Recruiting Intelligence

We recently talked with students past and present from Vietnam to Bangladesh and heard encouraging stories.

• A professor hand-delivered a recommendation during the early phase of the pandemic.
• A class specifically designed around a student’s pursuits.
• A helpful phone call to a trusted member of the international student services team when tragedy struck.

Stories that embody the kind of student-first experience we all imagine we provide to our students. It’s the kind of experience we certainly all tell the world of prospective students (and parents) that we will deliver.

The reality, unfortunately, is often quite different. Blame branding or the bottom line (lack of resources), but the undeniable truth is that competing priorities often win out over the well-founded ideal of student-first. 

Today’s post is not a how-to on making your website user-friendly. Today we put a spotlight on the policies and actions that put students first. We’re looking at what is undermining your institutional integrity and how you can address it. And trust us, students are well aware of how well your institution delivers on the promise of student-first. And they tell stories. So, yes, this post is enrollment marketing-focused.

When you delight, they gush with positive word-of-mouth support. And when you fail, they tell that story too.

To offer deep perspective on this topic, in addition to our own experience, we tapped a few colleagues who know more than a thing or two about fostering the student-first mindset:

• David Hautanen, Vice President for Enrollment Management at St. Mary's College of Maryland
• Jessica Sandberg, Dean of International Enrollment Management at Duke Kunshan University
• Jewell Green Winn, Senior International Officer of International Affairs at Tennessee State University (and newly appointed chair of AIEA)
• Brad Farnsworth, Principal of Fox Hollow Advisory and former Vice President at the American Council for Education (ACE)

They each had great perspective on the subject. We are so appreciative of their time and the insights shared. You, our readers, are the beneficiaries of their wisdom.  

Read on to learn concrete actions you can take now to help ensure your enrollment program is student-first. Is this post a good one to share with your leadership? Uhm, yes.

As I wrote from the MSY airport lounge, #AIEA2022 had just wrapped. At that time, in the previous 24 hours, Russia had launched a military attack on Ukraine, some of our colleagues tested positive for Covid at the AIEA conference, and Boston (my destination) was expecting a foot of snow the next day. Oh, and my Boston flight was unceremoniously canceled with no flights available to get me to Boston for another 3 days. Life as we know it continues with turbulent distress, ambiguity, and elements of normalcy.

With these realities in mind, I offer focused reflections on the ideas that struck me most during the conference and a few ideas on how they might add value to your work. As always, we don’t want to get all esoteric here. It’s about actionable steps for internationalization and diverse student experiences that take us all forward, together, with vision.

Enrollment management is complex. The tools available to help us can be confusing. Read to the end of this post for some very tangible advice from 4 international students who spoke at the conference.

More learning ahead

We hope you will be joining us at NAFSA 2022 in Denver this Spring. We will be sharing 3 forward-thinking presentations and a poster session. We are honored to co-present with colleagues from Benedict College, San Diego State University, Clark University, Northeastern University, CIEE, ICEF, and GNET. More details on those in future posts.

More immediately, read on for reflections and action items from AIEA 2022...

You are welcome here.

DEI efforts to address inclusion.

These are big concepts that deserve big discussions on campuses everywhere. Discussions with senior leaders setting policies and developing programs to make everyone on campus feel involved and connected.

And to make all that happen, that feeling of being welcome and included, will rely on some of the small things that often are met with eye rolls. Yet, these small things are really important to this whole inclusion effort.

You know that inside joke and the trendy celebrity stuff you are not on top of? The conversation that just kind of left you like roadkill as it blew right by? Maybe silly. Perhaps kind of uncomfortable. Happens to all of us. And it happens to your new students frequently. Domestic, yes. International, all the time.

If you think small talk is meaningless, think again.

In our work for a large, highly ranked Midwestern institution, we were talking with Pham (not his real name). He traveled from Vietnam for his US studies. A natural networker, smart, interested in business, he chose to major in Business Management Information Systems and Finance. With that degree, it is no wonder he was snapped up by Deloitte where he currently works as a Senior Consultant in Tax Management.

To hear Pham tell it, connecting to the US community with small talk was critical to his success. He came to understand this during his studies as he tried to connect with the other international students and with his American peers. He found he was struggling to make friends.

Read on for Pham's perspective and our tips for getting these really important conversations started. It is all about personal and student success. 

So, you have international students on campus. . . now what? We all know that the work doesn’t stop there. Your colleagues must have the tools and resources available to help students adjust both socially and culturally into campus life. 

As educators, we always strive to promote global awareness and perspective, but sometimes it can be difficult to foster this development on our own campuses. Questions that need to be asked every year—do we give students opportunities to interact across social and cultural backgrounds in all aspects of campus life? In the classroom, are there ways to foster greater inclusion with curricula and team assignments? In the end, are we producing alumni who are culturally literate and effective in a global workforce?

Achieving long-term institutional success through internationalization requires organizing on-campus resources to facilitate the types of interactions that open minds and build cross-cultural competencies. With supply chains, basic communication and daily business interactions in all industries going global, graduates entering the workforce need cross cultural perspective and skills. They need to be comfortable working with and managing a diverse set of colleagues. The universities that "get" this will produce more effective and powerful alumni.

This is a topic that has been discussed for years at NAFSA, AIEA and other higher education forums, so we wanted to highlight some of the best practical solutions that we have heard, read and discussed with higher education experts. As we take our regular summer hiatus from posting to this blog, we thought this discussion on integration and inclusion would send us off on a positive note. We hope that you will take the opportunity to join us at the NACAC conference in Boston this September or at NAFSA Regional in Princeton, New Jersey this October! We will be offering up some great new research on international student trends and the digital tools that help you reach them.

Read on for a selection of innovative tips & techniques for achieving inclusion on campus and fostering cross-cultural competency...