Category: international students

Show Notes

• Donelson, Don (2020). Cultural Acclimation. Tea for Teaching podcast. Episode 128. April 1.
• Fakunle, O. (2020). Developing a framework for international students’ rationales for studying abroad, beyond economic factors. Policy Futures in Education, 19(6), 671-690.
• Ghazarian, P. G. & Keller, D. R. (2016). Country image and ideal destination choice in study abroad. International Education Journal: Comparative Perspectives, 15(4), 20-34.
• Ghazarian, P. G. (2016). Country image and study abroad: Destination choice of students from Mainland China. Journal of International Students, 6(3), 700-711.

Transcript

John:International college students face cultural and financial challenges in addition to those all new college students face. In this episode, we discuss strategies institutions might use to support international students.

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John:Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching, an informal discussion of innovative and effective practices in teaching and learning.

Rebecca: This podcast series is hosted by John Kane, an economist…

John: …and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer…

Rebecca: …and features guests doing important research and advocacy work to make higher education more inclusive and supportive of all learners.

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Rebecca: Our guests today are Peter Ghazarian and Hayley Weiner. Peter is an Associate Professor of Higher Education Leadership in the School of Education at SUNY Oswego. Peter has worked in international education in the US, UK, Germany, and Korea. His work focuses on higher education, leadership, public policy, multiculturalism, and human migration. Hayley is a graduate student in the Higher Education Leadership program at SUNY Oswego. Welcome Peter and Haley.

Peter: Hi.

Hayley: Hi.

John:Our teas today are: … Peter, are you drinking any tea?

Peter: I actually am currently drinking some tea. For the summer, I would say my go to is unsweetened black tea, and that’s what I have right now. It’s hard to get away from it.

Rebecca: It’s perfect.

John:And Haley?

Hayley: I’m drinking chai today.

Rebecca: Nice.

John: …and Rebecca?

Rebecca: I am drinking a Scottish afternoon in anticipation of my upcoming trip in two days.

Peter: That’s exciting.

John:And I am drinking an Irish Breakfast tea, which is in the same general neighborhood.

Rebecca: I’m going there too. We invited you here today to discuss your research on the experience of international students in US education. Can you start by helping us understand the current landscape of international students studying abroad in the United States? Like, who are the students? Are they from particular regions, levels of affluence, et cetera?

Peter: Yeah. So I’d say there’s been kind of a sea change in the international student population in the United States since COVID. Prior to COVID, I would say it was predominantly dominated by middle- and upper-class students from China. But then with the trade war, and then with the COVID outbreak and the zero-COVID policy in mainland China, it led to a lot of diversification of international students coming to the United States after COVID. And so we are starting to see a lot more students from India in particular, and also from Sub-Saharan Africa, especially in Nigeria. A lot of students coming to the United States from Nigeria.

John:And could you talk a little bit about the research project that you’ve both been working on?

Hayley: Yes, so Peter and I were intrigued by this idea of why international students come to the United States and what their experiences are in terms of seeking employment. A lot of international students express this notion of wanting to gain either internship experiences or post-graduation employment, normally in the form of CPT or OPT and Peter and I are very intrigued, as these students often express positive and negative experiences that are unique compared to what their domestic peers may experience when trying to gain employment of that kind.

Peter: And we’re also kind of interested in these competing personal versus professional elements or aspects to their experience, where they have kind of this imagined experience that they’re going to have as international students. And then there’s this reality and these economic demands that come upon them that they might not have anticipated. And so there’s almost a direct kind of butting of heads there between those two aspects of their time abroad.

John:You mentioned OPT and CPT. Could you define those terms for our listeners?

Hayley: Yeah, so CPT stands for Curricular Practical Training, and this is a work authorization for international students while they’re maintaining their student status, so they can only participate in CPT for employment that is directly related to their major, and while they are in a current student status. OPT, on the other hand, stands for optional practical training, and this is specifically for students after they graduate. And traditionally, students will go for a full-time job, but students can do either part time or full time or even internship. But OPT is specifically for their post-graduation employment.

Peter: And so for a lot of students, that becomes this period where the clock is ticking down if they want to find visa sponsorship through an employer. And so many students see this almost as kind of this grace period after they finish their program to try out with an employer or employers, and hopefully be able to win their support to stay in the United States as a full-time employee there.

Hayley: Yeah, and to add on to what Peter said with this idea of a clock, specifically with OPT, with students finding their post-graduation employment, there’s a lot of federal rules. For example, the latest date that they can start their OPT is 60 days after their graduation date. And as we know, navigating the job market in the current way it is, it’s very difficult for domestic students, international students, or any student in general, to find a job within a specific, constrained timeframe. And international students don’t get the privilege of looking for jobs outside of their major or maybe just taking a job that can earn them a little bit of money while they seek something that is more up to what they’re looking for in the long run. So keeping in mind that there are these federal regulations about the days and there’s this constant pressure sitting on them to find the jobs, even while they’re a student and post graduation.

Peter: Once students become aware of that, it’s almost like the specter that’s haunting them in all of their experiences, whether or not they’re in class or whether they’re building personal relationships with their peers, there’s this creeping dread of this clock ticking down and this need to find some security in life.

Rebecca: Those federal regulations impact the front end of the experience as well. Can you talk a little bit about some of the challenges international students face in even coming to the United States to study?

Peter: So international students… I would say the biggest struggle is to get that student visa on the front end. So past work that I’ve done related to destination choice among international students has primarily focused on country image and how that influences individual students’ choices. And what I’ve found in the past is that actually much more important than individual perceptions of a destination are the country-level relationships between a student’s home country and the destination, and so they’re much more likely to choose a place that has a good, constructive, positive relationship with wherever it is they’re trying to go. That plays more of a dominant role in deciding whether they go or don’t go to a particular destination. But then there are also other issues that they consider, such as financial barriers and regulations that can get in the way of them easily being able to access higher education within a particular destination. And for the United States, the big barrier, I would say, is demonstrating the ability to financially pay for the study in the United States. It’s for those who’ve had the experience, it’s a bit like applying for a mortgage, but instead of being asked to show that you can pay for it in the future, that you can already pay for the entire house before. [LAUGHTER] And so there’s a lot of financial gymnastics that people go through to try and demonstrate that, even though it is a big ask for them and it can be very difficult for them.

Hayley: Yeah, to jump onto what Peter was mentioning about the financial aspect, I currently work as a DSO in SUNY Oswego’s international student office, and a DSO is a designated school official. So I help students when they’re preparing for their visa interviews or when they’re getting their initial documents, such as a form I-20 to apply for their visa interview. And a very common occurrence is international students needing additional time or having struggles in terms of demonstrating the financial ability, and specifically, international students don’t get the privilege of applying for FAFSA or other United States federal aid programs that their domestic counterparts may get the opportunity to apply for. And so as a result, they have a larger sum of money that they may need to come up with up front, like Peter mentioned. And sometimes, even if they don’t receive the visa on its own, they still needed to come up with that money just to get the visa interview appointment.

Rebecca: And then my understanding is that, depending on where you’re coming from, getting a visa appointment is also a challenge …just scheduling it and making it happen in a time frame that makes sense to start school.

Peter: I’ve had many applicants, for example, from Ghana, who are really struggling with that. It’s just booked out so far in advance, it’s so difficult for them to get an appointment, and the students feel as though they’re very unlikely to be awarded a visa unless they’ve been given some form of scholarship or some sort of financial assistance with the offer. And so students are pretty desperate in that situation.

Hayley: A lot of preparation goes into it as well. Peter mentioned Ghana. I know India is a country where sometimes students are waiting one year or more. I’ve seen students wait years …plural… just to get their visa interview booked. And sometimes students are more eager and they want to have it sooner. And this does result in a different perception of whether they decide to come to the United States specifically to pursue their degrees, or maybe what degree they’re going to pursue, because they’re looking for that longer benefit in terms of financial benefits.

John:Implicit in this discussion is the notion, I think, that most of the students who are coming from abroad are interested in staying here after it, or at least staying long enough to get some training. What proportion of students are coming with the intention of staying in the U.S. after they complete their schooling, and what proportion are planning to return to their countries?

Peter: I don’t have hard numbers for that, but the sense that I get is that a lot of students are pretty fluid in their view of whether they stay in the United States. A lot of students are also willing to go to other third destinations that are English speaking, for example, like Singapore or Hong Kong, or places where English is the lingua franca, and they feel like they’d still be competitive in the job market, but they would be making what we might call a global middle-class wage, although some of the students we spoke to were interested in going back home after getting a bit of experience here, believing it would allow them to move into kind of an elite position back in their home country. In particular, I believe one student was interested in moving for a global energy company that was active within their home country. They believed if they had some energy industry experience in the United States, it would be pretty easy for them to transition into that type of position back in their home country, which is a position for an elite individual there.

John:Given the additional financial requirements for students coming from abroad, it would seem like most of the students who come in would be coming in from above average incomes in many of the countries of origin, which means we’re mostly providing some additional benefits to those who are already relatively privileged in their countries. Is that accurate?

Peter: And that is absolutely accurate. I have actually done a study that looked at whether or not international higher education exacerbates income inequality. In any case, it depends on the host or the sending destination. In some places, it is something that is seen for the elite, and it is almost something that’s required for them to return back to their home and get a position within a large corporation or within the government. It’s seen as kind of a stamp of approval having that international qualification. But in other places, what we’ve started to see is that when we do have people who are from a lower income background who participate in international higher education, it does contribute to intergenerational mobility, and that tends to be an improvement in their social class as a result of their participation. And it just depends on the place. And so in a lot of East Asians countries that are sending students, it is contributing to the inequality, whereas in Europe, especially Eastern Europe, that’s where it’s having more of a positive impact and contributing to economic mobility there.

John:So you’re working on the study of international students in the US. Where’s the sample drawn from?

Hayley: We focus on a phenomenological study where we focused on the shared lived experiences of international students. And just due to our resources, we did use a population of SUNY Oswego students specifically, and these students were a mix of both current students and recent graduated students. And to my knowledge, all of our students were a undergraduate degree level or recent undergraduate alumni.

Peter: There were students from India, Malaysia, Nepal, Bahamas, and Senegal. We did reach out to other institutions in central New York, to their offices of international students and scholars, to ask them to kind of spread the word and help to recruit but we got only a few responses to those initial entreaties, and then when we tried to schedule interviews with those folks, there was no response.

Rebecca: What are some of the challenges that international students face while studying in the US and adapting to the US educational system?

Hayley: I think a big overlooked challenge that international students face, that maybe others may not acknowledge, is they’re kind of starting over in a brand new setting. They not only have to get adjusted to the culture, but there’s some things that maybe people who live in the United States for their whole lives take kind of for granted. So, for example, international students, they’re permitted to have an on-campus job, but they don’t have a social security number. They have to go through the process of applying for a social security number. International Students don’t have bank accounts in the United States, and they can’t even pay for food their first couple days here because they don’t have maybe a card or anything to use at, like the grocery store, or they don’t have a SIM card for their phones to call their families back home. And I think there’s a lot of cultural adjustment that takes place, and students are kind of rushed into being acquainted with United States higher education settings, because not only do they have to deal with all of these cultural adjustments, but they have their schoolwork that piles up almost immediately after they arrive.

Peter: Yeah, and in terms of what we learned just in speaking to participants in the research study, what was kind of surprising or jumped out to us was that they are going through a lot of the same identity development phases that domestic students or local students go through but there’s these additional layers on top of those experiences that they’re having with having to navigate a new cultural environment and dealing with some of this economic pressure that they have on them. For some folks, they’re able to navigate that successfully, and they’re alright, even though it is very stressful. But for others, it is very difficult. For them. There’s always something to worry about, and it makes it very difficult for them to just relax and enjoy the moment, because there’s always some issue or concern that’s kind of lingering in the back of their minds.

John:In terms of cultural differences that they have to navigate, one of those, I think, would be differences in the way in which instruction takes place in US classrooms. Could you talk a little bit about some of the challenges that students face in adjusting to a college environment in the U.S.

Peter: I would say, from our participants, we heard mostly positive things. So the students themselves, coming from a younger generation, felt happy and excited for maybe more of a student-focused approach to instruction and more active learning in the classroom. They appreciated the opportunity to be able to interact with their peers, and felt that it really strengthened their communicative abilities. And so it seemed to be a very positive thing for the vast majority of students. They did mention that it was strange at first and a little difficult to adjust to it, but that overall, it’s something they enjoyed. It’s something they saw valuable as part of this attractiveness of US higher education in general.

Rebecca: Some of the conversations that I had with some international students recently in terms of the kind of classroom setting was the expectation of scaffolding, or the steps to complete assignments that maybe they had an experience in their home country, and not understanding that those things were required, or that those were different kinds of expectations that we have here. So it’s made me as an instructor much more aware of being explicit about what some of those differences might be. Are there other ways that instructors can support this transition into the US system?

Peter: I would say, looking at it almost from kind of this universal design for learning perspective, would be the best way to think about it is that the more explicit and clear you are in general about your expectations, it’s going to benefit not just international students, it’s going to benefit all of the students that are in your course. So making sure that you’re communicating your expectations about assignments in multiple ways, so that the most people can get it or can understand it is going to be really key here in just improving instruction for everyone. And international students will, of course, also benefit from this, but I think everyone can benefit.

Rebecca: So in addition to adjusting to the classroom and some of the adjustments to the U.S., what are some other changes that international students describe?

Peter: So, one of the big things that we heard about was personal change. So students weren’t just adapting to a new cultural environment, it was also having an impact on how they saw themselves and their idea of themselves. And so a few of the students talked about internalizing ways of thinking that they had originally felt were foreign or different or that they were uncomfortable with, but now they saw it as part of who they were, and that they had this interesting experience of moving between selves. So there was their home country culture self, and then there was their US culture self, and depending on the context, they had to be a little bit fluid in their identity and how they behaved and the way that they thought, but that that was an important part of adapting and excelling within a cultural environment is having that flexibility to be able to reinterpret yourself according to the rules of a different game you might be playing according to which culture you’re operating in.

Hayley: And it seemed like when the students kind of described this personal change or transition, like Peter mentioned, it wasn’t really a superficial change that they were describing. They were describing more of like a deeper engagement with the new culture that they were experiencing, and how this deeper engagement worked to reshape their thought processes and their perspectives, and how it was very transformative within their cultural immersion into US higher education institutions,

Peter: There were times when they were able to achieve that imagined or idealized experience of studying abroad that they originally had before they came to the United States. So I think one participant in particular talked about walking home late at night from a part-time job that they held on campus, and how they would never be able to do that in their home country, because it would have been unsafe for them to be walking alone by themselves, and just how they felt so free and they felt so independent that they started crying on the walk home, because they felt like they had achieved what they had dreamed or hoped for by coming to the United States.

Hayley: And that kind of ties on to this, like aspirational kind of rationale that Peter and I focused on on our research as well, where both personal and professional international students have this motivation to come to the United States because there’s dreams that they have. And like Peter mentioned, there was that student who just felt this sense of relief, or just a sense of satisfaction of being where they were at that point, being in the United States, and they felt like they were living what they were dreaming of when they were a child. And then we have the professional side, where they’re international students. I remember one student describing to us how she was thinking of being a doctor, and how in her home country, she knew that being a doctor and being a female doctor didn’t have as much room or level for success. And then another student from the same country mentioned wanting to be a geologist and how, in her home country, geology is not a very popular science, and that more engineering and doctors are from that home country, and how coming to the United States allowed them to have this diversified curriculum that allowed them to fit into these dream roles that they imagined when they were younger.

Peter: And so what we were trying to make sense of these different rationales for studying abroad. We weren’t just doing this like on our own or pulling this out of the thin air. We came into this with a theoretical framework that we adapted from a researcher called Fakunle, who’s based in the United Kingdom at the University of Edinburgh and Fakunle has put together a model for the different types of rationales that international students have for studying abroad. And it’s something that she put together speaking primarily to international students in Europe. And we wanted to see how well it held up while we were speaking to international students here in the United States. And we found that the model applied very well. And those four rationales are an aspirational rationale, an educational rationale, an economic rationale, and then an experiential rationale.

Rebecca: That transitions nicely into thinking about international students for an F1 visa and that OPT or that optional practical training that we talked a little bit about earlier in trying to find a job in their field or discipline immediately following graduation. What is the experience like for students trying to find these opportunities? I know from my own conversations with international students, it can be a struggle. Can you share what some of those barriers are that they might face in this job hunt?

Hayley: I think a very major barrier is that sometimes employers don’t comprehend or understand what it means to be an international student, and believe it or not, with OPT, if a student plans to use their one year of OPT, or in STEM students’ case, they get an additional 24 months of OPT, an employer does not need to provide sponsorship of any kind, and the student is eligible to work for that given employer, so long as that employment is directly related to their major. And sometimes employers get scared or worried about the idea of hiring an international student, either just they don’t have the resources to know what it means, or they’ve never done it before, and that acts as a significant hinder for international students. Now I know when we were interviewing students, there were a few students who mentioned that they were able to easily acquire a job, and it took a few tries, but they were able to get one before they graduated. And we’ve had other students who mentioned that it was much more difficult to get post-graduation employment, and after graduating, it became their full-time job to apply for a job, but keeping in mind that they only had that limited number of days to seek that employment added this extra stress that was very troublesome for the students.

Peter: Yeah, and I would say that it’s not just the employers that are ignorant of the rules that surround OPT, there’s also a concern that support services on campus beyond the international student office, aren’t always aware of these regulations or how they impact a student’s employability, and so students felt like they had to take anything that they heard from Career Services or an internship opportunity that they heard about with a grain of salt, because those are almost always developed or they’re communicated in a way that’s targeted towards local students, and it might not play out the same way for an international student. That opportunity might not exist for them. And they also talked a lot about how they avoided medium or smaller companies as a result of those companies’ lack of awareness or knowledge of OPD or CPT, and the belief that they would just kind of not even consider them seriously because they weren’t aware of how OPT or CPT worked. And so this was a source of pressure for a lot of students. They felt like they were supposed to be the expert of these policies, but they’re very complicated, and for somebody, for example, who’s communicating in a foreign language, trying to express this in a way that calms the nerves of a potential employer is not something that’s easy to do.

John:Might part of that be due to concern that when many new employees are taken on, particularly in technical fields, there’s a lot of on-the-job training that’s provided, which is costly to the firm. And might there be concern on the firm’s part that they might invest in workers who will not be able to get a change in visa status?

Peter: Yeah, I think that’s absolutely a legitimate concern on the part of a company. Interestingly though, it seems like those technical positions are the ones where the students tend to have more success in applying for the positions. And so students, for example, who are going into mining or into IT roles, those are the students who often have the most success in their applications for OPT even though those tend to be the positions that have a lot of on-the-job training that they are going to receive. And I wonder whether or not that’s because those are industries that are traditionally more open to recruiting from abroad, and so perhaps they feel more comfortable with working with these students who might need some sort of sponsorship in the future,

John:And also the fact that there are not that many students in the U.S. majoring in those fields, so that a very large share of employees in those areas are coming from overseas … fortunately, or we’d be in much worse trouble in our country.

Rebecca: It might also be tied to the potential three years of OPT rather than one that is often tied with those particular fields which are STEM designated

Hayley: Based on our interviews with students, as well as just my work in general, I noticed that students who are in STEM designated majors, even for their first year of OPT, before their STEM extension is even granted, they have a much easier time just getting their foot in the door or getting an interview, compared to students who are maybe in the field of like business or communications, and I think that longer extension of OPT could possibly have an impact on an employer making the initial investment into an international student as a first-time employee.

Peter: Right, because one year isn’t really enough time to know for sure whether or not you would want to keep somebody on, but three years, you know then, you know for sure whether or not this is somebody you want to sponsor or not. And so, actually one of our participants made a comment like, “I just don’t think a year is enough for me to prove myself to an employer. And so I don’t think I’ll be able to stay. I’m glad that I have the opportunity to gain that experience here.” But, that person, in particular, really regretted not being in a field that offered the longer OPT because she felt like that would have given her a better chance to be able to stay in the United States in the future. An interesting sort of side effect of that that I’ve seen, is that a lot of institutions are coming up with ways to get their programs designated as being in the STEM fields, in order to make it more attractive for international students. So I I’ve seen, for example, like a business analytics program, that they really focused heavily on data visualization and those types of things in order to promote it and get it approved as a STEM field degree program. But is it actually a STEM field degree program? I don’t know.

Hayley: It is actually, yeah, business analytics was recently added to the list of STEM designated degrees.

Rebecca: What could institutions do or advocate for to minimize some of the challenges for students as they pursue work opportunities?

Hayley: I think, while it may not be the sole solution, a really great solution could be showing international students how to market themselves. I noticed a lot of international students worry that maybe because of their international background, they may not line up with a domestic peer who studied in the United States their entire lives. But that’s not always the case. International students have specific traits such as being able to easily adapt to new cultural settings, or a lot of times they speak even multiple languages, and this is something that their domestic counterparts who are applying for the same jobs, they don’t often have that same trait. And so by being able to market themselves in the current or modern workplace or in the job market itself, I think that would be one way to minimize some of the challenges. I don’t see that as being one of the ways to get rid of all challenges, but it could allow international students to have an upper hand.

Peter: And I think a lot of student support services that are available on campuses now are in this sort of one-size-fits-all approach to supporting students, and that that can be to the detriment of students who are coming from non-traditional backgrounds who are participating in higher education here in the United States. So international students, for example, suffer from this. Non-traditional students might suffer from this. First-generation students might suffer from maybe an older approach to providing support services to students that in the past did serve well, but now maybe we need to be thinking a little bit more carefully about how do we individualize these services that we’re providing, so that we are at least aware of the different types of support that different students are going to need if they’re going to be successful transitioning from higher education into the workplace, and so international students would absolutely benefit from this. And I think that, in order to make this work, there needs to be a little bit more communication across offices on university campuses, because now a lot of these things are very siloed off from one another, and so it prevents, for example, an understanding of students who are receiving accessibility support in their work: searching for a job, for example, or students who are international, who are looking for a job, might have specific needs that they would benefit from if those offices were aware of what one another were doing and they were sharing information a little bit more openly with one another.

John:A while back, we did an interview with someone from the University of Miami who was talking about a program they had there to help prepare students from China for American classrooms in terms of the difference in structure and the difference in expectations, in terms of active participation and discussion. Is that something that perhaps more colleges could do to ease some of the transitions?>

Peter: So there was kind of a boom in those types of programs, in those gateway programs, they were often called, and they met with mixed success. In some cases, they were really helpful, and it helped students to adapt by giving them a soft transition period when they could adapt to the expectations of the U.S. university, before they went into a more high-stakes environment where they were getting graded for their actual content area coursework. However, some people were critical of this. They saw it almost as a money grab by the institutions who were asking these students to complete maybe 24 credits of coursework that wasn’t really going to apply towards a degree, and a lot of the times it was a conditional part of their acceptance into that institution. And so they got kind of a bad rap by especially international students who saw it as just paying for two more semesters but not really receiving a tangible benefit.

John:That particular program was a very short course, just more of an orientation to the differences in the culture of American college education. It was just a short program to reduce some of the shock and to help prepare people for the difference so they could hit the ground running without getting a bit behind in their work.

Peter: Yeah, I think that approach is absolutely positive and something that would be of great benefit to the international students, but again, if it has no credits, and then the funding for that type of program becomes very difficult, because it’s not sustainable in the long run, a lot of the time,

Rebecca: Is there a role that institutions could… should… play in establishing relationships with potential employers or regional companies that might make it easier for students to find placements after graduation.

Hayley: Working in an international office, it’s not traditional for international advisors to maybe reach out to employers on behalf of students, but if an employer were to ask a student a question related to their visa status, or maybe related to OPT or CPT, that would be somewhere where an immigration advisor on a campus can step in. Something recently that the SUNY Oswego International Office did, was we actually heard about students receiving lots of questions from their employers about what it means to be an employer of somebody who is working under CPT authorization or OPT authorization. And so our office actually took the initiative to make a specific web page for those employers for these basic kind of Q&A, frequently asked questions, that we do receive, and it’s actually had a very positive impact. And we’ve received a few compliments from some employers about how this did assist them, and they learned some new information about really what it meant to be a student on OPT or a student on CPT from the perspective of an employer.

Peter: And that more broadly, with all of these workforce development initiatives that we’re seeing take root across the United States, I would say that there’s an increasing expectation that higher education institutions are more directly involved in the transition of their graduates into the workforce, and that they are playing a role in making sure that students, regardless of what major they’re choosing, are being prepared for some sort of future within the economy. And I think that there is some resistance to that, because it challenges some of the foundational ideas about what higher education is about, or the purpose of a higher education institution. But I don’t think it’s something that higher education institutions are going to be able to escape. With the huge amount of money that people are investing in a degree there is an expectation that there’s going to be a return on the money that students put into that and higher education institutions are going to be held accountable if students are not able to be successful after pursuing their degree.

John:Are there any other things that you’d like to share about your study with our listeners?

Peter: The thing that really jumped out to me is as someone in the past who has done primarily quantitative research focused on international students, it was nice and refreshing to focus more on the individual lived experiences. And what really stood out to me was how similar the experiences were between international students and what is recorded in the theory about local domestic students in the United States, and so they’re having these same sort of identity development phases, or they’re going through a lot of these same sort of experiences. But as I mentioned earlier, it’s layered with these other things that are going on that really add a little bit of depth and complexity to the types of things that are happening to the international students here in the United States.

Rebecca: We always wrap up by asking: “What’s next?”

Peter: I would say this study focused on Central New York in particular and so the next logical step would be expanding it out further to other regions of New York State, or to other regions of the United States in general, to make sure that my model holds up according to other experiences in other regions of the country and in private and public and even parochial higher education institutions within the United States. So grasping at the diversity of experiences that exist within U.S. higher education, and making sure that that’s captured in the work, and then moving beyond just defining the problems and the experiences towards highlighting or spotlighting solutions to these issues or concerns that we’re learning about as we’re studying the experiences of international students here.

Hayley: Yeah, and to kind of add on to what Peter was saying, by bringing to light or highlighting or making awareness of the shared experiences of international students, because I think it’s very important to acknowledge that international students still touch just about every office on the campus the same way that domestic counterpart students would. And so this is not just something that maybe international student advisors or individuals who work with international students on a daily basis should focus on, this is something that kind of has stakeholders on all ends of a campus. And so by spreading the awareness or making others known of these challenges that international students face, I think solutions would become more prominent.

Rebecca: Well, thank you both for getting us to think a little bit more about our international student population.

Peter: Oh, thank you so much for having us, and we really appreciate the opportunity.

Hayley: Yeah, thank you so much.

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John:If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast service. To continue the conversation, join us on our Tea for Teaching Facebook page.

Rebecca: You can find show notes, transcripts and other materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer.

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