The role of international office professionals in research with international students

Written by Betül Bulut-Sahin (Middle East Technical University)

My journey with international students started with working in an international office in 2004. My first incoming student was from the USA (I still remember his name; he was the only international student in my university), and I remember how excited I was to help him during his time in Turkey. Since then, I worked in different positions in the international offices for 16 years and met several international students. Since I earned the PhD title, I have been conducting research with international students. As a researcher, I remarked that most research in the literature ignores the role of international office professionals in supporting international students’ experiences. Therefore, in this blog post, I try to inform researchers about the crucial role of international office professionals in international students’ lives and show their possible contribution to research with international students.

Who are international office professionals (IPs)?

International office professionals (IPs) are defined as practitioners working in international offices of higher education institutions. In academic research, there is not much research on the experiences and positions of these professionals in the internationalization efforts of the universities. Although their hierarchic position in the organizational structure, their size, their role, etc., changes, each university has an international office dealing with mostly the administrative issues in the support of international students. Although their job seems to be straightforward, we argue that their role is multi-faceted:

Why do I call them street-level bureaucrats?

In this study, I called IPs as street-level bureaucrats. Street-level bureaucrats (SLBs) are mostly used in public policy literature to define teachers or police officers and explain their direct role in policy implementation. In other words, while the leaders conduct the policy-making processes through laws and regulations, SLBs mostly use their discretion to apply these policies. I believe that IPs are also an example of SLBs, as the first contact points in universities, they are the ones who apply the internationalization policies for international students.  The study that I have conducted showed that IPs mostly use their discretion while supporting international students, meaning that their behavior is sometimes different from what is expected in the regulations. To give an example, an IP from Poland mentioned that he is taking more responsibility for guiding first-year students:

“Most of them are going abroad for the first time. Especially in the first year, it is necessary to take care of them closely. Visa procedures, finding an internship or job, accommodation, career services, orientation, etc. Hundreds of e-mails are replied to organize everything.” 

As this example shows, IPs play a crucial role in international students’ study abroad experiences, and their role extends to applying the rules and regulations. They do their best to help international students settle and adapt by using their discretion as SLBs. Therefore, we need to support these practitioners due to their crucial role.

Why should IPs be involved in research with international students?

Most researchers working with international students are faculty members in universities, and they interact with international students in classroom environments, engage with international students in academic environments. On the other hand, some of the research they conduct focus on  international students’ socio-cultural, psychological, financial, etc., experiences of international students. Since they do not mostly engage in international students’ out-of-classroom experiences, their research sometimes narrowly focuses on these non-academic experiences. However, most of the time, it is IPs who witness these types of experiences of international students. Therefore, the IPs’ close engagement in international students will strengthen the research due to their close interaction with international students in non-academic areas.

Moreover, I believe that IPs’ involvement would be useful in three cycles of the research. In the beginning, at the research design phase while defining the research questions, IPs’ involvement will help researchers find out the current issues and gaps in the literature. Secondly, during the data collection, IPs’ involvement would be helpful while publishing research announcements to international students Last but not least, at the end, researchers mostly have difficulty writing the implications of the research results and cannot make them useful for practice. In other words, they have difficulty in transforming complex research results into practical suggestions which would support the real-life experiences of international students. Therefore, IPs’ involvement would be helpful to find practical implications for research results, leading them to be used by all practitioners working in international offices to support international students. As SLBs, they are not only policy-implementers but they have also the potential to be research-results-implementers.

 In most cases, IPs struggle with practical issues while helping international students; researchers have published several publications offering solutions, but these do not match. For example, IPs look for solutions to the problems faced by international students, and in the same university, researchers publish about these same topics, and sometimes their implications for practice are far from reality. Therefore, I believe that through actively participating, IPs will lead researchers to relevant and applicable research. At this point, the ENIS Cost Action project is a perfect example of a platform to connect researchers and practitioners in international student mobility.

To sum up, IPs’ active participation in three cycles mentioned above (research design, data collection and transforming the results into practice) in research with international students will enrich the academics’ understanding of the real-life, solid experiences of international students. Moreover, unlike faculty members, they have interaction with supra-national, national, local, and institutional authorities in and outside countries, and they have the potential to evaluate the big picture in the international student phenomenon. As a scholar-practitioner, I have given several pieces of training to IPs during international weeks, and each time, I was surprised by their large vision and experience. The researchers on international students would not want to miss that!

Author Biography: Betül Bulut Şahin is an Associate Professor specializing in the internationalization of higher education. Combining academic expertise with practical experience, she has worked in international offices and focuses on internationalization policy planning in higher education. As a scholar-practitioner, she bridges theory and practice in internationalization through impactful research and professional contributions.

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