OU homecoming adds a global flair

BY JAMES S. TYREE Comments 1
Published: October 31, 2009

NORMAN — Millie Audas has spent more than 30 years helping international students feel at home at the University of Oklahoma.

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schedule

• 1 p.m. — Parade lineup and float competition

• 3 p.m. — Parade begins at Elm and Boyd streets

• 6 p.m. — Game: OU v. Kansas State, Gaylord Family — Oklahoma Memorial Stadium

• Halftime — Housing & Food Services Royalty Coronation, Gaylord Family — Oklahoma Memorial Stadium

Today, as grand marshal of the OU homecoming parade, Audas will lay the figurative welcome mat for all alumni and other visitors to the campus.

"I am just delighted to be parade marshal,” she said. "It’s a very special thing, homecoming, to welcome people coming in from so many different places.”

The parade begins at 3 p.m. at Boyd Street and Elm Avenue, about three hours before the homecoming game between OU and Kansas State.

The parade route will proceed east on Boyd, turn south onto Asp Avenue, and then east again on Felgar Street and ending at Jenkins Avenue.

Audas knows the route well as she has joined international students for many previous parades.

Before serving in her current position as special assistant to OU President David Boren for international partnerships, Audas was a longtime director of Education Abroad and International Student Services.

The programs serve about 1,500 international students from more than 100 countries.

"Every year I have been in the parade with international students, and it’s really good that OU sends its students all over the world, too,” Audas said. "They wear their nationality’s clothing and carry flags of their country with them at the parade, which always brings a very different component to the parade.”

Audas is a native of Bolivia who speaks fluent Spanish, English and French and has a basic understanding of Italian and Portuguese. She studied in Michigan and France and arrived with her husband at OU in 1978.

Off campus, Audas helped start programs between Norman and sister cities Clermont-Ferrand, France, and Colima, Mexico.

On campus, with Boren’s emphasis on international education and exchanges, Audas had negotiated 174 student exchange agreements with universities in 66 countries.

Boren called Audas "a pioneer in the effort to prepare our students for the global society.”

American students help many of those international students get acclimated to this country and the OU campus through the OU Cousins program.

"I hope what people get today by seeing the international students and students involved with OU Cousins that the university has become a family for people all over the world,” she said.