No matter where you come from or which language you speak, there is a place for you in Harrisonburg and at EMU, and Nasser Alsaadun MA ’17 (education) is living proof of that.

The Iraqi-born educator, who came to the United States in 2008, became the first refugee councilmember in the city’s history when he was elected last fall and began his in January. He says his presence on council sends a clear message that Harrisonburg is diverse and accepting and that local immigrants can feel welcome as a part of the community.

“People can all live in peace and learn from one another—your culture, my culture. We’re all in the same pot,” Alsaadun said. “I think that’s actually a unique thing about this area.”

Through his advocacy work, Alsaadun ensures that the Friendly City lives up to its name as a welcoming place for people of all backgrounds. He volunteers with , a local office of Church World Service that serves and advocates for refugees, asylum seekers, unaccompanied children, and immigrants in the Shenandoah Valley.

He is also a founder and board member of the , a community group that works to make the city more inclusive and supportive for immigrants and newcomers, addressing challenges they face, building relationships with them, and connecting them with resources.

One of those resources is EMU’s renowned Intensive English Program (IEP). Alsaadun, who teaches Arabic courses as an at James Madison University and English Language Learner (ELL) classes for Rockingham County Public Schools, often motivates residents to enroll in IEP classes. The program, hosted in EMU’s Roselawn Building, helps English language learners from all around the world find their voice and build a better life for themselves. In a typical semester, IEP has 60 to 80 students of varying ages and language skill levels representing 15 to 20 countries.

“EMU has one of the best English programs in the area,” Alsaadun said. “It has a great reputation with the immigrant community.”

He added that graduates of IEP are highly proficient, professional, and well-prepared to continue their education, not just at EMU, but at any university. “From Winchester to Charlottesville, (that program) is the best there is.”

Did you know?
In Harrisonburg City Public Schools, more than 70 languages are spoken by the student population. The No. 1 spoken language isn’t English—it’s Spanish! Source: in the Daily News-Record. Learn more about IEP at .

Escaping danger

Alsaadun grew up in Iraq and graduated from the University of Basrah in 1997 with a bachelor of arts in English. When the Iraq War broke out, he served as an interpreter for the U.S. Army in 2003. Because of his help, he became a target of militia insurgents, who came looking for him. When they couldn’t find him, they kidnapped his father for two days, then tortured and killed him.

Alsaadun and his family fled to Syria and later relocated to Lebanon, where they received refugee status from the United Nations. They arrived in the United States in July 2008 and were resettled by CWS Harrisonburg.

While serving as a temporary instructor for JMU’s foreign language department, Alsaadun started working with the refugee resettlement office and other organizations to welcome newcomers and help refugees adjust to their new life. As he helped connect immigrants to EMU’s Intensive English Program, he learned more about the university. He had heard so many success stories about its graduates and decided to enroll. And in 2017, he graduated from EMU with a master of arts in education.

It had always been his father’s dream to see him earn a master’s degree, shared Alsaadun, and so it was especially meaningful to him. “I cried,” he said, “because I couldn’t have him there with me seeing that moment.”

‘A different touch’

Since graduating from EMU, Alsaadun has continued his studies through courses at JMU and the University of Virginia. He said EMU professors are unlike any others he has encountered in his education.

“I was blessed to have professors who recognized and appreciated the gifts I had,” Alsaadun said. “They knew I wasn’t a native English speaker and that I came from a different culture. Some teachers expect you to know everything, but my teachers at EMU understood that sometimes you struggle. That kind of understanding is unique to EMU.”

In August, while attending a city/EMU liaison committee meeting as a council representative, he received an email confirming his acceptance into the doctoral program at the University of Louisiana at Monroe. He is now in his first semester, pursuing a PhD of education in curriculum and instruction, and credited EMU and its professors for providing the tools and skills that have helped him succeed.

“It’s absolutely a different taste of education,” he said. “The courses at EMU have a different touch.”

Alsaadun, now a U.S. citizen with a wife and four children, opened Babylon, a Middle Eastern restaurant and market in Harrisonburg, in 2016. He’s been invited to the White House on two occasions. He met former President Barack Obama in July 2016, in appreciation for “serving the community and being a good role model for refugees” and attended a leadership summit on refugees at the White House that September. He received the Leader of the Year award from Church World Service in 2022.

You can always tell the difference between EMU nursing graduates and other nurses without asking them, says Kate Clark, associate professor of nursing at EMU. 

“It’s what we hear all the time from hospitals and other employers, that there’s something special about EMU nurses in their approach to patients and their professionalism,” she said. “One major element is our family nursing class, which helps shape both their self-confidence and their cultural humility.”

That class, the semester-long Nursing & Family in Community course (NURS 426), partners undergraduate nursing students in pairs with refugee and immigrant families in Harrisonburg and Rockingham County. Students in the course, who are juniors and seniors midway through their clinicals, visit the families at their homes weekly to promote health education, help them navigate the U.S.’s complicated health system, and teach them basic essential skills to help them adjust to life in a new country.

These skills might include: navigating a phone tree to schedule a medical appointment, setting up taxi rides to appointments, using the bus system, enrolling in an employer-sponsored health insurance plan, and understanding the difference between primary care and the emergency room. Students have been known to ride Harrisonburg city buses with families, walk with them to a local food pantry, help read their mail, attend medical appointments with them, and connect them to community resources such as clothing closets and bicycles through the program (led by alum Ben Wyse ’99). 

Students might tell families they can expect to see people in costumes walking around the neighborhood and knocking on their door for Halloween. They also might help families from warmer climates prepare for cold weather with appropriate winter clothing. 

Students communicate with their assigned families using either their own foreign language skills or a provided interpreter. This semester, there are eight different languages spoken by families in the course’s Family Partnership Project.

Through the course, EMU nursing students build long-term therapeutic relationships with families, learn to provide care for a family unit, and experience the barriers that marginalized groups in the community face when trying to access health care.

“Because they get to experience those things from the family’s perspective, it gives them a good understanding of how the health system is not always designed for certain types of patients and the challenges they experience,” Clark said. “Whether or not they pursue home visiting long-term, it makes them better, more compassionate nurses across the board.”

She said the course sets EMU’s nursing program apart from others. “I’ve rarely heard of another school that has a standalone family nursing class that involves home visiting,” she said, “especially not one that focuses on refugee and immigrant families.”

A ‘win win’

Many of the families participating in the Family Partnership Project have a tenuous grasp of English, are lower income, and need additional information to be able to navigate this new country. EMU’s nursing program partners with , a local office of Church World Service that serves and advocates for refugees, asylum seekers, unaccompanied children, and immigrants in the Shenandoah Valley. The agency identifies local families in need who can benefit from the project’s tailored support, resource referral, and health teaching. The students’ help is invaluable, especially at a time when policies enacted by the current presidential administration have led to funding and staffing constraints for the organization. 

“We’re grateful for EMU’s nursing program,” said Susannah Lepley, Virginia director of Church World Service. “I like programs that are a win win for both the university and the families and this is definitely one of those. The students get a lot out of it, the families get a lot out of it, and I think it’s a strong selling point for EMU.”

In the past, students have worked with families who have been in the U.S. for only one to two months. This semester, due to fewer refugees entering the country, nursing students are working with families who have been in the U.S. for a year or more. This has allowed them to focus on longer-term concerns such as nutrition, stress management, and mental health.

“You can’t overstate the friendship aspect,” Lepley said. “People often leave a pretty intense network of support back home and they come here and they don’t have that anymore. They have to recreate it from scratch and I think the nursing students are a big part of that.”

The epitome of EMU nursing

Clark, who has taught the family nursing class for the past 13 years, graduated from EMU with a BSN in 2007. She took the course as a student under longtime professor and mentor Ann Graber Hershberger ’76. During her semester in the course, Clark was paired with a Spanish-speaking single mom in Timberville. 

Up until that course, Clark had questioned whether she actually wanted to become a nurse. She felt like there was never enough time during her clinicals at the hospital and that she was just checking boxes. 

“I knew I wanted to do something with a bigger impact, and when I took that class, I felt like I could finally let out the breath I had been holding since I started the nursing program,” she said. “I don’t know if I would’ve stayed in nursing had it not been for my experiences in that class.”

Another alumna from that year, Rebekah Good Charles ’07, said the class prepared her well for the work she now does as a community health nurse serving families around Lancaster, Pennsylvania. During her semester in the course, she visited with an immigrant family from Mexico and helped them sort through medical bills, contact financial aid, and fill out paperwork. 

“It was interesting to see the health care system from that side,” Charles said. “You can do all these things for your patients when they’re at the hospital, but when they get home, they’re left with all these loose ends to tie up. It was eye-opening to see that and help someone work through that, and it made me realize just how complicated the health system can be.”

Lydia Tissue Harnish ’17, MSN ’23, uses the same skills she acquired from the family nursing class in her job as a maternity educator for the Lancaster Nurse-Family Partnership. During her senior year at EMU, she was paired with a refugee family in Bridgewater expecting a second child. Harnish spent the semester preparing the family for what the birthing experience in the U.S. would be like.

“It’s really the epitome of EMU nursing,” she said. “We’re in the patients’ home setting, assessing the whole person, their environment, and their family as a whole.”

‘Begin to thrive’

When senior nursing major Joshua Stucky and another EMU nursing student met with a Syrian refugee family for the first time in January, only a month after they had arrived in the U.S., he felt overwhelmed at the prospect of helping with their cultural transition.

“They didn’t know how to use their phones or get their kids to school and didn’t have a way to get around,” he said. “And so I walked out of that first meeting thinking, How are we ever going to help this family? … You eventually have to set an expectation that you’re not going to solve all their problems.”

Over the course of the semester together, the pair of students was able to solve some of them. Through a connection he had with Bikes for Neighbors, they were able to provide the family with bicycles. They were also able to ensure the children received the vaccines they needed and that the family had access to a neighbor’s car.

During one of their final home visits with the family, while talking to the parents, he remembers seeing the two younger children bound into the home with their backpacks. “They had been going to school and, even though we didn’t play a huge role in that, it was just the most rewarding thing to watch them begin to thrive,” Stucky said.

Learn more about EMU’s nursing program at .