Area of Specialization

To fulfill the requirements for my area of specialization in international education, I engaged in the following coursework.

As a result of completing the CSSA program at Oregon State, I, Sharece M. Bunn, am now able to do the following related to

International Education

A. Identify and articulate challenges international students face when transitioning into their studies in the United States.

When I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ukraine, people in my town knew my name. Though the town had a population of 10,000, four times the size of my hometown in Oregon, I was better known in Lypovets than I ever should have been. My identity led to the celebrity status I held during my two years. Never before had my national identity as a U.S. citizen been as salient to as it was at that time. My foreigner status led to exoticism, which led host country nationals to treat me as “other,” a person who was not part of the host culture. When international students arrive in the United States, they may be also confronted with tokenization and othering. Even if students enter the country as welcomed guests, the systems within the United States can restrict students from experiencing their life in a positive manner.

The dominant US culture is White and can be uninviting and overpowering for international students. When they encounter this, students may feel compelled to remain in isolation. While my US upbringing prepared me to be bold and explore different aspects of the world when I lived abroad, I have met students from China, for example, who are reserved, and they share that adjusting to US culture and society is difficult. Thus, it becomes essential for higher education professionals to structure programs and orientation that will help students adjust to the culture.

In some cases, international students are forced to represent their entire country or culture to students and faculty in the United States. Marshall (1970) wrote that international students serve as cultural carriers between the United States and their home countries. These international students may be the only people that domestic students, staff, or community members have met from the international students’ countries of origin. With this perceived novelty, the international students may be tokenized. When students do experience tokenization, they may become part of the process of stereotyping. We have examples of such stereotyping at OSU where we have a large influx of international students. Professionals are aware of the fact that increased international student enrollment is viewed as a way to generate revenue for the institution and thus may make assumptions about international student wealth. But though the cost of international education at OSU is high, not all international students at OSU have the private financial means to fully support their education in the United States. For example, an international student who works with ISAS recently applied for scholarships to complete their education. The student’s mother had been going through hardship and though the student was working 20 hours a week, she did not have the means to fully support her education here in the United States. This student’s story is different from the more generalized story we hear about international students’ wealth. While some students may have financial means to pay for their education as well as a high-end automobile, this is not the full picture or full story of the international student population at OSU.

When students become marginalized by stereotypes, they may experience high levels of stress that are often exacerbated by added language and social etiquette differences. In AHE 552 Principles and Theories of Student Development in Higher Education Part II, I researched international student transitions in conjunction with cognitive development for my term paper (Appendix W). I wrote about how international opportunities could be improved for some students if we developed intercultural competency in students and staff. Bennett’s (1993) model of intercultural sensitivity defines six stages: denial of difference, defense against difference, minimization of difference, acceptance of difference, adaptation to difference, and integration of difference; it can provide a framework to use in my work. When I taught INTO’s American Survival course to INTO OSU students, I found that the small group of students in my class would usually operate from the first two stages – they would either deny cultural and social differences or they would build up a defense to separate themselves from the American experience. Students were failing most of their courses because they were often disengaged, not getting involved in the campus community or communicating with their classmates or local community members. In cases where the students become disengaged and apathetic, I think professionals need to be more intentional with outreach and intervention. I was not involved with academic advising at INTO, but I believe advisors could have played a key role in finding out how to support the student better. As an instructor, I also could have done more to engage the students, by checking in with them, requesting a meeting, and referring them to academic coaching or Counseling and Psychological Services, if needed.

In my blog post for AHE 552 Part II, I wrote that struggling through adverse situations and culture shock could help with cognitive development (Appendix X). Changing norms and circumstances with culture can help students work through King and Kitchener’s (2011) Reflective Judgment Model. If students approach their education hoping to have all answers provided to them or for them, for example, they may be engaging in pre-reflective thinking. If the students begin to experience changes in culture and education, however, the students may begin to realize that knowledge is not certain and can begin to shift towards quasi-reflective thinking. What I was learning in AHE 552 Part II showed that difficult situations and adversity actually helped students develop critical thinking skills. Similar to Sanford’s (1966) challenge and support theory, I found that removing all the barriers international students could face might reduce their ability to grow and develop their critical thinking and reasoning skills. Working to remove all barriers was not the solution. Rather, it would be necessary to seek ways to improve the experience for students by finding the balance between challenge and support.

Some cultural and academic support is essential to help international students transition to their studies in the United States. When students go through orientation to the university, they must go through comprehensive training regarding the university-wide classroom expectations. For example, at OSU’s New to OSU Presentation, we partner with the Office of Student Conduct and Community Standards to discuss Academic Honesty. Katkus (2014) found that enforcement policies are discriminatory towards students who come from collectivist cultures in the East where the way students cite and borrow from previous works is different. Buehler, Craig, and Federici (2010) say that to agree on the policy for academic integrity will often bring up questions about standardizing integrity and how this can be done without associating the principles with religious morality. Additionally, while domestic students may feel the burden of switching between APA, MLA, AP, or Chicago Style during their studies at the university, for a student who is still learning the nuances of American English and culture, these stylebooks can be daunting. The Western method of citing sources is also challenging for students as for students from Eastern cultures, “the norm is to repeat back a textbook or a professor verbatim (without a citation), as a sign of respect to the source of knowledge” (Redden, 2007, para. 7).

Students from collectivist cultures may view respect for professors and the classroom setting differently. Rather than sharing their opinions freely to enhance the learning environment, students may have been conditioned to stay silent and merely listen to their professors in their home institutions (Robertson, 2005). However, even within different collectivist cultures, the classroom expectations may differ. Beckman-Brito (n.d.) found that students from China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Vietnam had different perceptions of acceptable classroom behaviors. Assuming that collectivism or other approaches to learning not within the norm of US culture result in identical experiences and difficulties for the students is unrealistic. However, it is important to remember that international students may experience much stress as they negotiate the different classroom and academic as they adapt to their studies in the United States.

Globalization also contributes to the challenge. Globalization allows American entertainment to spread across the globe within moments of being released. International students may develop cultural expectations and stereotypes based on the media such as how people develop friendships and relationships, in what type of houses people live, what cars they drive, who Americans are (many international students expect Americans to be White), and what the “American dream” means for the future. I learned this when I first moved to Ukraine and again when I traveled to India – many people I interact with have specific views and understandings of America (i.e. we all live in cities and fight for marriage equality). While these assumptions may be partially true, there are actually multiple truths and individuals within different communities in the United States will treat social justice issues differently. The reality can be vastly different. When students in my American Survival classes arrived in Corvallis, for example, they were surprised by the smallness of the college town. A student from Iraq was initially glad to bring his wife and daughter to the small town of Corvallis, feeling that they had much to do outdoors, but as the rain came, he shared that the novelty was gone – he missed the city and longed for the desert. One student from China struggled with her experience in the US. Though she claimed that wanted to make friends, she built up a defense against difference (Bennett, 1993) and limited her activities to watching NBA games in her residence hall and eating at Panda Express in the MU. This student’s struggle to find friends is not uncommon as 40 percent of international students claim to have no close American friends and wish for meaningful connections with students born in the US (Jaschik, 2012). Constructing ways for international students to interact and make friends with domestic students should be one of the focus areas of our programming efforts.

B. Analyze the value and impact of international education experiences.

While a student with the CSSA program, I took advantage of three separate international education experiences: the Transatlantic Student Symposium with the School of Public Policy, the Educational and Social Reform Program in South Africa with NYU Steinhardt Global, and the Global Perspectives in Higher Education Program in India with NYU Steinhardt Global. During these three experiences, I served as both a student and observer, trying to learn the information and content while investigating how these programs were able to engage students in learning.

The Transatlantic Student Symposium (TSS) was part of a course I took in winter 2014. The class required us to read the same texts and materials that students at Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany and the University of Warsaw in Warsaw, Poland, were reading to have a uniform academic experience. To complete the course, we all wrote papers regarding the topic of Sustainability in Education, Culture and Politics: Questioning the Validity of National Narratives and Policies. I wrote a paper about American Study Abroad and how White American students may form a national identity for the first time when they go abroad (Appendix Y). Sometimes, the first experience US students may have with their American identities may be when they experience hostility from host country nationals regarding American culture and the American government (Dolby, 2007). These interactions can create dissonance. Gallagher (2003) wrote that students are frustrated to define their American identity, because it is an unknown. The collusion of cultures caused by White supremacy was created from the adopted cultural traditions of subordinate races and ethnicities within the nation (Gallagher, 2003). As students seek to make meaning of their national identities, they may embrace the idea of “being ethnic for a day” by celebrating St. Patrick’s Day or participating in cultural events that are other than the dominant White culture (Gallagher, p. 29). The dominant narrative takes away some students’ association with their culture and identity. Presenting my paper at the symposium was a rich experience and I was able to engage in dialogue with German and Polish students and faculty who were interested in the American concept of study abroad (Appendix Z). Essentially, my experience with the TSS allowed me to further investigate my own American identity while studying the development of other students. As I am a White student who studied abroad and served as a Peace Corps volunteer in two countries that are predominantly White and mostly pro-American, I did not experience some of the adversity I learned that many students face when studying abroad.

My trip to South Africa was a very different experience. As I mentioned in competency 3b, in South Africa, my White identity was more salient to me than my other identities. I was also able to work with students from NYU who had other goals for the trip – one classmate went on the trip to reconnect to her African heritage. While she was able to research the African Diaspora at her home institution, visiting South Africa had its own advantages – she was able to meet Black Africans, walk where members of the Black Power Movement had walked in the 1960s, and challenge dominant narratives held by members of the NYU South Africa cohort during our indaba sessions.

The structure of the NYU South Africa trip was well-designed. Our instructor, Teboho Moja, helped build community during our first class session when she asked our 14-person group, “What’s one thing about you that it would be helpful to know so that we can learn and accommodate one another best?” The level of vulnerability in the circle was amazing. I learned of my classmates physical statuses that could inhibit their abilities to perform certain tasks along with their general interests in the program and what they hoped to learn. Our group became a team and as we all went out into the communities to learn about South Africa, we would gather together for our evening indabas to support one another while drinking South African wine and sharing our learning and experiences.

The trip to India was much different. Two instructors facilitated the trip and a group of 21 students went on the journey. Larger numbers and less time together resulted in less intimacy and vulnerability. The trip was fully packed and there was less time for reflection. Upon returning, I began to question the value of short-term study abroad programs. Map (2012) found that short-term study abroad programs help students develop intercultural knowledge and adaptability. However, though these short-term programs can help expose students to different cultures in a relatively affordable way, my trip to India lacked the depth of experience and cultural exchange that I have found crucial and highly impactful in other international experiences. I was critical of the program structure: class sessions were rare and short, the program was fast-paced, and our interactions with Indian students were staged – the administrators only invited “the best” students to meet us. Our discussions with students barely scratched the surface. My experience in India lacked the authenticity to which I prefer in international experiences an authenticity that allows us to learn from one another and discuss the various truths of our existences. The educational tour was not conducive to investing in the culture and getting to know the people as I have done in prior travels. The trip felt more like voluntourism and I, like Biddle (2014), believe that visiting a country as a White American can be problematic and can perpetuate the systems of inequity and inequality that affect our world if we go with a White savior complex. Though many professors told me that the trip did no harm to the students who went and could have opened their eyes to a world other than their own, I personally craved more commitment to the culture and people. I viewed the tour as more beneficial to us than to the Indian people we visited. We, the delegates, were treated like valued guests though our hosts did not receive mutual benefits from our visit – was it beneficial for them to be better understood in our studies and research papers. Surely. However, our pens and papers added to the power we delegates had in the situation. We were able to control their story rather than allowing them to tell their story on their own.

International educational experiences should serve as cultural and educational exchanges that can enhance the learning and experience of all parties involved and should not be one-sided. Should I plan future programs for study abroad, I would hope to incorporate programming and learning outcomes that ensured mutual benefits for all parties involved.

C. Articulate how this area of specialization will inform my future work and position.  

When I began my journey with the CSSA Program, I did so hoping to become a study abroad advisor. Learning the necessary material to help me obtain this position seemed like the ideal reason to make international education my area of specialization. What I learned through the CSSA Program, however, is that international education is about so much more than study abroad. At Oregon State, for example, we have a rising number of international students coming to our university. With this increase, we must work to make our campus culture more inviting and relevant to students from all nationalities.

My internships with INTO OSU and International Student Advising and Services (ISAS) have given me some first-hand experience working with international students. Helping students with their adjustment to the United States and Corvallis has been one of the most enriching parts of my practical experience in the program. Designing a course outline for an international transitions course was one of the highlights of my internship (Appendix AA). While designing the course outline, I met with my assistantship supervisor one-on-one to discuss the content which in essence is a hybrid of INTO’s American Survival course, ALS 116, and identity support to educational migrants. I am eager to see how I can adapt this outline into a tangible project during spring term, either creating a single online module for students or working with advisors in the College of Engineering and the College of Business to structure a course that they may implement in the coming academic year.

When I meet with my assistantship supervisor, I often discuss issues I have learned about through my internship at ISAS. For example, when some international graduate students come to the United States, they bring their families with them. I would ask, how does the ASC support students with families? The answer I got was difficult: we mostly serve first-year students. Most of the structures and programs we have in place are designed specifically to help first-year students succeed, and do not easily translate to supporting non-traditional students or students with families. The Learning Corner website, the Writing Center, and Academic Coaching are the main programs and resources to which I refer international students, because they are relevant to all students. While I believe that there are ways we can improve our services to be more inclusive for international students, I realize that some of the difficulty arises from the unique relationship OSU has to INTO, namely that many of the INTO students have limited English language abilities and most university programs and functions are designed to support students with a high level of English proficiency. As I mentioned in competency 5a & 5d, I have a desire to learn to speak more languages. Perhaps as the number of international students coming to America increases, it might be valuable for higher educational professionals to engage in learning languages other than English to better support international students. However, whether the institutions themselves will adapt academic disciplines in multiple languages is another matter.

Whether I find a job working in an international programs office or if I decide to seek a generalist position in student affairs at a community college, I know that my area of specialization will help inform my practice. Supporting international students is not merely the responsibility of those who work in international programs. Rather, it is the responsibility of each person in the university. In AHE 599, Globalization of Higher Education, I was able to learn from professionals in different functional areas around OSU’s campus about how they have come to specialize in working with international students. In Laurie Bridge’s case, she became the librarian who focused on working to improve the communication and services between the library and the growing number of international students whereas with Emily Dunn, her entire job at INTO focuses on working on the unique needs of international students at various levels. As I begin my career in higher education, having knowledge and understanding of international education experiences and the challenges associated will give me the insight to support students who may be struggling to adjust to life back the US after a study abroad program. I will also be able to offer perspectives to colleagues who may not understand the challenges international students face, and can help push past the assumptions that essentially put limitations on students.

References

Beckman-Brito, K. (n.d.). Classroom etiquette: A cross-cultural study of classroom behaviors. Arizona Working Papers in SLAT. Retrieved from http://slat.arizona.edu/sites/slat/files/page/awp10beckman.pdf

Bennett, M. J. (1993). Towards ethnorelativism: A developmental model of intercultural sensitivity. In M. Paige (Ed.), Education for the intercultural experience. Yarmouth, ME: Intercultural Press.

Biddle, P. (2014, February 18). The problem with little white girls (and boys): Why I stopped being a voluntourist. [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://pippabiddle.com/2014/02/18/the-problem-with-little-white-girls-and-boys/

Buehler, M. A., Craig, P. A., & Federici, E. (2010). Instructing students in academic integrity. Journal of College Science Teaching, 40(2), 50-56.

Dolby, N. (2007). Reflections of nation: American undergraduates and education abroad. Journal of Studies in International Education, 11, 141-156. doi: 10.1177/1028315306291944

Gallagher, C. A. (2003). Color-blind privilege: The social and political functions of erasing the color line in post race America. Race, Gender & Class, 10, 22-37.

Katkus, K. (2014, March). Academic convention as a property of whiteness: The disproportionate impact of enforcement policies on international university students. Paper presented in AHE 520 Multicultural Issues for the CSSA Program, Corvallis, OR.

King, P. M. & Kitchener, K. S. (2011). Reflective judgment: Theory and research on thedevelopment of epistemic assumptions through adulthood. In M. E. Wilson (Ed.), ASHE reader series: College student development theory (2nd ed.) (267-384). Boston, MA: Pearson.

Jaschik, S. (2012, June 14). Friendless in America. Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved from https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/06/14/new-study-finds-many-foreign-students-lack-american-friends

Map, S. C. (2012). Effect of short-term study abroad programs on students’ cultural adaptability. Journal of Social Work Education, 48(4), 727-737. doi: 10.5175/JSWE.2012.201100103

Marshall, T. (1970). The strategy of international exchange. In Students as links between cultures (pp. 3-31). Oslo, Norway: Scandinavian University Books.

Redden, E. (2007, May 24). Cheating across cultures. Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved from https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/05/24/cheating

Robertson, W. (2005). Writing across borders. [DVD]. Available from Oregon State University Writing Center.

Ryan, M. E. & Twibell, R. S. (2000). Concerns, values, stress, coping, health, and educational outcomes of college students who studied abroad. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 24, 409-435.

Sanford, N. (1966). Self and society. New York: Atherton Press.

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