Realizing a Dream

Online Friendship Leads Chinese Student to UND

They lived worlds apart - shein China, he in North Dakota.  She wanted to improve her spoken English, come to America and study science.  He wanted to help her realize her dream.

From him, she heard stories of “ice” “fishing” (she pronounces as two separate words) and says, “‘hockey’ was a word I didn’t know before meeting him.”

Lei Ding of Jinan, China, and David Monson (BS ‘72, MEd ‘83) in Osnabrock, ND, met in an Internet chat room on biology several years ago.  They shared much about their interest in science and their respective cultures.  It was good to practice her English with him, she says, because he speaks clearly and not too fast.  Their friendship grew.           

She mentioned she was thinking about attending a school in the Midwest, “not a well-known one, like Harvard.”  They were both stunned when she said she was planning to attend UND and he told her that school is his alma mater and he lives not far from it.

“‘What are the odds?’” she remembers him repeatedly saying.

He says, “Of the billions of people in the world, the odds are phenomenal” that he’d connect with someone aiming to attend UND.

In 2001 when more than 50 percent of Chinese student applications were being rejected (probably due to 9-11, she says), Ding became very frustrated.

“I had applied for my visa four times!” she said.  “Mr. Monson offered to write letters” to officials on her behalf, but she decided to try again on her own.  She finally obtained her visa and arrived in the United States in the summer of 2002.

“Our first stop was Cabela’s (local sporting goods store),” she says of David and Mary Monson who, with their three sons have taken her in, almost as one of their own.

“I have learned a lot from them,” says Ding who’s been included in the family’s holiday celebrations and adventures for fishing and sightseeing throughout the area.  “They want me to know about American culture.”

Lei Ding, who shares her research experience with her “American father,” David Monson, is working on her graduate degree in the laboratory of Gene Homandberg, Ph.D.

Her gratitude shines through as she recalls Monson telling her, “Just think of Mary and I as your American parents.”

Her “American father” maintains a demanding schedule as a teacher and superintendent of the Edinburg School System, a farmer and state legislator who has represented District 10 in consecutive terms since 1992.  He is the assistant majority leader in the North Dakota House.

Monson and his wife have encouraged other foreign students, from Japan and Thailand, in the past.  “It’s fun learning something about their cultures,” he says, “and we’ve tried to teach them about ours.”

They get together with their Chinese friend regularly and “we want to show Lei more of North Dakota, take her around the state.”

He believes she will excel in the field of science, noting that she “has fit in very well with everyone at UND; she loves the culture and is so eager to learn.  She is so dedicated to her studies and to science, here and in the world.

“She has the ability, intelligence and drive - she can do about anything she wants to.”

Ding is working toward her doctoral degree in the lab of Gene Homandberg, Ph.D., professor and chair of biochemistry and molecular biology, Grand Forks.  He too is grateful to Monson who helped him obtain cow cartilage for his research related to osteoarthritis.

She plans to complete her doctorate in August 2007 and then go on for postgraduate studies, probably at another university in the United States.  But she is firm about staying in the Midwest, “because the people are so friendly”.

-Pamela D. Knudson

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