Happy Tuesday and welcome to another episode of Grad Pod!
Navigating a new country, culture, and academic system is not an easy thing to do, especially for international students embarking on their graduate education journey. For many, it’s not just about adjusting to a different culture; it’s about understanding a new academic framework, balancing visa regulations, and building meaningful relationships in a completely unfamiliar environment. These challenges, while often overwhelming, can also be transformative.
In this episode, we are joined by Kelly Richard, a Global Learning Specialist at VCU, to explore the struggles that international students face in their journeys, the importance of fostering supportive and inclusive environments, and how universities can provide the resources necessary for these students to thrive. We also dive into what makes international student journeys complex and how VCU, as a community, can create a more welcoming and empowering environment!
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
HAYA: Trying to assimilate into a new life, navigate cultural adjustments, and understand how the academic system works in a new country can be a very complex process. This is especially true for our international students. It's not just about adjusting to a new culture, but also navigating a different academic system, which can feel, again, very overwhelming.
The U. S. education system, with its emphasis on independence, critical thinking, and self directed learning, can be very different from what many international students are used to. The complex administrative side, visa requirements, paperwork, and legal regulations, again, all of this adds an extra layer of stress.
Yet many international students embark on this journey. They take on the challenge and pave the way for others. Cultural adjustments such as understanding new social norms and building new relationships can also be isolating, and many international students may find themselves balancing three worlds, their home country, the new one they're trying to adapt to, and their academic world.
In this episode, we are highlighting the international student experience. I'm your host Haya Hamid, and today we are talking about all of the resources that exist here at VCU to service our international students. As you may know, VCU is home to over 1, 200 international students from 101 countries. By fostering an environment that understands and supports their unique needs, we can help ease their transition and empower the next generation of international students.
Fortunately, VCU has a dedicated team offering specialized services and engagement opportunities to our international student community. The Global Education Office, commonly referred to as GEO, promotes programs that prepare Americans for a global environment and attract future leaders from abroad to study, learn, and exchange experiences.
Today, I am joined by Kelly Richard, a global learning specialist. In her role, she directly works with international students. Kelly and team play a crucial role in advocating for international students as well being by providing opportunities for social, cultural, and academic programming to foster a sense of belonging and an inclusive culture.
Welcome to the grad pod, Kelly!
KELLY: Thank you. Very happy to be here.
HAYA: All right. Tell us a little bit about your role and how you got into this role.
KELLY: Sure. So, as you mentioned, the Global Education Office is sort of a larger department that has a couple of different focuses. In our office, we look at study abroad opportunities for domestic and international students, which mainly encompasses sending students abroad for different learning opportunities, whether that's one week, two weeks, a semester, or a year.
So we do all of the study abroad pieces, but we also, ensure that the international student population at VCU is set up for success, whether that means through academic programming, social programming, and all of the additional pieces that come with living in a new country, specifically in Richmond, Virginia, which has its pros and cons, depending on how you're looking at different situations.
Living in a city can be both really exciting and wonderful, and can also mean that things like finding housing are difficult. So, our job is to ensure that international students are given all of the resources and support that they need in order to be successful in their studies to eventually achieve whatever goal they've set out to achieve for themselves career wise.
HAYA: Awesome. I mentioned earlier just a very brief list of challenges that our international students face, and they were very blanket challenges, but could you tell us more specifically what unique challenges international students face in navigating cultural differences within the academic environment? And maybe also outside of the academic environment.
KELLY: Sure! Before I jump into challenges, I think it's important to sort of mention who are international students because our office specifically serves students that are on a student visa. And what that means is an F1 or J1 visa, so those are the two main visa types that we serve, but VCU is lucky enough to be an incredibly diverse student community.
We have so many wonderful students that are bringing a wealth of background and expertise to our university.And, many of our students might have an international background. But may not be coded or, you know, categorized in our university system as an international student. It also causes some complications and challenges when we're designing services for students because we are mainly focusing on visa holders, which isn't the experience that all students that have an international background at VCU possess.
You asked about cultural backgrounds or cultural differences in the classroom. Is that correct?
HAYA: Yes!
KELLY: So the American education system, the higher education system is complicated, right? It's expensive. It has a lot of sort of focus on collaboration, but a very specific type of collaboration. We're talking about, you know, students that are trying to get a PhD degree or a graduate degree.
And there's a lot of research that often goes into that. There's a lot of projects that go into that, which is collaborative by nature. However, the American higher education system is also very stringent on how we give credit, right? So we have very specific rules about citations. We have very specific rules about ensuring that we give credit where credit is due.
And that can be very challenging for students that come from an academic background that is different. A lot of our international students have indicated to us that this is challenging because the rules are fluid, which can be difficult to sort of navigate and understand, right? A professor might assign a group project and say, here is the assignment, you're going to work together, and this assignment you are meant to collaborate with your peers.
But that's not the case for every assignment, right? And so understanding and navigating the nuances of when is it okay and acceptable and even encouraged for me to work with others versus when is it not, can be very difficult for students.. We also have found that participation is a very cultural concept, right?
Participation can be a big part of classroom expectations and can be something that students are graded for. However, participation looks different depending on where you're from. What class you're in, what field you're in, right? And so sometimes participation doesn't encompass all of the different ways in which a student can interact with a class.
So when a professor says, I expect you to participate, that could look like raising your hand every class. That could mean that you're participating in the group activity. But for some students, they may interpret that as, I need to do every assignment by the due date. I need to make sure I'm communicating with my professor via email regularly.
And so having explicit instructions for students on what is participation and how is that expected to be performed in this class is something that we also encourage all faculty members to consider.
HAYA: Awesome! Well, thank you for clarifying who is classified as an international student. I think that's very clarifying for many of us who might have not known.
And also speaking more about, you know, what the nuances are in the classroom and how that translates in terms of collaboration, completing assignments, and even, you know, communicating with our professors, which for a lot of us as domestic students are things that we don't really consider.
And so this brings me to our next question, which is about community building and again, surrounding our international students with people who want to help, who want to mitigate the challenges along the way.
So can you tell us about how important it is building a community for international students and what are some effective ways to encourage networking? What steps can we as current graduate students take to create a more inclusive environment for our international peers?
KELLY: Sure, I am biased when I say this, and I recognize that. I think that community is one of the most, if not the most important aspect of an academic experience.
Working with others, being able to feel connected, feel like you belong in a specific academic sphere or a academic environment is paramount to success, right? We see this in student data. We see this in anecdotal evidence from our students.
Being able to be connected with others means that your educational experience is not just about what's on paper, it's also about the experiences that you're having, which comes full circle, right? We think about this idea of a holistic student experience, and that's something that's thrown around in higher education all the time.
But it's true that in order to do well in your classes, you also need to have something that you're coming back to after you've done all of that mental work to work on your research or work on your thesis, to be able to have a group of people that you can go back to and feel safe and feel like you can rest and recharge and who understand you and want to know you, uh, is incredibly important.
So there are a couple of different ways that we encourage our students to get involved. The first is through any of the various wonderful, super awesome organizations that are available at our university. So, VCU is so lucky that we have so many student orgs that are doing such cool projects and are interested in various different topics.
We have many students who do get involved in different student organizations, often affinity groups. So the Bangladeshi Student Association, for example, is super popular and does a lot of awesome, cool projects and events. We also have our own student organization that the Global Education Office sponsors called GIA, which stands for the Global Intercultural Association, that we hope is a great place for students to meet each other across cultural backgrounds and sort of share in their communal experiences of wanting to explore international communities and spaces.
This is an organization that is meant to be for both international students and domestic students that are interested in international conversations.
Other ways that students can get involved on campus would be, our office organizes a Global Buddies program, which I am still struggling to find a good way to explain this to people other than to say, it is almost like, matching students for friendship, right? Similar to, like, an app might be..
HAYA: Like a pen pal?
KELLY:Yeah, it's like a pen pal, but in person, right! So, uh, we have domestic students that sign up every semester and international students that sign up every semester. Uh, and we try to match students one on one based on interest, age. Interest in learning a new language, for example, might be something that we utilize to help match students.
We try to match based on how often students want to meet, what their hobbies are, etc. And, we've had great success with that program. A lot of our international students are able to make connections with domestic students because of that program. And our domestic students are able to have a little bit of a global experience locally here in Richmond, which is really cool.
Especially for our students who are interested in studying abroad.
HAYA: And how might our listeners join in on that and how are they able to participate in the Global Buddies program?
KELLY: Yeah, it's a great question. We have information on our website about the Global Buddies program. So you can always just Google or Yahoo or whatever you do.
The VCU Global Buddies program should pop up. We do a sort of call to all VCU community students, uh, every semester. So it's a semesterly program. We try to sort of cut off making new matches about halfway through the semester, uh, and then we'll re up the next semester. So currently, we have about 84 matches that are currently meeting.
HAYA: Wow!
KELLY: Yeah, it's a, it's a great program. We have 84 different matches that are currently meeting, which is great. And hopefully we'll have the same number or more in the spring semester.
HAYA: Cool stuff. Yeah. Yeah. So you already mentioned some of the specific organizations like Affinity Groups and organization, the organization that is sponsored by GEO. Are there any specific organizations or groups or initiatives that we should be aware of or prospective international students should be aware of?
KELLY: Yeah, a really good way I would recommend to shop around for student organizations would be to go to the SOVO Fair, which happens every semester. I don't remember what the acronym specifically stands for.
I think it's Student Organization and Volunteering Opportunities, maybe? Yes.
HAYA: You ate!
KELLY: Yeah. Okay, great. So that might be it. But Sovo Fair is a great opportunity for students to shop around, kind of pick out what they might be interested in. I know some of our students are also very interested in joining religious communities here at VCU, and there's a lot of great opportunity to do that, that they can learn about at the Sovo Fair, but also they can always reach out to our office and ask about specific opportunities if there is a religious community they're looking for.
We're happy to sort of share what religious communities are in the near vicinity to VCU. I also would highly recommend students come to our global cafes, which we do every month. So that's something that our office sponsors and we work with student organizations to put on these global cafes, which means that we pay for the food, the students in the organization.
Cook and host and they do an activity and it's meant to be an opportunity for domestic and international students to come together and learn about a specific regional culture. But it's also a great way for students to sort of test out and say, Oh, I'm interested in joining the student organization.
Maybe I can go to this low stakes free meal, talk to some people, see if this might be of interest to me. And it's a great opportunity for student orgs to also sort of advertise their. their organization to the rest of the community.
HAYA Yeah, and capture a diverse array of
KELLY:Exactly.
HAYA: Potential new members. Yes.
KELLY:Exactly.
HAYA: Going back to our discussion about supporting international students, I'm wondering how we as domestic staff and current graduate students, how can we be more mindful of the stressors that international students face? And are there any upcoming initiatives or changes to support international students that you're excited about? Maybe something that we should be out on the look for?
KELLY: Yeah, that's a great question. Something that I think the greater VCU community may not be aware of about the international student experience is that many of the stressors and difficulties that international students are facing are the same as domestic students.
We tend to have the same survey results come in every semester when we talk to our international students about their experiences and what their concerns are. The most common concerns for our students tend to be community building. Financial concerns and academic success, which I would argue is probably the same for most VCU students and most higher education students.
HAYA: Absolutely. We are much more similar than different..
KELLY: Absolutely, The difficulty comes in when we think about how international students are able to navigate those obstacles and difficulties. So, something that I don't think a lot of people realize is that international students have a much harder time finding housing because they don't have a social security number, therefore they don't have credit, right?
And that's something that can be really difficult to navigate before you've even entered the country is thinking, where am I going to live? Many of our students are bringing their families with them. Many of them are bringing their young children, their dependents. And that can be very financially stressful because on, for example, an F 1 visa, international students are not able to work more than 20 hours a week, which is really difficult for a student who is studying full time, also supporting perhaps a child or a spouse.
And if a student has brought their spouse with them as a dependent, that dependent is not allowed to work. So it's incredibly financially stressful for an international student to be here with their family.
HAYA: Yeah, I had no idea. Yeah, that must be a lot to, you know, navigate.
KELLY: Yeah, it's, it's very difficult.
And, our students that make it work are rock stars! What I will say is that we at our office are aware of these issues, but it's helpful for others to know as well. Another obstacle that, you know, a lot of students that are from an international background might be facing is that a lot of our students are second language English speakers, right?
They might have a first or second or third first language or a couple of first languages, and now they're speaking in English all day, every day, and that can be very emotionally and mentally taxing on top of the fact that English is not the same everywhere in the world, right? We have different nuanced ways of speaking in English here in the United States.
This has been something that I've had to sort of laugh at throughout my whole career. Students might email something that I think, okay, great, I have a perfect response to this. Let me send you my response. And then there's like a word that through the whole conversation often we have to backtrack and figure it out.
Also, tone can be very different internationally. I know that because of my personal identity, I use a lot of exclamation points, and that can indicate excitement or friendliness in my mind. To other students, it might indicate frustration or anger. So thinking about how we're talking with international students and leaving space for nuance of how English works and how we're utilizing it is really important.
You asked what other members of the community can sort of do and know to help international students.
HAYA: Yeah, absolutely.
KELLY: Something that we would advise is joining one of our programs, coming out and meeting our students, talking with us, learning more about who the international students at VCU are and what their concerns are from them.
That's something that I think is really important is ensuring that the information that we are sharing with the larger community is authentic to the true experiences of the international students that we're serving. And the very best way that we can do that is to talk to the students directly and have them be the advocates for themselves for what change they would like to see.
So, in order to do this, we do have an international student advisory board that meets with us regularly once a month to sort of advise us on what our office is offering in terms of resources and social programming. Our website and calendar always have listed events available for the community to engage in.
We would love for other faculty and staff to go through our global zone training,
HAYA: which I did!
KELLY: And I think it's great. I am biased because I'm one of the people that lead it, but it's a great training are we have three goals for the training.
It's a one hour training and we have three goals. The first is to share more about who the international students at VCU are.
The second is to talk a little bit about some basic cultural theory. I'm a big cultural theory nerd, so I try not to go ad nauseum about all of the different things, but it's hard. It's very interesting.
And, then the third sort of goal we have is to share resources and some best tips and tricks and strategies for how we can ensure that international students are being supported in the classroom.
For anyone that's a teacher, you might know the phrase universal design. So that's something that we talk about a little bit in our training, but that's sort of what we sort of aim towards is the idea of how can we make sure that academic experiences are universally accessible and universally setting students up for success.
HAYA: Yeah. And I will say as someone who completed this training and as someone with a little bit of international experience, it really opened my mind about the challenges that are very unique to international students. Yes, again, some of them, you know, still apply to domestic students, but being mindful about tone.
You know, word choices, language in the classroom or in regards to academic settings was something that, you know, I didn't really think about much. And getting to speak with the people who directly assist international students was also helpful to, you know, sort of make a connection so that if somebody did need your assistance, I could direct them to the right person.
We're talking about global zone training. Any other opportunities for students?
KELLY: For international students specifically?
HAYA: Is the global zone training only available for staff and faculty or can other people also participate?
KELLY: Yeah, it's a great question and it gives me an opportunity to kind of share a little bit of what our office is working on as we head towards the future.
Currently, our global zone training is specifically catered to faculty and staff of VCU. However, we pretty quickly realized that this training and this information should be something that is also accessible to domestic students. And so that's something that we're currently working on is figuring out ways in which we can adapt our current teachings through the Global Zone Training for a student population, specifically a domestic student population.
We're also playing around with the idea of having a sort of “welcome to VCU, welcome to American higher education” training or course for international students as well. We have a couple of different resources available for students for this purpose. Currently, we have a canvas course. We have several opportunities for students to come to webinars before they arrive.
We of course do an international student orientation. However, having a dedicated space to talk about the cultural nuance of American higher education, we thought might be something that would be relevant and interesting to international students. So it's coming down the line. We're hopeful that sometime in the next year or so, we'll be able to offer a global zone training that is specifically for students and domestic students being our target population and audience so that we can ensure that not only are students being supported and integrated into a classroom community by their professors, but also by their peers.
And I think that we're lucky that the VCU student community is so welcoming and so wonderful. I think that knowledge is power and just sharing some information about what the international student experience looks like is probably all it would really take to, to help students recognize what those challenges might be and be willing to be more accommodating and more welcoming to students, uh, since that's already sort of the VCU student intention, I think.
HAYA: Yeah, absolutely. I think including, you know, our domestic students is only going to uplift this experience and they're going to, you know, continue supporting international students in ways they haven't been able to before because maybe they weren't aware and now they know more because knowledge is power and I believe this will be great, not just for the international student community, but as an international hub.
So what advice would you give to international students just starting out on their graduate journey?
KELLY: Yeah, that's a tough question because there are so many pieces of advice I would like to give but the greatest advice I can share if I have to boil it down to sort of one point would be not everything has to be done in a day.
Our international students are, as I said previously, rock stars! They're coming in, they're excited, they have very impressive goals, they have very impressive drive, but not everything has to be done in one day. We often have our students burn out quickly because they're trying to accomplish everything in the first week, the first semester, the first year.
Our office is here to help, but prioritization is really important. If you're thinking about, I need to get good grades, and I have to get my kid set up in a public school, and I have to worry about health insurance, which your health insurance may look very different in your home country. If you're thinking about, I need to make sure I meet my professors, I need to start thinking about a graduate assistant position, I need to think about housing, it's a lot of stuff to, to sort of consider.
And all of it is important. And so thinking about how can I prioritize what has to happen today? Is a really helpful way to sort of break that whole journey down into bite sized pieces so it doesn't become overwhelming. There are certain things that have to happen before other things, right? Housing has to happen before you move to Richmond, right?
Getting a graduate assistant position might have to happen before you're able to start working on your dissertation. But something like joining a student organization, that can happen next week, right? Thinking about, oh, I need to email my professors to introduce myself to them. That doesn't have to happen until classes are about to start, right?
So thinking about how can I prioritize and sort of break down all of the things I need to do to reach my goals down into bite sized pieces can really help reduce burnout. Yeah, that would probably be my biggest piece of advice.
HAYA: Yeah, and that's applicable to everybody really, right? We can all take it one day at a time and, you know, learn from our international students.
KELLY: Yeah
HAYA: Yeah. All right. Last but not least, could you please tell us where we can find your office and how we can connect with you virtually?
KELLY: Absolutely. Please connect with me. We'd love to help in any way that I can, whether you are a domestic student, an international student, a faculty member, staff member, our office would love to meet with you.
We are located on Grace Street, right next to the Insomnia Cookies in Grace Street Center. Um, we're on the fourth floor of that building. If you have trouble finding it, which many people do because it's a little bit tucked away, what I would recommend is to email us. I check the global inbox every single day and that inbox is global, global@vcu.edu G L O B A L at VCU dot EDU. We check that every single day and we sort of use that as a place to collect all information. About international student questions or concerns, et cetera. And then we take that email and we figure out who needs to respond to it. So that's a really good sort of One stop shop in terms of emailing.
You can also find us on social media. We post all the time on Instagram. Our office is always doing funky, cool stuff. So the Instagram handle is @VCU global. So we hope you'll follow us and see a little bit of more of what our office is doing. Awesome. Thank you, Kelly. And thank you for representing GEO today.
HAYA: As we wrap up this episode, it's clear that the international student experience is both challenging and rewarding, shaped by cultural adjustments, new expectations, and a need for a strong support system. Support systems like the Global Education Office play a crucial role, but small acts of kindness, mentorship, friendship, or simply offering guidance can make a significant impact.
To our international students, your journey matters. You're not alone in your struggle, and in any case, we all struggle just in different ways. Keep pushing forward, seek support when needed, and embrace the opportunities ahead. And to the broader graduate community, let's continue building a space where all students, regardless of background, feel seen, heard, and supported.
Thank you for tuning in to The Grad Pod. Stay connected for more conversations that matter.
Grad Pod is produced by VCU's Graduate School. Haya Hamid is our host. Our producer and editor is Grace Albritton. Our theme music was composed Performed and recorded by Austin Sellick and Claudia Andrade, students of Felipe Letao, assistant professor of composition and sound design at VCU School of the Arts.
Do you have a question for us? Email us at gradschool@vcu.edu and we may answer your question on an episode.
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