The Albany Student Press (ASP) — “Ever since I came here, I just thought I felt a little out of place,” said Jessica Lau, an international student at the university.
“Ever since I came here, I felt unwelcomed and just didn’t have a great experience when I first started my classes last year in the fall. I wished I had a little more help to guide me around.”
Jessica is one of the few students from the international student population who felt unwelcomed and dissatisfied in the university. This is where the solution comes in.
The Solution
The Sociology Department has recently completed focus groups from October to November 2019 on international students at the university to study the perceptions of international students about their life and studies at UAlbany, while also trying to improve or develop new services or programs to make them feel welcome which could improve international students’ experience.
These focus groups are specifically on international students from mainland China, Japan, India, Korea and Taiwan, due to them taking up a big chunk of the international population. According to Dr. Michael Elliott, Director of the International Student and Scholar Services (ISSS), there are about close to 85% of the international student population that comes from Asia.
Dr. Angie Y. Chung, Associate Professor, and Director of the Sociology Honors Program leads this project with help from her team that consists of students from many different departments. She says there will be campus-wide surveys focusing on not just about their experiences in the university, but also how they get accustomed to the new environment specifically for these students following the focus groups which she aims to send the questions out by April 2020 and hopes to complete the data needed by the end of the Spring 2020 semester.
How It All Started
Dr. Chung explained that this wasn’t the first time they did focus groups on international students on campus.
“I first conducted this pilot study in coordination with the Vice Provost for Internationalization [which is now renamed as the CIEGS (Center for International Education and Global Strategy)] back in 2013-2014 as a Provosts Fellow. It was an on-campus study consisting of a campus-wide survey in fall and focus group sessions in spring,” said Dr. Chung.
The first campus-wide surveys was done during Fall 2013 while the first focus groups were done in Spring 2014. In the second round, they have switched both out, which means they’re doing the focus groups first before they do the campus-wide surveys.
For the second round of surveys, they’ll be using the results from the focus groups to tweak their survey questions they did in the last survey. They also plan to expand the questions with topics surrounding the student climate and much more.
The Project’s Aim
Dr. Chung was asked on what she hopes to achieve from this second round of focus groups and surveys, she explained that some of the reasons is because Dr. Elliott wants to learn more about what the international student population wants. “Dr. Elliott has expressed a lot of interest in trying to find a way to engage international students and help them throughout the process of being a student [in UAlbany],” Dr Chung explained. “It was created specifically because Michael Elliot was interested in restructuring the program, we have a concrete goal to hopefully lead something substantive.”
She then mentioned about how they wish to have more engaging and equal activities between domestic and international students. “We want to learn how to engage with international students on an equal way,” Dr. Chung explained. She explains that they wouldn’t want to force these students to assimilate to the culture on campus, but more of a ‘two-way relationship’ between domestic and international students is what they’re aiming for.
Dr. Chung also expressed that they want to figure out why these students are not coming to all the events ISSS offers and figure out what they would be interested in doing. “We should do the research before we actually try to redesign the programs.”
Dr. Chung also realized how the climate for international students has changed drastically these past few years. “It’s not a very friendly climate, and not just those who are coming but also those who are here,” said Dr. Chung. “I wanted to kind of comparatively see if there’s been any changes from then to now where the climate is at its peak.”
She has expressed interest to further explore the gender family dynamics in Asian students. She wants to see what leads them to the decision to come to the U.S. from a gender family perspective like their roles in the family, the policies, and how they view women and men’s roles.
She also quickly noted that she has always thought of the differences in academic preparation before international students come to the U.S.
Previous Results From The First Round
In the first round, she said that they had found interesting results. “People just go into another country to study and learn everything from [different] cultures to languages,” said Dr. Chung.
She notes about how eye-opening the students do to prepare to study in the United States. “They prepare very differently academically, so some people focus on private tutoring, others do other cultural participation and much more.” Other examples she gave that typically international students go for according to her previous focus groups are Model UN, penpals, studying abroad and much more.
She was also intrigued over their views of what globalization means to them and what they plan to do with it in the future. “[All of students from the focus groups] were also very different depending on the country they came from,” explained Dr. Chung. She gave examples of students from Korea and mainland China:
“[For Koreans, they’re] using it to give them a kind of edge and being able to navigate the job market better in Korea and anywhere else around the world. For Chinese students, they want cultural exposure and really learn about people and how things work differently.”
What Happens Next?
Since they’re done with the second round focus groups, they will be meeting to discuss the results by next week and by then, they will start designing their campus-wide survey questions which will be based on the results from the focus groups.
Once they’re done with the surveys and the project as a whole, Dr. Chung plans to use these results as a “stepping stone” for a larger project in the future. “It’s part of my research agenda for the future. I want to know the data first before pursuing anything.”
She has a few ideas on what she can do with the results, she has expressed interest in doing a comparative project across universities. She also mentioned she could do a transnational study between Korea and the U.S.
“That’s what these surveys are for, just to get a sense of what I’m looking for,” Dr. Chung expressed.
Jessica is already a year at the university and is currently a senior, in hopes to graduate by May 2020. She was asked again how she is doing today, she said, “I’m fine. I’ve found people who I befriended. Slowly, I’ve gained more friends and got used to the culture here at the university.”
“I sometimes have my bad days, but I’ve gotten comfortable. Slowly, but surely.”
If you would like to know more or help in this study, do contact Dr. Angie Y. Chung at aychung@albany.edu. If you’re an international student from mainland China, India, Korea, Japan or Taiwan, do look out for the campus-wide survey which is releasing in this coming April 2020!
This piece was also written for AJRL201Z Reporting and News Writing II class of Fall 2019.
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