Early this semester, the University’s international advising team introduced a newsletter, podcast and series of workshops to further support international students on campus. International students comprise 14% of the admitted class of 2027, a 3% increase from the previous year, according to a Jan. 25 press release.
“Our philosophy is that students are the experts on themselves and that they benefit the most when our communication — from how we advise to how we share news – reflects their feedback and experiences,” the advising team wrote in an email to The Herald. The team includes Associate Dean of the College for International Students Chia-Ying Pan, International Student Program Manager Emily Collins Garcia and International Student Academic Advisor Jason Serrano, who collaborated on the statement.
On Jan. 24, the team released the first in a series of bi-weekly newsletters that include tips from international student advising, community member highlights, updates from the Office of International Student and Scholar Services and an advice column written by Associate Director for English Language Support Anne Kerkian that focused on reaching out to professors.
Future newsletters will also feature stories of “staff and students within our global network,” according to the advising team’s statement to The Herald.
The newsletter, along with the team’s other initiatives, began in response to focus groups held in spring 2023. “Students told us that they really valued hearing about highlights of other international identifying individuals’ journeys at Brown,” the statement said.
The international advising team also piloted a podcast, Worldview Wavelengths, on Feb. 1, according to the newsletter. The podcast welcomes one staff member and one international student each episode.
The team also recently began offering workshops for new students and soon-to-be-graduates focused on choosing a concentration, personal finances and Curricular Practical Training, which allows F-1 visa holders to obtain temporary employment in the United States as long as it pertains to a student’s area of study. The first workshop was held on Jan. 31, with a focus on post-graduate financial planning.
“The information that (Dean Pan) has is very valuable,” Abdulla Aldhaheri ’24, who is from the United Arab Emirates, said, adding that he highly encouraged attending the workshops.
“We hope to foster a space for reflective conversations on how cultural values, family conversations and financial literacy all have an impact on our relationship with money,” the team wrote in the statement. They also hope to focus on “how unspoken norms in and outside the classroom may affect how students navigate their academic experience.”
When Aldhaheri arrived at Brown in the spring of 2021, he would log into online classes from home in the United Arab Emirates. There, school would start at 4 p.m. and end at 3 a.m. The only interaction Aldhaheri had with Brown that semester was attending virtual class and submitting assignments.
“When I came here, I was lost. I didn’t know what I needed to do and I didn’t know what I was expected to do,” Aldhaheri said. But as he grew more comfortable with the college community, he was able to share the answers he learned from Pan and the international advising team with his peers.
“I was able to be a resource for a lot of international students,” Aldhaheri said.
“The Office of International Students played a massive role in me getting to know Brown and actually enjoying my time here,” Aldhaheri said. After four years, he realized “everyone feels the same way, it takes time to get used to it and there are a lot of people that are willing to help.”
Hadley Carr is a senior staff writer at The Herald.
