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Archive for the ‘Foreign Students & Scholars’ Category

U.S. Department of State Exchange Visitor Program: What Can We Expect?

Posted in Events, Foreign Students & Scholars, NAFSA, tagged , on January 17, 2013 | Leave a Comment »

Robin LernerWe recently posed this question to Robin Lerner, deputy assistant secretary for private sector exchange at the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, and her staff.  As part of our regular agency liaison, NAFSA staff and David Elwell, chair of NAFSA’s International Student and Scholar Regulatory Practice Committee (ISS-RP), met with  Ms. Lerner to discuss her vision and plans for the Exchange Visitor Program, which she oversees, and to convey the needs and concerns of the academic community.

Ms. Lerner accepted NAFSA’s offer to host a teleconference so that she could engage with the academic community, and we hope that you will participate. It’s a great opportunity for members of the academic community who have an interest in the Exchange Visitor Program to learn how the program will be managed going forward.

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International Students Bring $21.8 Billion to U.S. Economy – and Much More to Communities

Posted in Advocacy, Foreign Students & Scholars, Guest Post, Int'l Education Week, tagged , , on November 13, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

International students and their families contributed more than $21.8 billion to the U.S. economy during the 2011–2012 academic year, according to a new NAFSA report released yesterday. California, New York, and Texas welcomed the largest numbers of international students, and those and other states across the country saw substantial benefits from spending by these students and their families on living expenses, tuition, and fees.

The compelling, real-life stories about the positive impact international students make on our campuses and communities often come from the experiences of international educators who work with them every day. Today we have a post about international students in Pennsylvania from Jennifer Figueroa, director of International Student Services for Bucknell University, in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. If you would like to share your own story, visit the Share Your Story page on Connecting Our World.

Bicycling to Sustainability
By: Jennifer Figueroa

Somehow, I am lucky enough to have a really unique job. I work in higher education, specifically with students that come to study in the United States from all over the world. I travel vicariously through them, and occasionally travel for real when the opportunity presents itself. I’ve mentored, supported, and advised students from far-flung places, nations, and cultures including the Ukraine, Brazil, Rwanda, Honduras, China, Nepal, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Macedonia, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, The Netherlands, Madagascar, Yemen, and Tibet. What is the best part of it all? Getting to know them as individuals and seeing the influence they bring to our campus. Each student brings a vibrant and unique perspective to campus, lending new ideas and concepts to classroom discussions and enriching campus programs through cultural experiences.

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Comprehensive Immigration Reform Finds Spotlight in Presidential Debate

Posted in Advocacy, Foreign Students & Scholars, Immigration Policy, tagged , , on October 17, 2012 | 3 Comments »

Presidential candidates Barack Obama and Mitt Romney sparred over immigration policy in their televised debate on Tuesday night, the second of three debates. In a testy exchange, the candidates touched on each of the three pillars of comprehensive immigration reform: enforcement, visas, and the undocumented. While Romney and Obama may disagree on details, both said they would seek major revisions to federal law in the next Congress.

The truth is, today’s world of global mobility bears little resemblance to where we were generations ago when the basic structure of U.S. immigration law was created. We need a new, sustainable national policy now. NAFSA supports comprehensive immigration reform that is based on facts, fairness, and a shared future. True comprehensive reform must address the three pillars of border security and enforcement, broad visa reform, and resolution of undocumented persons.

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Change is in the Air

Posted in Foreign Students & Scholars, International Educator, Study Abroad, tagged , on September 6, 2012 | 3 Comments »

The following appeared in the September/October issue of International Educator magazine.

IE Sep/Oct 2012The United Kingdom has long been well-known for its excellence in higher education. The universities of Cambridge and Oxford are world-class institutions that many nations, including the United States, have tried to emulate. They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery—in terms of higher education in the United Kingdom, times are changing. Recent years have brought many changes to the higher education sector in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales.

Increasing tuition for both domestic and international students has been on the rise. This is quite a shift for UK students—in the past, pursuing a university education was largely subsidized by the government. With the increase of fees for international students, the UK sees more funding per student, which can help defray budget cuts that have been instituted due to the global economic downturn, but it can deter international students from coming to the UK due to the higher cost.

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Today’s Chinese Student: What Really Matters

Posted in Events, Foreign Students & Scholars, tagged , , on September 4, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

NAFSA Webinars“They are not asking new questions. They are not posing new problems,” says Megan Wang of Chinese students coming to the United States for undergraduate study. “It’s a question of scale. There are more of them than ever before.”

Wang is the associate director of undergraduate admission at the University of Southern California (USC), and she, like many other professionals working with international students and scholars, has seen a significant increase in the number of Chinese high school students applying to universities and colleges in the United States. She says that undergraduate applications to USC from China have increased steadily in the past few years, topping out at over 2,200 applicants. “I am hoping that it might start to stabilize,” she says, noting that further increases would not be surprising.

Wang will copresent a NAFSA webinar on September 12 titled “Today’s Chinese Student: What Really Matters.” Wang works mainly in admissions and recruitment while her copresenter, Sufei Li, organizes exchange programs for Chinese university students.

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Learning and Fun: The Ongoing Path to Advocacy Success

Posted in Advocacy, Foreign Students & Scholars, Guest Post, Internationalization, tagged , on July 31, 2012 | 4 Comments »

This week we go to Cincinnati to continue our blog series documenting the reflections of the inaugural cohort of the Connecting Our World Grassroots Leadership Program (GLP). Over the past year, Frank Merendino developed a new intercultural communication training program for faculty and staff at the University of Cincinnati. In his post, he shares the fun and hard work that became his advocacy story.

Frank MerendinoBy Frank Merendino
Being a part of the inaugural cohort of Connecting Our World’s Grassroots Leadership Program (GLP) was a lot of fun. I also learned quite a bit about how to advocate effectively for international education on a number of different fronts.

Being an advocate for international education can take on many different meanings. You can be an advocate by attending NAFSA’s Advocacy Day or writing a letter to your state representatives on the necessities of immigration reform. You can be an advocate in your community by developing a program that integrates international students with locals or shares your hometown traditions with students from across the world. You can be an advocate on your campus through policy development that affects the experience international students have at your institution. There are any number of ways that you can be an advocate for international education—and I strongly encourage you to do so even if you think it’s something small—do it! Be an advocate!

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Shedding More Light, Less Heat, on Comprehensive Immigration Reform

Posted in Advocacy, Foreign Students & Scholars, Immigration Policy, Visa Policy, tagged on July 11, 2012 | 9 Comments »

This post was originally published on ILW.com, a leading immigration online law publisher, on July 3, 2012. 

What are we going to do about U.S. immigration policy? That question is back in the spotlight again after a whirlwind two weeks for the issue. First, the Obama Administration announced that it would end the deportations of undocumented young people who would be eligible for relief under the DREAM Act. Then, last week, the Supreme Court struck down three of four key elements of the controversial anti-immigrant law passed in 2010 by the state of Arizona.

Both of these developments are significant steps in the right direction – but they rightly beg the question: How do we really go about fixing the problem we have when it comes to U.S. immigration policy? What is needed is a comprehensive approach to immigration reform that is based in fairness, facts, and a shared future.

These three concepts aren’t just nice words – they mean something.

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Advancing Global Engagement Through International Education

Posted in Annual Conference, Foreign Students & Scholars, Study Abroad, tagged on June 11, 2012 | 5 Comments »

Robert M. GatesEducating foreign students is critical if the United States is to build allies in the world, and study abroad is not an “unaffordable luxury” but rather an important way to help develop future leaders with global experience and language skills, former U.S. secretary of defense Robert M. Gates told international educators during a keynote speech at NAFSA’s 2012 Annual Conference & Expo last week in Houston, Texas.

Gates, a former defense secretary for both Presidents Obama and Bush (2006-2011), served as the president of Texas A&M University from 2002-2006, where he pushed for international diversity on campus and was recognized as a proponent of international student-friendly visa policies. Gates told the audience that while he was at Texas A&M, he counted himself an international educator and advocated for greater global engagement, helping establish a branch campus of Texas A&M at Education City in Doha, Qatar.

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