written by: Irina Kharitonova
During the COVID-19 pandemic recovery, it has been difficult for Student Services offices in the U.S. to consider other global events. However, there are emerging and ongoing issues that continue to affect our students, reminding us about the interconnectedness of the world. For many international students, new crises emerged with the beginning of the war in Ukraine, rebellions in Iran, earthquakes in Turkey, and the recent events in Sudan to name a few.
Currently, 16 countries around the world are listed by United States Citizenship and Immigration Services as countries in crisis. In a cruel exercise of control, governments continue to endorse internet cut-offs that leave students abroad wondering about the well-being of their loved ones back home. How do these critical circumstances affect student performance and their ability to meet faculty expectations? . Are student advisors, faculty, and staff aware of the students’ situations back home? What is the best way to support students from these countries in crisis? There are more questions than answers on this topic for Student Affairs professionals to address, but in our roles we can make all the difference for international students.
I immigrated to the U.S. 12 years ago and still remember what it is like to be homesick. 2021 was a difficult year for my family due to a government overturn in Kazakhstan, where my mother lives, and the start of the war in Ukraine, with many of my friends having families in Ukraine and my sister currently residing in Moscow. I had sleepless nights, struggled with focus and concentration, and could not think of anyone who would understand my stress.
Student Perspectives
This academic year, in 2022, in my Graduate Student Services Coordinator role, I was approached by students from Iran requesting me to advocate for and extension of their Ph.D. Qualifying Exam deadline given their inability to focus on exam preparation during the first months of rebellion in Iran. This was a moment of insight: many international students at some point in their university studies, have been and continue to be affected by the crisis in their home countries.
Amirreza and Sahar Rasoulpour, two married Mechanical Engineering Ph.D. students from Iran, shared their feelings. Sahar, who was in Iran during the start of the rebellion recalled, [i]t was really disappointing for us… we lost internet connection with our family and our friends. Being nervous about your family and people you love is the worst feeling you can experience… and other international students would be no exception… It was super hard for us to find a platform to talk to each other.
Mahsa, another Iranian Ph.D. student, shared that all Mechanical Engineering students from Iran have one-entry visa in the US, and cannot leave the country throughout the duration of their program. She worried about her parents back home. She shared,
The death of Mahsa Amini was really sad, it is something that we were tolerating for many years… I was sad, angry, and exhausted, but at the same time seeing my people standing up for women in Iran and seeing men standing by them and having their backs was very beautiful and touching! I really wanted for everyone in the world to see it.
These statements are just a few examples of students’ perspectives and their states of mind when emergent situations occur in their home countries. Sadly, faculty are frequently not aware that some of the students’ experience deep level of distress due to their inability to join and support their families at the time of need, receive financial assistance, or return home safely.
Protections for International Students
Reflecting on the Fall 2022 semester, I keep wondering about the actions we, as Student Affairs professionals, can take to assist our students affected by a crisis at home. USCIS grants several protections for international students with the opportunity to obtain a work permit during their time of hardship as well as permission for prolonging their stay in the country. Being aware of the special statuses available to our students can help us guide them through the difficult situations:
- Deferred Enforced Departure (DED) is available when it is not safe for the students to return to their country. DED recipients are protected from deportation and are allowed to obtain work permits.
- Temporary Protected Status (TPS) allows foreign nationals to stay in the U.S. for six, 12, or 18 months due to safety concerns back home. If a student’s nation in crisis receives the TPS designation, eligible students can apply to remain for a limited time and request work authorization.
- Economic Hardship Work Permits can help students who have lost communication with or the opportunity to receive financial support from their families at home. It allows international students to work off-campus for up to 20 hours per week during regular semesters and full-time during breaks.
- The Special Student Relief program provides an opportunity for students to work and study part-time if they are affected by emergent situations in their country. Students may request employment authorization; work more than a standard maximum allowed number of hours per week and reduce their course load while continuing to maintain F-1 nonimmigrant student status.
As we further explore international students’ rights, Student Affairs professionals need to react to the current global events, work closely with the International Services Offices to receive most recent updates, deliver information to affected students, and educate students on their options.
Considerations for Academic and Student Affairs
It is important for faculty and staff to be aware of the students’ situations back home and global events in order to follow up in a timely manner. Many international students, due to cultural differences do not feel it is appropriate to raise their concerns and ask for a “special treatment”. For example, students from Sub-Saharan, Asian, Middle Eastern, Eastern European, Central and South American countries share collectivistic culture. While personal attributes create independent collectivists and interdependent individualists, we need to remember the overall differences in values affecting our students.
As Ting-Toomey and Oetzel (2001) elegantly defined in their book Managing Intercultural Conflict Effectively,
individualism refers to the broad value tendencies of people in a culture to emphasize individual identity over group identity and individual rights over group obligations. By comparison, collectivism refers to the broad value tendencies of people in a culture to emphasize the group identity over the individual identity and ingroup-oriented concerns over individual wants and desires (p. 30).
Due to their collectivistic values, international students on campus often do their best to follow the university rules and become useful for the campus community, without consideration for their personal mental health and emotional well-being.
Face saving behaviors in students from individualistic versus collectivistic cultures are also different: while individualists can be more concerned with self-face preservation, collectivists will often try to ignore the uncomfortable in order to protect the reputation of the family and/or an institution. “If I fell behind,” shared Mahsa, “I would be comfortable asking faculty for help, but I wouldn’t want them to think that I am using this opportunity to not do my work.” How many international students are perceived by faculty and staff is very important to them.
We also need to be aware of cultural issues affecting power distance in specific countries. Power distance focuses on how individuals within a culture conceptualize the sense of self. Individuals and their behaviors can be conceptualized as either moving toward the “horizontal-self” spectrum or the “vertical-self” spectrum (S. Ting-Toomey and J. Oetzel, 2001, pp.33-34). In high power distance cultures, people place high value on hierarchy and authority (“vertical-self” spectrum). Representatives of cultures with small power distance, gravitate towards equal treatment and informal interactions (“horizontal-self” spectrum). As a result, in many countries with small power distance children are allowed to express opinions and even contradict their parents. In other countries, where the power distance is large, the focus is on obedience and dissent from children and others is highly discouraged. This type of upbringing can make it difficult for the students to have more casual interactions with faculty and may cause for some international students the need to ‘hide away’ when they experience challenges with their research progress or academics rather than reaching out for help.
As student support staff, we can implement several measures to help close these intercultural gaps. Examples include being more proactive when following up with students, continuing to educate faculty on cultural differences, and creating more conversations with students on the importance and the appropriateness of utilizing resources as a means of being more self-reliant and self-sufficient while studying in the US.
In addition to providing necessary legal and emotional support, the universities can look into their grading and course completion policies for students experiencing emergency circumstances in their home countries. Although a smaller group of students is affected by a crisis, it is still a global crisis that can be treated as such. An international crisis affecting a small group of students, could be processed utilizing our COVID-19 experience, with remote and flexible attendance options, relaxed grading policy, extensions, special passes, and more. Connecting students to counselling services on campus and a community from their home countries is also essential in providing psychological and emotional support.
Fostering Connection and Community
During the interview, our Iranian students made great suggestions and provided confirmations as well. “At the level of the university,” Sahar shared, “having a set of comprehensive instructions for every stage of student life could be a good idea. It would be great to introduce a recreational center for graduate students where we can be together, eat, and study.” “It would help all the students from a country in crisis to communicate with each other more often and get rid of anxiety” Amirreza agreed. He added,
for example, if I know a new application that we can used to connect with our country, I can share with others. What helped me a lot was talking to my friends, so I don’t feel alone in this! If the university can provide a place for the students to build community,
that would be very helpful! It would also be helpful if our faculty advisors understood the advantages and disadvantages of these conditions.
Mahsa agreed and added,
when the Graduate School at our university organized a meeting for Iranian students, they expressed the need for inclusiveness and belonging, and requested -that in the future it would be best to welcome non-Iranian citizens to this conversation by inviting the whole university population. I was a bit surprised that only Iranian students were invited for the event… we all hear about this, we all know what’s going on… It would be good to talk about this altogether, it would be very helpful for everybody to hear our voices!
These students identified different communities as potential sources of support. While other students from their country have a shared experience, there is a broader opportunity for support across the international student community, as well.
Conclusion
To conclude, with the globalization of higher education in the modern fast-changing society, it becomes increasingly important for Student Affairs professionals to stay well-informed on current global events and be sensitive to cultural differences as we develop unique approaches to supporting each student population. How can we become more globally aware? How can we be more intuitive and attentive with our international scholars? The discussion about supporting students from countries in crisis is just beginning, and as we continue to search for the answers, we will strive to create more inclusive environments on campus, to foster students’ connections, and to be there for our students when they need us the most.
Reflection questions:
- What can Student Affairs Professionals do to stay informed on the global events affecting their international students?
- Given cultural differences, how can Student Affairs professionals support students from the countries in crisis?
- How can faculty be made aware of students in their classes affected by a crisis abroad?
- What are other protection statuses for international students? Where can you find this information if needed?
- How can community building help students from the countries in crisis?
References
Kharitonova, I. (Host). (2023, March), Supporting students from the countries in crisis, (Episode 5, Season 7) [Audio podcast episode], In Contemporary College Student Podcast. https://open.spotify.com/episode/6B6kqRtfvnFEgeitD59V6z
Ting-Toomey, S. & Oetzel, J. G. (2001). Managing Intercultural Conflict Effectively. Sage
Slater, M. A. (2022, August). home is where the mind is: Supporting students from countries in crisis. IUP News. Retrieved from: https://www.iup.edu/news-events/news/2022/08/home-is-where-the-mind-is-supporting-students-from-countries-in-crisis.html
United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (n.d.). Temporary protected status, uscis.gov/humanitarian/temporary-protected-status
University of Washington International Student Services (n.d.). Special Student Relief. Retrievedon March 1st, 2023, from https://iss.washington.edu/work/f1-employment/special-student-relief/
About the Author
Irina Kharitonova (she/her) is the Graduate Student Services Coordinator at the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Clemson University. She received her BA in Psychology from Kazakh National University in Almaty, Kazakhstan, her MBA with emphasize on Management and Administration from UIB in Almaty, Kazakhstan, and is currently a doctoral student in Educational Leadership program at Clemson. Prior to joining Clemson, Irina worked as a Student Success Coach at Blackboard in the U.S., and as an Advising Coordinator and Program Manager at KIMEP, an English-speaking North American-style university in Kazakhstan.