Training puts participants through real-world scenarios international students face
Staff members in the Office of International Students and Scholars at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville had a dilemma: When foreign students ran into problems, they would often turn to the most-trusted adults in their lives, host families or favorite professors, for guidance.
These mentors would try to help: Short on cash? Get a part-time job at a fast-food restaurant. Failing a course? Drop it and make up the credits next semester.
But the advice, while well intentioned, was also sometimes wrong. Student-visa regulations forbid international students from working off campus, except in narrow instances in which it’s related to their studies. The same rules mandate that students from overseas be enrolled full time.
The international-office staffers came up with an idea, to develop a short training program to help familiarize volunteers, faculty members, and others on campus who work with the university’s 1,200 international students with some of the common, yet specific, challenges that the group encounters.
“We always tell people, ‘Our objective isn’t to make you immigration experts. It’s to make you more sensitive to these issues,” said Audra D. Johnston, the office’s associate director — and its “resident immigration geek.”
For nearly two decades, Johnston and Cynthia Jane Smith, assistant director of outreach programs, have run the program, In Their Shoes, leading participants through real-world scenarios: When an international student’s roommate moves out, is it OK for a host family to offer housing in exchange for some housework and child care? How should an adviser or supervisor respond if they begin to notice an international student acting erratically? What are the potential visa implications if a student is arrested for underaged drinking or public intoxication? What happens if he is contacted by the FBI?
During the workshop, attendees break out into small groups to consider different scenarios, all based on issues the international office has dealt with. “Repeatedly,” Smith said. Then the whole group comes together to talk through the problems and possible solutions.
Johnston and Smith offer additional advice: Working as a nanny in exchange for housing would run afoul of visa rules, but host families can refer international students in financial need to a campus emergency fund, and the local food bank is another resource. International-office staff members can sit in if the FBI requests to interview a student.
Over time, Smith and Johnston have sharpened the workshop scenarios. In recent years, for example, participants have been more likely than in the past to suspect that the FBI outreach was a scam, so they updated the training to reflect that concern.
The presentation format has also grown more sophisticated. Initially, the pair distributed written copies of the scenarios, then they upgraded to rudimentarily recorded skits. Now each scenario is a mini-movie, filmed professionally by a local videographer. International students are recruited as actors; in one video, about a document mix-up, the registrar’s office doubles as the motor-vehicle office.
The scenario-based approach can resonate more than other means of conveying the same information, Johnston said. “I think storytelling has a greater impact.”
The international office regularly runs the training for groups across the University of Arkansas, including campus police, the diversity office, and resident assistants. They can tailor the training to focus on the issues most relevant to the audience.
In recent days, they have held sessions for the geosciences department, which was referred by another academic department, as well as for a cross-cultural communications course.
Margaret Miller Butcher, who teaches the communications course, invites Smith and Johnston to present each semester. Despite the course’s subject matter, many of her students have never even spoken to an international student. Working through the scenarios “lets them have a little bit of an understanding,” said Butcher, who has a cameo in one of the videos as a concerned professor whose student has been hospitalized. “It builds better bridges.”
The course is a service-learning one, and many of Butcher’s students go on to volunteer in the international office as conversation partners or “campus cousins,” acting as peer support for new international students. In reflection papers at the end of the semester, In Their Shoes is always one of the learning experiences students most frequently mention, she said.
Departments and offices that go through the training have a point of contact in the international office. Anecdotally, Johnston and Smith said other faculty and staff members are more likely to flag concerns about students to them, and students who visit the office tell them they’ve been encouraged by their professors to seek support. When the graduate school was thinking about increasing work hours for its teaching and research assistants, it reached out to see if doing so would have any visa implications, Johnston said.
The professional-quality videos cost about $6,000 to make, Smith said, but because of the program’s track record, they were able to get financial support from the university. Still, any college could offer a pared-down version, writing their own scenarios.
Arkansas officials have also been exploring ways to copyright In Their Shoes and make the program, including a facilitator’s guide, available to other institutions. After a recent presentation at the NAFSA: Association of International Educators conference, one audience member came up to Johnston. “If you publish it,” she said, “I’ll buy it.”
I’m interested in writing about innovative approaches to common problems in international-student support, study abroad, and other aspects of international education. Know of programs that fit the bill? Email me at karin.fischer@chronicle.com.
