UC welcomes largest group of new global students ever this fall

Now they’ve arrived at UC to take up their studies in person.

“A world-class university has to be a global one,” said Vice Provost for International Affairs Raj Mehta.

“There is a fourth “I” implicit in UC’s core values of inclusion, innovation and impact, and that is internationalism. We can only realize our Next Lives Here vision when our students have multicultural competencies, a transdisciplinary perspective and the ability to use the virtual tools of a borderless workplace. The year of COVID has shown us that."

Regardless of statistics, the arrival of such a large number to UC’s campuses this fall is energizing for everyone involved in the University of Cincinnati’s globalization.

“Attracting international students to UC to share their perspectives, their culture, their experience, is in line with sending our students abroad to experience the same. We need students to be knowledgeable and competent in the world around them,” said Academic Director of International Programs in the Carl H. Lindner College of Business Michelle Johns. Johns is also  director of the international business program.

Director of International Admissions Jon Weller compared international recruitment to another way UC strives to offer the best to all its students.

Weller described the International Admissions office’s round-the-clock efforts to connect with and support students throughout the pandemic, which intensified despite the office being very short-staffed.

“I was at the Denver airport on a flight home from somewhere, and there was this coffee [stand], and on top of this coffee cup it said, ‘Stay up late, get up early, change the world,’ right? That’s probably been the theme of our office for the past year and a half.”

He credits a great staff who sincerely made students feel welcome as a major reason for UC’s recruiting success.

But UC also has a strong infrastructure to recruit and retain quality students from around the globe. Multiple offices across UC’s colleges contribute to the mission.

UC also maintains offices in China, India and Vietnam and a centrally coordinated global network of partners and agents that support students, families and high school counselors around the world.

The university helped to pioneer this recruiting system and under the first Vice Provost for International Affairs, Dr. Mitch Leventhal, was one of the founding members of the AIRC (American International Recruitment Council), the U.S. professional organization that sets standards for international student recruitment.

“We’re considered one of the best universities for managing a network like that,” Weller said. “Lots of universities have even larger networks than we have, but they don’t manage them, support them, train them, monitor the student success like we do.”

Associate Director Sarah Mackey contrasted a common travel-heavy approach to recruiting with the marketing focus and strategic approach of UC’s team.

“I don’t think this office historically has been an office of road warriors,” she said. “We have a full spectrum of skillsets in our office. We’re like a mini marketing and design firm. We have 70 partners around the world. We have full-time in-country reps in three places. We have long-existing relationships with high schools that we’ve been working with year after year after year after year. And we’ve done all of those things for a long time. I think we were able to pivot and make some slight adjustments minus the travel.”

When travel shut down entirely, the office zeroed in on digital advertising and social media.

Assistant Director Nick Paddock, territory manager and counselor for Sub-Saharan Africa & Southeast Asia, said about digital marketing, “I think that was a big game changer for our office, because we were able to reach huge populations in certain countries that we’d never reached before.”

In-house virtual events have previewed the UC experience for students and provided capsule information on tuition and finances, co-op and internships, applying for housing and other essentials.

Paddock coordinates UC’s international student ambassador group and has been liaising with student groups like the PandaCats, Chinese students who have created their own group chat with prospective students and applicants.

“There’s active recruiting going on from current students that aren’t even associated with Admissions or UC International at all.”

Like most universities, UC has also been taking advantage of virtual student fairs.

“Our office probably does at least fifty virtual events in one season, between the global offices and our office. I’m sitting in on a fair tomorrow or Wednesday that’s Russia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, all of central Asia,” Mackey said. “There’s a huge amount of opportunity with this virtual setting to reach out to students that we normally wouldn’t. We normally wouldn’t travel to Moscow, for example.”

Assistant Director Megan Lindle, who manages the Middle East and North Africa recruiting territory, sees the pluses and minuses of virtual platforms to connect with students.

“I try to use the technology to my advantage and show them everything through my computer that I might not have been able as easily to show them at a fair [in person],” she said. She has started new WhatsApp groups to help keep prospective students and new applicants informed. She’s easily able to contact alumni to work virtual events, which would be more difficult if she were in-country and they had to travel to meet her.

But in highly relational cultures, she said, “I think we’re missing that human face-to-face interaction. I think that’s really important for recruitment and for establishing those first points of contact with the students. And it also means a lot for UC, for recognition of our university in other countries around the world, to be there.”

(She still manages to connect in person once students arrive at UC. Coffee comes into play for that aspect of recruiting, too—she mentioned several upcoming coffee dates with students and their families visiting from around the globe.)

Natalie Ochmann, UC International’s assistant director of marketing and publications, posted a story on Instagram ahead of International Education Week asking new international undergrads why they came to UC. Dozens responded.

"And we got a response from a student who is not even enrolled yet, saying, 'I want to come to UC and my enthusiasm is mounting with all the insta posts.'"

Other students have DM’d the office to say that they chose UC after being attracted by its Instagram or TikTok accounts.

The consensus is that recruiting in future is likely to be a hybrid of virtual and face-to-face connections.

Michael Neugent, director of the MS Finance program in the Lindner College of Business, has recently been appointed one of UC International’s pilot faculty fellows for international initiatives. He and Jun Wang of the College of Medicine will work on developing strategic partnerships for UC in China.

He describes international education as critical to international diplomacy and sees benefits for both countries in finding the right partnerships to strengthen relations between China and the U.S.

“We welcome the diversity that students from China bring to our programs. … It's an advantage to the student who comes from China, but it's also an advantage to the student who's from the U.S. And having diversity in the classroom benefits everybody.”

India remains in the second spot for international students in the U.S., though numbers are dropping from that country as well. It is the top country of origin for international students at UC; nearly two and a half times as many students currently come here from India as from China.

In the past five years, UC has recruited increasing numbers of students from South and Southeast Asia. Students from Sub-Saharan Africa are another rapidly growing group, though six of UC’s top 10 markets are still in Asia. Mackey lists Vietnam, the UAE, Nepal, Bangladesh, Brazil, Mexico, Uzbekistan and Egypt as countries of recent focus.

The processing of I-20 forms (documents certifying admission and eligibility to apply for a student visa) for next term is ahead of pre-COVID pace as well, according to International Services Director Ron Cushing. Provided students meet the requirements of the October 25 Presidential Proclamation for travelers to the U.S. to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19, Cushing believes a larger than normal contingent of students will arrive for spring as well.

"We're already up 50% for undergraduate confirmations over spring of 2021," said Jason Chambers, associate director in the International Admissions office. "And we have an additional 63 offers not yet confirmed. This is a considerable increase from the 67 total international undergrads who came to UC last spring."

Like that eager prospect who chimed in on the Instagram story, these students can’t wait for their chance to come to UC to fulfill their dreams.

UC’s colleges are continuing to find innovative virtual ways to provide global experiences for students who are unable to travel. Joint classes with partner universities around the world, podcasts with international experts, virtual conferences and shared research projects have all helped bring the world to UC and UC to the world.

And those international students who finally made it here this fall—how are they doing?

Johns said the graduate students she talks to are really glad to be here, but still seem a little dazed.

“When they talk to me about it, they feel a little exhausted. Their voices, it’s almost like they’ve been walking upstairs, and we’re standing still! You can just hear this exhaustion in them just mentally thinking about the process or the waiting game that they just went through,” she said. “I think for some of them a lot of things fell into place so quickly and perhaps at the last minute.”

“I feel like it was always a lot of hoops to jump through, a lot of steps to the process, a lot to navigate [even] before the pandemic if you were an international student coming to the U.S. from abroad,” said Lindle. “But I think they’re very resilient and very excited and determined … to make it work, and I think our job is just to support them through that process.”

Julie Steimle, assistant director of graduate student advising for Hasan's program at UC, said, “Most of the graduate students in the College of Engineering & Applied Science are international students, so our college leadership has had to work with UC International to devise creative solutions over the past two years which would allow international students to begin their studies at UC despite challenges associated with obtaining visa appointments in the midst of a global pandemic.”

She contacted Hasan to offer him the option to start classes online until he could get to the U.S.

That's what Hasan decided to do. With new paperwork reflecting his changed arrival date, Hasan was able to focus on making plans to come to Cincinnati.

“At that point, I was a bit relieved, so I could focus on my interview, which went nicely,” Hasan said. “With the COVID situation in my country, I was still worried my flights might get canceled. I didn’t know what was going to happen.

“My professors helped me in any possible way. I’d really like to thank them. There is a big difference in the time zone, so sometimes they would have to reschedule a deadline for me because it was 3:00 in the morning in my country. They understood the situation.”

In September, with COVID case rates falling in Bangladesh, the lockdown was lifted. Hasan was able to buy his plane ticket and fly to UC on October 4. After quarantining and testing, Hasan was able to start his classes in person on campus.

“It's a very beautiful campus and a beautiful city,” Hasan said. “I think it was a very good decision for me to join UC.”