for three years before being adopted by the alumni association in 1994. The alumni group provided funding and resources enabling Ms. Flushman to better publicize the program.

Now the program is a part of the university's student services department and will receive $5,500 from the university for the first time this year.

The program has grown from four students the first year to about 100.

Sue Bozarth, director of admissions, was paired with Ms. Bobson. Ms. Bozarth, who has been involved with the program for three years, tries to provide students with a family atmosphere.

"We've done normal kind of family things - gone to the movies, bowling, had them over for holiday parties," Ms. Bozarth said. "I feel like a big part of the program is serving as sort of adoptive parents for out-of-state students."

Ms. Bobson can't always go home to Indiana for the holidays, so she often spends them with the Bozarths.

"I've spent the last couple of Thanksgivings with them," Ms. Bobson said. "Plus, they have a daughter that is the same age as my little brother. It's funny because their family is just like my family."

Ms. Bobson said most of the time she just meets with Bozarth over lunch, but sometimes it helps to have a refuge.

"I live in the dorms, so it's nice to have some place to get away and use their bath tub or have a home-cooked meal," she said.

Frank Strand and his family have accepted nine students from the program into their lives.

"They do everything we do as a family," Strand said. "We do the holidays together, they work the ranch with us."

Most of the students assigned to Strand and his wife Geri have been international students. He thinks the relationships with the students benefit his 8-year-old son and 11-year-old daughter the most.

"It's a big education of the different cultures for my children," Strand said.

Two of the students took his kids trick-or-treating and one performed origami during show-and-tell in one of the kid's classrooms.

"You never lose them. They might graduate but they still show up and they still call," he said.

Throughout the years, Strand has taught three of the students to drive, helped several of them find apartments and once had to arrange emergency air transport to a hospital for a student who rolled a car on a rural highway.

"It's just been all the things you'd get with a bunch of teen-agers," Strand said. "We get involved with them in just about everything a kid does."