Designing Success: Supporting International Students - Adventures in Advising

🎒🌍 What happens when international student success meets academic advising, data, and a whole lot of heart?

In this episode of Adventures in Advising, Matt and Ryan are joined by Dr. Ling LeBeau and Dr. Steven Schaffling from Syracuse University to unpack an award-winning framework that’s redefining how institutions support international students from day one to year one and beyond.

Together, they explore how intentional onboarding, structured peer mentoring, advisor training, and proactive communication helped boost retention to 91.5%, the highest in a decade. Along the way, they dig into what it really takes to build community across cultures, support students during global uncertainty, and design advising models in higher education.

Expect thoughtful insights, honest reflections, practical takeaways, and a behind-the-scenes look at how one bold idea grew into a nationally recognized model. Whether you work in advising, international education, student success, or leadership, this episode is packed with inspiration you can adapt to your own campus.

🎧 Press play for data, dialogue, and a reminder that student success is always better when it’s built together.

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Transcript

Matt Markin  
Matt. Well, hello and welcome back to the Adventures in Advising podcast. At the publishing of this episode, we are a few weeks into 2026 Matt and Ryan, here, we hope that the new year has been kind thus far. Ryan, how are you?

Ryan Scheckel  
I'm still trying to wrap my head around the 2026. Isn't some fictional year. It always seems strange when we get to that stage of the the numbering where you're like, I don't even think that's right.

Matt Markin  
Oh yeah, that's true. But hey, it's 2026 another episode of the podcast, another great episode, I think. And we have two amazing guests today, one of which I briefly met at the NACADA annual conference in Las Vegas, and Ryan, when I tell you brief, it was very brief. I had just finished co facilitating a panel with Cheri Souza, and I had a concurrent session right after so here I am gathering my things and then talking to our soon to be guests that we're going to bring on. And we got to chatting about international students and their success and challenges. And then as we're talking, the panelists were like, Let's also do a group photo. And so I'm like, I'm so sorry. I gotta go. Can you email me or send me a message to the app or on LinkedIn so we can talk more? And then as I'm running to like, the my session, I'm thinking like, man, hopefully she doesn't think that, you know, here's this jerk that's just like, you know, blew me off. And like, goes off the you know, leaves.

Ryan Scheckel  
Well, if anybody knows you, Matt, they know that's not the case. And you know, we certainly feel the pressure of all the ways that people can get a hold of us, but these are definitely those places where it's great that we can reconnect and and get to have more meaningful and longer conversations, for sure.

Matt Markin  
Yeah, absolutely. So let's bring on our two guests today, and those are two guests from Syracuse University. So first up is Dr. Ling LeBeau, Director of International Student Success, and Dr. Steven Schaffling, Assistant Dean for Student Success in the College of Arts and Sciences and Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. So Ling and Steven, welcome.

Steven Schaffling  
Welcome. Hi, Matt, thanks for having us.

Ling LeBeau  
Hi. Thank you so much. So it's honored to be here.

Matt Markin  
Yes, and we're great that both of you are here to talk about this wonderful topic, and I'm going to turn it over to Ryan.

Ryan Scheckel  
So one of our favorite things with our guests is to hear their their origin stories, as it were, their journeys into and through higher education and to the point that they're at now. So So Ling, if you could tell us a little bit about your higher ed experience. What was it like starting out and getting to where you are at Syracuse Now, sure.

Ling LeBeau  
So my entire life actually is in higher ed, so that's only career. So I've ever been and I was actually a faculty in the Chinese University for 12 years before coming to the US to pursue my PhD in higher education at Indiana University of Bloomington. So I've been this country for over 20 years, and then Syracuse is the fourth institution I work at my career focused on international higher education, actually have done many roles and different sections sectors of international higher education. For example, International Admissions, international students, scholar services, study abroad, international partnerships in the foreign language development, foreign language teaching, all those things. And Syracuse, so I've been here for will be six years, exactly next month, and then this is the first I've been here for six years. It's the first time actually, I got to explore the academic advising in depth. So I am really fortunate I have this opportunity because now I see the overlapping of International Education, academic advising. I found lots of interesting topics areas here.

Ryan Scheckel  
Sure and Steven, how did you get to where you are now?

Steven Schaffling  
Sure, Ryan, you made me think about something like that I haven't thought about in a really long time, which was like, how I got to this like, so I honestly, I was, I had finished undergrad and then with a degree in psychology, and came to a realization that I wanted to do something in education, right? I enrolled in a master's program straight out, and I was a full time master's student for a year, and then I saw this academic advisor post, and I went that that's it. That's fine, like the ability to work one on one with students like this, sort of, this cross between education, counseling and and the setting. And I find that, I find that, you know. 20 years later, as Link puts it, I find that a lot of people come from sort of these two directions, like either psychology and counseling or education over here, right? So I find that it's similar. I got to the point where I was the Director of University Advising for Drexel, and then, and then I was recruited by Syracuse University for the position that I currently hold, and so in this role, I oversee an office, an undergraduate office of student success, that have 35 professional staff members that support about 5200 undergraduate liberal arts and sciences students at Syracuse University. 

Matt Markin  
So a lot, lot going on, lot that you're responsible for. And I guess Steve and I'm going to throw this one to you, because, you know, of course, this particular episode, we're talking about international students, but the position that Ling is in is from Ryan understands one that you actually created. So I was wondering if you could talk more about how that came about and the importance of it?

Steven Schaffling  
Sure, sure. I think that the the genesis of Ling's position comes first from the perspective of of the larger setup of the Office of Student Success for for arts and sciences students here at Syracuse University, where I was tasked to create this integrated model where you know your academic advisor here is also your career advisor. It's one a single assigned person. And sort of that ethos, we took that and started to expand. And one of the first places where we expanded the concept of integrating Student Success supports in the office was international students. And where that came from is that in my history at my prior institution and at Syracuse International, students tend to retain by the federal definition, from year one to year two, at a lower rate than the average for the institution. And my dean here came to me and I said, Well, she said, What can we do about this? And I said, Well, this was the same story at my my prior institution. But one of the things that we discovered in the data was that by building a regression model that assigns, sort of an attrition value for for every single student, one of the things we found was that international students, if they make it through the first term, they actually then beat the model. And so then came the concept for links position, and to embed the position within this what you would commonly refer to as an academic advising office and and the design for links position was sort of two parts. Part one was to design high impact programming that was student facing for students, international students, essentially from onboarding like matriculation through the end of first year. And that's half of the work, and probably half of the work we'll talk about today. And then the other half, though, is the concept of professional development and and growth and competency for advisors. So like particularly, that's the orientation of Ling's role. Ling does not have a caseload of students. She doesn't carry a caseload of students. That would be, there's a lot of models out there where you say, Oh, I have an advisor that's just strictly assigned to my international students. Ling's role is a little bit different from that. And so that was the design presented. Presented it to the dean. The dean said, Go do it. Essentially, get it done, Steve and Ling, luckily enough, applied. I don't know what Ling 60 days before the pandemic hit, and I don't go slow, you know. 25 days after that, I hired her, and so she was here 15 days before the world shut down, more or less well.

Ryan Scheckel  
And not only did the world shut down, but he kept working at it, you know. And I think that's the results sort of speak for themselves in a lot of ways, and we'll certainly talk about the way that this approach has been recognized. But Ling, I'm curious what was your experience on the other side of that? What was it about the position and the opportunity that you were specifically drawn to? How did it align with your sort of professional and personal values.

Ling LeBeau  
Yes, actually, before I saw this job post in my career as international educator, I noticed this issue. I say, when we serve international students, of course, we focus on the immigration, visa paper work, English language, social belongings, everything. But how do students learn how to students pursue their career? Because, because, ultimately, the career outcome is, is, is the what international students want, because they pay so much tuition to come to this country. Can they find a job? Can they go to high end graduate program? We did not have much guidance or resources there for students. I realized that, what's the problem? So the why? Saw the job posting, I said, Wow, this is very different. This is new. This is what I thought, exactly, and so therefore. And then I applied to the position. Unfortunately, worked out. And then, basically, then Steve and I, we started from scratch. And then there were, there was no model existing, not much literature. And then so Steve and I both, we googled it, and we found a couple universities, some initiatives, some projects, pretty much, that's it. So then we started from scratch. And at the beginning, I did lots of talk. I talked to students, talk to advisors, talk to campus administrators, you know, to identify the needs and the gap, and then while exploring. So I started some programs already. So I started like the weekly gatherings, the weekly forum and for students get together to learn, you know, and then then soon after that, and then, you know, pandemic hit, and then we just move everything online. So was very tough the first year, but, but the first year, and then, while handling, you know, our international students. They cannot come to the US. They have to study abroad. I mean, study in their home country, all those crazy things the same time. I also need to cultivate, you know, the relationship and also the just continue to move on. I think that the first year was really tough, but now reflect back, was very rewarding, because gave us chance to know, to learn our students needs and families needs more.

Steven Schaffling  
Fall 20 was really hard for international students talking about stating the obvious, but it was.

Matt Markin  
And, you know, moving into this next part, I mean, we're probably going to spend a little bit to spend a little bit of time on this, and that is not just the International Student Success framework, but but the award winning international student success framework that you all have achieved. And maybe kind of start, you know, with Ling and Steven, please jump into maybe, kind of creating the foundation of how this came about, the components of it. And then we'll probably dive more into it.

Ling LeBeau  
Yeah, absolutely, as Steve mentioned, that my job actually, literally has two parts. One part working with the students, another part work with advisors. So because this is not just like students and students that you need to learn how to do this. Do that also, we need to make sure advisors learn the strategies, how to work with the students so and then the first year, and then while developing So, first of all, it needs analysis. Needs to know what advisors need, what students need, and then develop programs. And then, starting in Fall 2020, yeah. So, and then I started our annual survey, survey on international students, survey on advisors, and then survey on our peer mentors. So based on the needs analysis, and every year, then we modify the programs, initiatives we offer. And then so quite a few initiatives we created, for example, the onboarding, academic training. And so it's basically we start to work with students from mid May to before they come to Syracuse the entire three months. And then we have a nine the blackboard, asynchronous course for them, non credit, different modules for students to learn those basic concepts of US higher education, for example, what is advising? Who is an advisor? Because advising is very it's a US centric. Many countries, they don't have a quote quote advisor. They have something different. You have to make sure students understand those pieces and what is Provost, I mean, what is pro What does Provost do? You know, all those things and university systems. So basically, we we start with our onboarding program, onboarding. We have an Blackboard, asynchronous course. Then we have our weekly every week, one hour a week. We have our virtual academic training. We invite student leaders, invite advisor, invite professors to share those concepts, those basic foundational knowledge of higher ed with our students. And then the summer, or so, we have our peer mentor. Peer Mentor, they one mentor works with five or six new students. Every single new student has a peer mentor. So they can ask the peer anything they have in their mind, housing, travel, anything in their mind. So that's one big piece at onboarding. So. Pre arrival, academic training, and then. So that's one pillar we think that's so important. And through our the assessment, the data collection, we have very positive results. That part definitely we continue to keep. And another piece is our the big, big part, peer mentoring. Peer mentoring, our student mentor and peer mentoring is a very structured, academic career focused program. It's not just like social Hangout, you know, those things. So mentor. Each mentor starts to work with students from May to December, at end of the first semester. So before students come to campus, it was like informal, you know, checking every week. But one students on campus, they meet on a weekly basis. I have a syllabus for each mentor to carry on, and then, of course, they have the  to just content those things we do hold our mentor also accountable also, actually, it's another way for mentors girls that as well, because they're students themselves, and so they grow tremendously. You know, through this experience, I actually asked them to reflect, write, reflection, journal, assessment, those things. Peer Mentoring is our number two pillar number three is the our advisor training. So we have constant advisor training every year, and then from, let's say so the the top three countries education system, for example, like in China, in India, what is higher why? What is the education system is like? Because sometimes our advisor, when they meet with students listed from China, they can, they are puzzle. They say, Why does Chinese students always act a certain way, why they ask the same questions? So I train them, show some videos, and I think lots of advisors the first time saw that they were shocked. That is, they all never knew that possible, you know. And then so and another training will be like, for example, the correlation between students English language proficiency and a course with course selection. So students, if the English proficiency at a certain level, if it's lower level, do not advise them to take high end, you know, the English language heavy classes, for example, like philosophy history, do not do that, you know. So that's another type of training, of course, and train them regularly on the international students, CPT, OPT, you know, the employment authorization. Why students need this? You know, things like that. That's our number three, pillar, advisor training. Number four, we have academic intervention so, and as Steve mentioned, I don't have caseload, however, whenever students so their issues, for example, academic probation or suspension, usually I collaborate with advisor as partners. So we partner together, we work, we help the students. And also for high achieving students, some high achieving students, they say, on in the you know, I feel like I don't have anything else I can do here. So I, you know, to help students find research resources and career, you know, opportunities, those things. That's academic intervention. And then the last but not least, is communication. Communication is the key, especially for students, you know, come from different countries, and, you know, educating different culture and the background. So here students, international students do not like emails. And, I mean, of course, American students don't like that either. So and then. But especially for international students, no, it's very they don't like it, but they have to learn how to do it. And however, to supplement that on a communication channel, we also use WeChat for Chinese students and WhatsApp for all other students. So and in addition to my weekly you know, newsletter, I also we send things through the social media, remind them and then, most importantly, actually, I also talk to parents. Parents, they have their WeChat group to Whatsapp group two, and also I have monthly meeting with parents, international parents, and newsletter, because, trust me, and then nowadays the students, we need to talk to their parents, so even if we don't want to, but that's definitely necessary, especially for students coming from different countries. Can you imagine how their parents, how worried they are, and also, if they don't know anything going on here? So that's not good sign. I look at parents as my partner. So that's communication. Is our face pillar, so therefore, so for the five pillars. And then we basically conceptualize that and and then we we conceptualize in the model, and then we try to refine that, and try to use our annual data to give us feedback on things we do make changes. And then, for example, I can give you example. Now I think our model is mature when. Well, because we test it, we we, we change every year. It's mature. Now, I think the next step we're looking for is the career development for our international students. I'll stop there.

Ryan Scheckel  
Well, I mean, it's easy to see why it's recognized as a model, not just in the the thoughtfulness that goes into it. But I think there's also a level of transferability. You know, certainly there's a lot of people doing things that they may not have quite articulated or packaged in that sense, but having that structure. But I'm curious, as an administrator, Steven, how has that been helpful for you? Not just that the results are present, but the effect that recognition has in the the context of a program at an institution, and moving it forward and advancing beyond just the recognition as well.

Steven Schaffling  
Sure, sure, it's critical. I think it's critical from the perspective of larger buy in, and I think that it's especially from, from external professional societies, right, like that. This isn't, you know, there's, there is a there's a range of awards that you can win. Some are given by, like the software vendors that we pay for and that's not the same thing as, like, an external professional society saying, Hey, we recognize this thing as being, as being uniquely good and and I think that it, it helps validate what's underneath of it, right? So, like to step back a moment Ling. Ling came into this from the like, with the expert perspective on international education rules and regs and certifications and like, what is it like, keeping our keeping our international students in compliance, like Ling has all that from, from her background and my background is sort of this advising and cross with, where does advising cross programmatically with retention, right? And so what undergirds that is, is a lot of the core stuff in NACADA, which is that we run an advising is teaching model, which means we assess everything we do, and then we let the assessment drive how we're going to adapt or change or move forward. And we run part of the other part of that is being scholarly practitioners like so we've had to in this concept of integrated and integrated advising, while we have to change the definition of what advising is. And so it took a lot of time, okay, as an administrator, to get back to your question, to develop those two pieces in the office, to then get where what you've done is moved and advanced the advising and the programming forward to the point where then you get external recognition. And now senior level administrators, they have the tangible one sheet that they can consume and understand. Like, Oh, this, this, it builds to this. And, oh, okay, now I get it. I see the package of how, like you have to build an advisor, an advising office, I always say this for the next 20 years, not the last 20 um, in order to, in order to to get to this place, you have to have these other piece, foundational pieces in and what it does then, to your point, yeah, it, it puts us essentially as a seat at the table, right, like, with an understanding of how we're doing things, and so then taking that critical lens on where, where it's replicated, or where it's happening elsewhere.

Matt Markin  
And I guess I kind of go along with like, kind of, like, the data kind of question. This is a question for the both of you, and maybe we'll start with you on this one. But you know, retention wise, the framework gone, you achieve the 91.5% retention rate, so the highest in a decade. And then it's also mentioned that year to year, you're kind of looking at the data. Are things changing? Are there any like, are the needs of your students, attending changing, or the challenges changing. Because I'm sure higher ups are looking going like, let's keep this 91.5% retention rate. Let's get even higher.

Speaker 1  
Oh, definitely, it's changing. So like, this year, the higher ed in this entire world, in the US, is just like, wow. You know the changing so and all definitely affect our international student population, for sure. In effect, you know, how students we still have continue to have students come, of course, the number, everybody knows, you know, from the media, number is declining, you know. And students not just worry about their career outcome. They worry about their safety. They'll worry about, you know, whether people you know here in this country may not be nice to them, you know, all those things and parents worry about, you know, I send my students so far away, and I'm not so sure. You know how they're going to feel there, how, whether, safe, whether their professor will treat them nicely, you know? Oh, definitely. It's much more complex now. It's much more complex than few years back. Oh, I just need to have a good grades. I need to do internship and find a job. It's much more nuances than that. So in that case, then I try my best all the parents communication, you know, the students communication, and try to help them understand the situation. I cannot say, Oh, no problem. No, don't worry. You know, I have to be very, you know, realistic, and also want to be very empathetic, you know, when they're with their worries, with their concerns. So fortunately, you know, we still continue to have students come or though the number, as we say, that, like the entire country, is declining, but I think that I am very pleased to know actually we have some international students here, and then they say they come here number one, because the academic program is strong. Number two, they say because themselves and their parents feel like, once they're here, they know our team will take care of them. They know our team, our team, you know we we have their interest in our mind, right?

Steven Schaffling  
And look, I could speak a little bit. I mean this concept of the retention and seeing at university senior leadership saying, well, just do it again, right? So that you know, I mean actually this past for the 24 cohort overall, we've had the highest retention rate in history for the for the full cohort, for Arts and Sciences and Maxwell, and it was due significantly to the work in this office. I mean, some a lot other other portions of the work in this office that are being replicated by the rest of the university. But so I'll give an example, like I said, the genesis for this work and the application of high impact practices and the and the data demonstrating for us that term one and the transition in year one for international students, if you could help them get through it, they'd actually beat your you know, your predictive analytics that many people have like through EAB or whatever, what the success of that programming has done is, right? Syracuse occupies an odd place in the market. Right? We're a private institution. R1 institution that's between 50th and 100 right? And so there's no population that's more sensitive, or maybe I should use the word aware of national ranking, and what their perception is on the value of moving from the 60th ranked institution to the 40th they believe that that's a that is a that is a marker, and some folks culturally believe there's not much of a question if you have that ability. So if you improve the academic performance of a population that's extremely sensitive to the national ranking in their first year, the problem that you end up creating is that now more more of them are able to leave because they're able to transfer out and move up in the national So what then that be gets is like is, as Ling had mentioned earlier, it's sort of this transition into further work, right from an advising perspective. And this is something that is broader than just the international student population at Syracuse. It's the domestic students as well, but the international students are very sensitive to it. But what that does is it the end of the bell curve for retention for students that are struggling is well trodden academic advising work right? It's we know. We know what the referrals are that we need to make. We know who the resource are the academic support offices are like. We know where those connections are for students that are struggling academically, for students that are over performing who they were before they came to your institution, and are now able to maybe externally, transfer and get a merit award offer from someone higher than you in the in the national rankings, you now have been different problem and a different advising problem to address. And it's, and it is a much more complex conversation, because it's, it is really at the individual student level. And so Ling mentioned earlier, like, how one we're moving into, like, at this point in our office, we believe bringing career into the First Year Experience course is literally just requisite. We just, you know, we we met John Gardner a couple times. It's like, I believe in the Gardner model. But like, the sort of that. Yeah, this piece of career piece, what is the institution and the degree, what is the leverage and the opportunity that it offers me, and where am I going? Is a conversation that we have to be proactively having now, in term one and then, and then beyond that, the concept of going past our peer mentors into like faculty mentors, for for international students like to create these connection points, for these strong students that now suddenly, because they're navigating that transition more easily, they actually have more opportunity. Does that make sense? And that's a, that's a that's a a complex problem relative to retention that you've in some ways, created.

Ryan Scheckel  
Yeah, no, no. Good deed goes unrewarded in some way. But I'm curious, specifically, Ling, you know, you have this opportunity through one professional organization, NASA, and their sort of international student perspective, but you're also sort of inaugural Chair of the International Student Academic Success advising community with Nakada. And you know, I'm always interested in people's experiences in multiple organizations, and I'm curious if you could comment on sort of your perspective from your role and your interactions with those organizations, not only helping develop this program and your work, but also the way that they inform it too.

Ling LeBeau  
Yeah, that's a very good question. I know I'm very fortunate, I still am involved into two big, giant organizations. The first one, NAFSA, is called NAFSA. Sorry, it's not. And there's another one called NAFSA. This one's called NAFSA, so has over 10,000 members, and then Nakata also has more, probably even, you know, global both global organizations, yes, so, and then that's what I'm learning, you know, because international students, everything, definitely, it's under not NASA, okay, so only immigration, you know, the global issues, everything. And then one, I start to be involved into Nakata. So it's mostly focused on students learning, student success, you know, and then the advising piece. And that's how where Steve and I and, you know, we both, I asked him, I said, Hey, there's so many advising communities. They have the students for expanding, students for first gen, for nobody. Talk about international students. International students actually is 6% of the US higher education student enrollment. I said, when nobody talk about it, you know, I even check literature student success. Nobody talk about it. No, nothing. International Student Success. So that's why Steve gave me an idea. She said, he said, No, let's propose one, you know, and then that's why we work together. And then so Nakata has very, you know, structured procedure. Say you need to do survey, and you provide this data, everything like that. So we, we did very comprehensive survey. Nakata help us send out all the members, I think about we have about almost 300 responses, and we analyze the data, and absolutely the need is there, absolutely so clear. That's why we're very fortunate. You know, Nakata approved this advising community in 2023 Yeah, actually, Steve, he was the first chair because I was not able to be the chair that...

Steven Schaffling  
I was forced to be the first chair.

Ling LeBeau  
So yeah, and then, and now I'm the chair. And then till October 2026, and then we, actually, we scheduled advising community event last week. And then something technical went wrong by walking to do again on 18th, we have the first hour virtual event that talk about, you know, share best, practice everything. So we'll see. Because after October 2026, Nakata, we will restructure bison community, and then the International Student Success is under place based advising, so we'll see how things go from there.

Matt Markin  
Well, speaking of best practices, and I know every institution is different, but let's say someone at institutions like I really like this model. Are there any insights that you might be able to that you would give us, like someone at an institution that maybe they can take away from your model and potentially adapt it to their own context at their institution. So whoever wants to start with that one?

Steven Schaffling  
I mean, I'll just say briefly that at the beginning, it was prioritization, right? I. I said, sort of adapt the concept of, there's 11 nationally approved high impact practices, right, that and that, but it's at the beginning, like, which ones do you think you can or want to go after, or can achieve first? And so in the early conversations with Ling, I sort of partnered with her to director to the Okay, it's onboarding. So what are we doing from May one until day one of classes, and then it's this concept of a more robust, academic based period peer mentorship program. And so we sort of, we sort of attacked those first. And so when we and those are two of our most successful things. But we thought, okay, near one, what could we accomplish? And then the next question we usually get is, Well, okay, how do you recruit the mentors? Mentors? How do you and what I would say the other piece is about being creative. We don't pay our peer mentors there. There's wing, what, 35 of them, roughly annually that we have. But what we do do is there's a college level internship course, and so what we can do is the students, the mentors, can register for the internship course and earn a credit towards towards the degree, and they get to put the bullet on their resume that they've served as a peer mentor. And, you know, and we do some things for them as well, like but I think that you've got to, you've got to pick, pick your priorities first, and what you think would have the best impact, the largest impact first. What's the biggest area need at your institution, and then and start, and start there, or what? Maybe it's what are you most able to go after first and then and then go from there?

Ling LeBeau  
Yeah, actually. So I just want to mention that last week and Steve and I, our took three other colleagues from other universities, actually, we, we did a virtual webinar, free to our NAFSA colleagues. So another, another organization, we were very fortunate, fortunate. There were, like, 220 registrations, and 126 show up, representing total registration, representing 164 institutions. So the and also, I did a quick survey, and the survey results are very positive. Everybody, great. 100% says, Yes, this is a very important initiative for international students in this country. I mean, right now we talk in this country. We're not talking about the world yet. So, and then it's very encouraging. And many people, they want to know how to how can we do this, you know? So that need is there. So I will say, first of all, start small. So sounds like a very daunting, my goodness, there's so many things, yes, because I've been here for six years. So start small. And then, for example, a skill set, peer mentoring. That's a student engagement program you can do, you know. And then also, some people say, Oh, but we don't have money, we don't have staff, you know. So, no, don't, don't. I think the first of all is like, just be open minded, as long as you think this is the important area. That's great. Okay, now pick up one thing you can do, and then track your data, you know, and then start from there. So I know Steve, he does not like me to talk about this, but I need to say I'm an only.

Steven Schaffling  
Oh yeah, all right, I know where you're going.

Ling LeBeau  
I'm a one person, so I don't have any staff anything, but I do have the office advising office, we call student success, and our advisors support me, you know. So, you know, bounce ideas everything. But some people, after they hear about what we tell them to Oh, my goodness, probably you have quite a few staff. Do you know just me? You just need to be open minded. Have the ideas start small, and then you'll get there.

Steven Schaffling  
I was just gonna say a piece of that is in reconceptualizing the position, right the where support for international students has been conceptualized previously was okay, we'll have an International Student Advisor and give them a caseload. If Ling has a caseload, she can't do programmatic development. She can't do advisor development. So what I need then, the argument was in that that value, long run is going to have more returns than and like, look, there's more than one way to to get there, not suggesting that a specialist advisor for international students wouldn't maybe produce some of the same results, but like to produce the programming side of it. Like, yeah, Ling. Ling doesn't have this piece that has often sort of been added or thought of as requisite, when you think about embedding such a person in an advising office.

Ryan Scheckel  
Yeah, I was gonna say that there's lots of ways to construct a team, but if there's not leadership of that team to free to lead, you know, I think that that's that's part of. One of the things that encourages me about what I'm learning from you all today, but one of the things you said early on, Ling was this idea of gatherings, and I certainly know how valuable Peer Mentors can be in creating community. But I'm also curious in an official capacity as a representative of an institution. How do you build community when we know that international students aren't homogenous, and I'm interested in what steps you all take to still try to bring folks around the same table, so to speak, when some of them might, you know, sit differently or have different approaches to what would be at the table.

Ling LeBeau  
Oh, totally. Because, as all the other institutions, usually top countries in China, India, South Korea, Canada, you know, like that. Totally, yeah. We have students like maybe that, students only one from their country, you know, things like that. It is, it is challenging so and then to build a community. We start from, as I mentioned, in early May, so early May. And then we have the weekly gathering and for students who never show up, usually I'm walking to send them individual emails. And also we communicate with parents. So and then peer mentoring, absolutely. When we pair peer mentor, we ask the both students and mentors for their thoughts. I say, what type of mentee Do you want? What type of mentor Do you want? You know so and then sometimes also for especially for students, if they're the only one from that from their country, the new student will try to go to a database to find upper class also from that country, you know, connect to the student so to help them feel welcome. And then, and then, once the students are here, not only to have their mentors, every week, we have open space I call forum to get students together. So however, as we know students nowadays, they know, they mean only some are engaged. Some. Doesn't matter how you try, you know. So they just don't, they just ignore you. And then, and then social events. So I have our mentor, actually, there's a requirement, they have to have at least two social events with their mentees per semester. So and then some do very well. Definitely something. Not everybody do well, but some, most of them, do very well. And then, so usually a couple of weeks after the semester starts, and I start to, we start to receive, like the red flags from the from the university system. So and so did not submit homework, so and so did not attend class. I received the alerts too. Once they have the alert use, I reach out to every single international students. I said, Would you like to talk everything like that? So and then I think those are the ways to, you know, reach out to students. And then also, I think most important thing is that I need I let students and parents know I care about them, and then I tell them. I mean, I know, usually we don't recommend this, but I don't mind personally, because I was international student myself. I know the pain. I give students my cell phone number. I know it's kind of I know everybody can do it. I say, you can call me. Text me anytime. Don't worry, I'm here. So that's kind of how make students more comfortable, you know? I mean, actually, fortunately, no only feel you know, per semester, they call me after midnight all those days. But you know, the you make them feel like you are the person doesn't matter what happens. They can depend on you. I think that's really the backbone for the community. I mean, the first couple years were not easy, because students even don't know why there's my position. They don't know what I do. So now they all know so and then, I mean, of course, always, there are still some students. They mean, not only they don't talk to me, they don't even go to class, you know, so and then sometimes it's difficult.

Matt Markin  
But, sometimes too even if they don't text or stop by, at least them knowing that they can if they wanted to right again, that that connection emotional point and Lane Your position, this is specific for your particular this academic college, right?

Ling LeBeau  
Yes, for college, arts and science, Maxwell School, yeah, we are the largest, though, or largest on campus. Also, 50% of international undergraduate students are here. And then yes, we do, actually, our university did take initiative, and I, actually, I led a campus wide group last year. So we, we talked to other colleges and share with them what we do. You know, those things so and then people have different opinions, of course, because each college has their numbers so varies. So other colleges, student, international students, they do. Know Me. And then I know it's not. Steve doesn't like hearing this, but and then they do contact me. They find how to work with me. The parents how find how to contact me. They asked me, I don't I don't reject. I don't say, No, you're not. I don't help you. You know, I still try to help.

Steven Schaffling  
Yes, we're student oriented professionals. We're not right, throwing a student out at the door, right? I do think, I do think William's primary orientation is around the students, right, responsible.

Ryan Scheckel  
It's indicative of the how much institution values collaboration. For sure.

Steven Schaffling  
Yeah, yes, absolutely. I mean, and they do, right? This bling me. The students show up at your weekly forum. They so, you know, and then at that point, it's conversational, it's still community, yeah, right, but we're embedded in it, in an office that has one of its pillars as academic advising, right? So this office literally certifies for degree and so what happens then is, a lot of the conversations orient around those things like degree requirements and stuff, and we don't want to, you know, the thing that keeps academic advisors up at night is telling a student the wrong thing and they don't graduate in time, right? That's, that's our like advisor, recurring nightmare.

Matt Markin  
This was a fantastic discussion. I am really happy that this worked out so link, thank you so much for coming up to the at the end of the session at the Nakata conference. Sorry, I had to leave so fast after that, but I'm glad that you followed up, and then we got to have this wonderful conversation. I can't wait for listeners to to hear this so Ling and Steven, thank you so much for being on the podcast today.

Ling LeBeau  
Oh, thank you so much for having us.

Steven Schaffling  
Thank you so much for your time. It's always great.