Aiding The Adjustment:
Working with Undergraduate International Students as They Adjust to Life on Your Campus

Gary Rhodes
Associate Dean, International Education & Senior International Officer,
College of Extended & International Education
Director, Center for Global Education
California State University at Dominguez Hills

The international student population in the last 6 years has undergone significant change: it has grown exponentially larger, and is increasingly undergraduate. These larger numbers of less-experienced students create an additional need/expectation for programming and support - support that is not specifically linked to immigration advising alone. This represents a significant change from previous years’ demographics, which tended largely toward older graduate students who pursued degrees with full funding, and who perhaps relocated to the U.S. accompanied by their spouse and children. This is not to say that international graduate students don’t also need support. However, as a result of age and maturity levels, institutional responsibilities to support undergraduate international students are different.

Broadly speaking, special programming for undergraduate international students goes beyond just issues of cultural adjustment. Following are some issues to consider when thinking about the types of programs and support services that can help support international students and internationalize the campus and community:

Programming to understand American college and university values that are based around how cultural norms and appropriate behavior are important, focusing on issues including: relationships, gender, dating, academic norms, mental wellness, and integrating with host communities.
Appropriate interaction with others that involve interpersonal relationships and dating is important as it intersects appropriate behavioral norms and legal issues like Title IX and includes appropriate relationships, harassment, and gender equality. Providing information and resources around these topics to international students is important to support appropriate behavior on their part and confirm that they are protected from inappropriate behavior by others.
Cultural differences in academic integrity and plagiarism are a top priority. With higher tuition rates being paid by international students and additional pressure from home about high GPAs, there is additional pressure to succeed. There are also norms in other countries about levels of sharing being appropriate in ways that are seen as cheating in the U.S. What constitutes, culturally speaking, an excellent student in many Asian cultures, for instance, may be seen in U.S. colleges and universities as academic misconduct. Campuses need to develop their resources to teach/orient international students to academic expectations before they begin their studies in the U.S. and periodically throughout their academic program. This is a retention and success issue - and there is no standardized test to measure a student’s preliminary understanding of American academic culture. The TOEFL does not measure this; an IB (international baccalaureate) diploma can be a useful indicator, but institutions need to ensure that they are communicating information around academic integrity and not relying on assumptions - or worse, responding reactively and punitively. International student U.S. roommates may not necessarily be the best role models for academic integrity and may provide confusing messages to international students about “what they can get away with”. Having to drop a class or get an “F” may be a problem for a U.S. student. For an international student, it can result in a violation of their visa status and removal from the U.S.
With few exceptions, the new wave of undergraduates who are enrolling in U.S. institutions are away from home for the first time, and living beyond their home culture for the first time. Cultural adjustment is a stress trigger under the best of circumstances; when combined with the age and maturity level of an 18-to-20 year old far from home who is working through cultural and language challenges, these triggers quickly become crises with respect to depression, anxiety, identity, substance abuse, and social isolation. How do campuses provide mental wellness services targeting a specifically international population, managing the social stigma and negative perceptions around seeking mental wellness support? Again, this is an area where U.S. students are also struggling with mental health issues and may not be providing the best role model or empathetic support for an international student.
Large cohorts of international students tend to cluster protectively together, perhaps as a response to the stress trigger of cultural adjustment, creating another challenge for campuses: how to effectively and meaningfully integrate domestic and international student populations? Incentivizing competitions, for example, among domestic social groups may be one way to approach this solution, but international students frequently report that their domestic counterparts quickly fade from the scene after the award-winning contact has been made and recorded. How to find appropriate groups of new domestic students as potential contacts and friends? For example, American students from smaller towns who may be more receptive to making new friends than their peers from larger cities. There have been various institutions that have developed connections through social and/or academic mentor relationships that can make a difference.
Communities may struggle to understand the changing and growing international demographic. Programs that bring international students to communities in public diplomacy, sharing their experiences and cultures in local schools is a way to counteract this hesitancy or lack of awareness about international students, particularly in smaller or more rural communities. International students can visit local schools at all levels as well as community organizations to become a positive picture of the world outside the U.S., when they may have only seen media messages about terrorism, war, and environmental disasters outside of the U.S.
Cultural understanding is the responsibility of the entire community, not just newcomers. Flipping the new international student orientation model so that the onus is not always placed upon international students to adjust to American culture. What, and how, are our institutions communicating to their domestic students, faculty, and staff regarding international students and their needs? There is also an opportunity for international students to provide international learning on campus, in particular for the many U.S. students who don’t have the opportunity to study abroad.

The New Resource - Research on Student Mobility and Internationalization: Innovative International Student Support Programming. Following are the categories of information that we’ve collected information about innovative practices in.

Please share examples of good practices in these categories or other categories of information you think would be useful. Please provide that content by sending an email to: contact@globaled.us.

Thanks to Terra Dotta and UCLA for providing funding support to collect these resources and share them with you.

Aiding The Adjustment: Working with Undergraduate International Students as They Adjust to Life on Your Campus

Aiding The Adjustment:
Working with Undergraduate International Students as They Adjust to Life on Your Campus