An instructor's voice echoes across the room.
Out loud, he counts slowly from one to 11. His commands resonate with meaning, and with each number, 15 children jump into different Tae Kwon Do positions.
Their smiling parents, mostly immigrants, watched the scene from a row of chairs lining a wall in the Wilson Hall basement room.
"You can see the passion in their faces," said Miriam Patel, as her 8-year-old son, Nabeel Vali, executed the martial arts moves. "They look so concentrated and focused."
Patel, a Spartan Village resident who was born in Zimbabwe, has taken her son to the Tae Kwon Do lessons for about two years.
This semester, she helped coordinate them for the University Apartments Council of Residents, or UACOR.
The organization puts on several lessons each week — such as belly dancing, salsa dancing and yoga — for Spartan Village and Cherry Lane apartments' residents and other people who might be interested.
But UACOR does more than host community events.
"Our mission is to improve the university apartment residents' quality of life," said Ildiko Olasz, UACOR's co-chairwoman and an MSU graduate student from Romania.
Olasz said she hopes the organization can improve residents' lives in two ways. First, the group helps represent residents' best interests in front of MSU departments, such as University Housing, Department of Residence Life and Student Affairs and Services.
Secondly, the group provides programs that aren't covered by Residence Life and are requested by the residents, Olasz said.
That way, UACOR helps students stay involved and gives them a social network.
Becoming involved in the organization opened doors for Claude Diogo. The group's activities coordinator and agribusiness management senior said the organization helped him meet people outside his classes.
"I moved here from West Africa and didn't know a lot of people here," said Diogo, who lives in Spartan Village.
Diogo attends most of the group's community events, such as Wednesday evening's Tae Kwon Do class, and makes sure things run smoothly.
Students in the Tae Kwon Do classes are a mix of international and American children, most of whose parents are MSU students or faculty members.
"We try to get the community together considering that at MSU, we have people coming together from all different parts of the world," Patel said. "These events help to ease the cultural gaps."
Patel said she likes getting involved with the Tae Kwon Do lessons, "especially for the children."
When her son started the class, he was shy and reserved, Patel said. Since then, he has opened up a lot, and Patel recognizes the new confidence in her son.
"Mixing with other children has made him more open, and his shyness is fading away more and more every day," Patel said.
