The Office of International Services hosted the First Year Success Conference on Wednesday in the Indiana Memorial Union Whittenberger Auditorium, where first-year international students attended opening remarks and two sessions of their choice.
The conference was divided into seven parts: College is More than the Classroom; How to Take Notes, Read, and Study; Successfully Navigating the IUB Classroom Culture; Managing Academic Stress; Getting Started on Your Research: Navigating the Library; Cultural Adjustment and Tips for Spoken English: from Conversation to Presentation.
Each session was designed to teach international students how to create short-term and long-term goals, deal with failure and identify resources, said Chelsea Carroll, assistant director of orientation and outreach at the Office of International Services.
“I want to be successful in my college life and through my college life because it is my first time studying abroad,” said JJ Park, a freshman from South Korea. “So when I read the brief information about this, I thought I might use this to get better.”
Though in domestic classrooms students are expected to actively communicate and participate, in many international classrooms students are instead expected to sit and listen, passively understanding, but not questioning the information, Carroll said.
“It’s more about active collaboration between the student and the professor or even between students within the classroom,” she said. “That can sometimes be jarring for students who haven’t grown up in academic environments that really foster that type of learning.”
Complicating matters further, international students often do not receive the same parental support that domestic students do, Carroll said.
“They don’t necessarily have the culture capital at home,” she said. “So they don’t have people at home guiding them and helping them figure out what that next step is now that they’re here.”
This leads to a misunderstanding about the purpose of higher education in the United States. Because faculty from many international institutions of higher education help students find a job following graduation, a degree from an international institution of higher education often guarantees a job, Carroll said.
“As most American students know, it’s degree plus experience or internships or leadership experience while you’re here that will translate into actually getting a job,” she said.
Carroll said the language barrier can be stressful.
“Speaking English is the most difficult (challenge),” Park said. “Some students are having problems listening to the professor and what she or he says. And some professors have their different pronunciations, special pronunciations, so it’s really hard to understand. And I just want to know how I can solve these problems.”
Carroll said the Office of International Studies tries to solve these problems by ensuring students know where to go for language support.
“We also try to remind them that we know that this isn’t necessarily your native language if you’re coming from a non-English speaking country,” she said. “You don’t always have to be perfect, but the more you practice, the more you just get out of your comfort zone and speak in English, the better you’ll become over time.”
Last year, the Office of International Services divided the conference into several one-hour sessions, held once every two weeks throughout the fall semester.
“We just found that it was difficult for students to make all of the different, discrete sessions, because (students) are busy with classes and a million other activities and a million other ways of being involved,” Carroll said.
Carroll said she hopes international students will continue to succeed at IU.
“I am so impressed with the caliber of international students we have and the level of involvement many of them are willing to take on,” she said.
