There were five main categories that emerged from Angélica’s case: 1) second language struggle, 2) academic advisement, 3) financial support, 4) cultural adjustment and 5) integration into the graduate program. These five factors have played an important and significant role in her academic life. To allow Angélica to tell her story exactly as she told it, I conducted the interviews in Spanish. To assist the reader's understanding I provide a close English translation of Angélica's “text”.
2. 1 Second language struggle
An important issue in the life of international students is the level of proficiency in English when it is their second language. Students from non-English-speaking countries often continue to experience difficulty in speaking and comprehending English. Although they are required to score on the Test of English as Foreign Language (TOEFL) at or above a level considered to be adequate for them to understand lectures, read texts and write papers, many still report English to be a problem (Harvey & Stewart, 1991). Angélica’s struggle with her second language is characterized for the following dimensions: Painful silences; extended working days; and loss of profundity.
2.1.1 Painful silences
The hardship of expressing ideas or engaging in academic discussion or dialogue on a scholarly level is something that likely not only Angélica but other international students struggling with English as their second language, have felt through their classes and into the writing of their dissertations. With respect to Angélica’s experience dealing with English in the doctoral program, she affirms:
Well, it was a very hard experience. When I had to speak or do a presentation. Every day I had class was a day of suffering. I could understand everything the professors would say and the content of the books, I had my own thoughts. And I could do very well on my papers and put my thoughts into them and that's how the professors would get to know me.
The mastery of a new language requires comprehension (listening and interpretive skills) as well as communication (expressing and interpretive skills). For a new language learner what is often missing is the immediacy of transforming knowledge acquired into knowledge disseminated. That is, while it is virtually automatic for Jane, who is a native speaker of English, to tell her professor exactly what her thought is in the very act of thinking the thought, Angélica has to struggle through time lapses where she is searching for the correct way to say something in English, and thereby may suffer through an extended distraction which may leave her unable to think through what was on her mind in Spanish. To compound the problem, while Jane is absorbed in the exchange of a seminar discussion with her professor and fellow students, Angélica is slipping behind in her efforts to stay involved in the discussion. Compounding the situation further, at the same time she is struggling with her thoughts and expression, the international student may have to contend also with her fears and self-consciousness in not being able to participate in the manner expected of a graduate student. This could lead to discouragement, feelings of inadequacy and isolation.
2.1.2 Extended academic working days
Participation in a doctoral program places the student at the highest academic level. Doctoral studies requires hard work, long hours and self-discipline. However, when we talk about international students the burden becomes a little heavier and a little more complex. That is, in order to compete with their American peers or those whose first language is English, international students such as Angélica, must overcome a language barrier that comes close to causing them to double or triple their hours of private study. With regard to the time that Angélica spent preparing her assignments, she said:
(...) I would study every day of the week until two and three o'clock in the morning. I would read, write, work on reflections that needed to be done. Especially during those hard times when you have to turn in your papers and they all have to be done at the same time. It was amazing! Amazing! the number of hours I had to work, and without a break!
2.1.3 Loss of profundity
Loss of a depth of understanding (familiarity of knowledge) and verbal skill in oral and written communication puts a student such as Angélica at a disadvantage. While some international students, who learned English at an early age, possess second-language facility necessary to articulate subtle and complex ideas at the same level as their first language, others, who began to learn English shortly before becoming graduate students, often give the appearance of diminished or inadequate profundity of thought and expression. Angélica’s interpretation of this hardship reflects the experience of untold others like her as they seek acceptance as individuals and acknowledgment of their intellectual strength and sophistication as thinkers:
(...) in the second language we can say many words or not, but we never reach the level of profundity that we reach in our first language. On a higher level, as in doctoral studies, where you have to think independently and in fact you do that, but you communicate only a fraction of an insight in your second language. You are presenting your thought, but without the conviction and strength of a first language.
International students are aware of their responsibility to function competently in their second language. Professors also expect (and some may require) them to express themselves as academic persons in their oral and written communication. The students are eager to develop both skills to the satisfaction of their professors.
2.2 Academic advisement
A meaningful and effective advisement process ought to take into account the cultural differences and unique needs of international graduate students individually. Fundamental objectives in advising these students help them in adjusting to the demands of academic life and integrating themselves into their department and discipline. The academic advisor, a central figure in the lives of these students, should be genuinely solicitous and take an active interest in her or his advisees as individuals and as students. Angélica had two academic advisors in sequence, who regularly gave her the support and the time when needed, and actively participated in her academic development. Advocacy, availability of the professor, and participation in academic activities are the three basic subcategories drawn from the data of Angélica’s interviews.
2.2.1 Advocacy
Advocacy and support are not always given equally or consistently to international students by their advisors. There is a significant difference between advisement and support or advocacy. In the former the advisor guides and directs the student in her strategic and tactical choices in building a successful academic program. The advisor supports the student in his or her readiness to address specific and incidental needs as they arise; and is a fair and deliberate advocate of the advisee within the academic program. Angélica’s advisors treated her not only as a student, competing and acting with her peers, but also as a person to whom they related as persons. The latter includes familiarity with the unique personal qualities and the socio-cultural history of the student. The former suggests knowledge of the student against the backdrop of the program and the discipline. Both advisors were sensitive to all that Angélica had to overcome to earn her Ph.D. They saw Angélica’s strong determination to succeed. Angélica discussed her two advisors:
My academic advisement was excellent. With my first advisor I worked on a more personal level because our relationship was a professor-student relationship at the beginning, which evolved into a friendship and after that I had to be more strict with myself, even more than when our relationship was academic. But it was so rewarding because I felt supported, taken care of, I don't know how to describe it… protected. When I was halfway through my Master's, this professor volunteered to be my advisor. He just offered himself and said: “You need somebody who can teach you, because you don't know anything here and somebody needs to support you. If you like, I can do it”. And then I thanked him and he was my advisor until I took my Ph.D comprehensive exams.
Angélica’s first advisor was a human bridge between Angélica and her new academic world. In time he became her mentor. Angélica also enjoyed a productive working relationship with her second advisor (the first advisor moved to another university, but remained as a member of her dissertation committee):
(...) when my first advisor left, I chose this man and he graciously accepted. And ever since then we have been building a sort of academic relationship in which we can interact with ease. Our communication is quite professional, but also very informal because we don't operate in a bureaucratic way. Like the first relationship this one has also been very positive.
It is noteworthy that both of Angélica’s advisors are bilingual, allowing her the luxury to express herself in her mother tongue and communicate exactly and directly what she wanted to say. Both are familiar with her homeland. One was born there. The other worked in Argentina during his sabbatical. Both value Angélica’s sociocultural and national identity. They understand Angélica’s academic and personal contributions to the program.
2.2.2 Availability of the professor
Time is always a concern for professors at every level, and it was no different for Angélica’s professors. They have to prepare class, teach, write manuscripts for publication, attend meetings and conferences, write grants, and do service in the community. If done appropriately, being available for students is one of the most necessary but time-consuming activities for a professor. Some professors inform their advisees that their consultation will be limited to matters of importance.
Professors and graduate students, when possible, should find other opportunities to share ideas about the profession, the discipline, their research interests, etc., thereby making the professor-student (advisor-advisee) dialogue the center of the continuous culture of learning. When the advisor-advisee relationship succeeds, then both parties benefit from the cooperation, the sharing of insights and the sense of accomplishment arising from generous and professional mutuality. This attitude is contained in Angélica’s satisfaction with her advisor’s availability and magnanimity:
(...) And we spent a lot of time talking about professional topics. And that's something I'd like to say, we spent a lot of time, which is exactly what I want to say. But he was a professor and had to prepare his classes and spend time doing research, one thing at a time. However, he would always make time to be with me and talk and I feel very thankful for that, because I felt I was growing intellectually. I was starting to feel more comfortable at an academic level. Many interesting topics arose in our conversations that helped me grow toward a higher academic level.
2.2.3 Participation in academic activities
An outgrowth of a mutually satisfying advisor-advisee relationship, more fully integrating the student into the scholarly life, occurs when the professor invites the students to collaborate on a paper for publication or to share a panel or roundtable at a conference. Although such invitations are more common now than in the past (they occur earlier in the sciences), most graduate students do not enjoy such a privilege. Angélica was one of the fortunate ones. Both her advisors gave Angélica opportunities to experience scholarly activities that have become milestones on the path toward her professional development:
(...) from our conversations my first advisor had the idea of inviting me to write a paper and get it published in a North American university journal that is called "Democracy in Education," I give myself credit for what I wrote. But, of course, when you write with your advisor, it's not a small thing. From the very first moment he invites you to do that, he gives you his name, his reputation (...), his support made me believe in myself even more.
Angélica’s advisement was individualized and structured. Besides receiving wise and skillful counsel from her first advisor, she became more secure and confident about her future in her host country. The second advisor maintained the same level of cordiality and active professional interest that was initiated by his predecessor.
What contributed significantly to the efforts of Angélica’s two advisors was that both were fluent in Spanish and English. As a result, it increased Angélica's access to them, thereby almost immediately shortening the artificial distance that often exists between a professor and his or her student. This was apparent in these professors' eagerness, once they saw Angélica's talent and her determination to succeed, to share the authorship of professional papers with her and to invite her to participate in panel discussions at several major international conferences.
2.3 Financial support
In 2004-2005 international students contributed 13.3 billion dollars to the United States economy. Over two-thirds (67%) of all international students receive most of their funding to study in American universities from personal and family resources (Open Doors, 2005). This support comes with considerable sacrifice for many of them and their families. International students are legally required to maintain full-time status and must pay out of state tuition. When colleges and universities provide support for international graduate students it is often through research grants from federal and other sources, which now are more scarce than in the recent past. Even at the most affluent institutions financial assistance for international students is often strictly limited. The assistance, when provided, is usually by way of graduate, teaching or project assistantships. However, these options, for a variety of reasons, are also limited.
Before Angélica was admitted to doctoral study, she completed a master’s degree and took three semesters of intensive English. As to the financial resources used to pay these two programs Angélica said: “I paid with my own funding. This was a very considerable amount of money because I had to pay as an international student.” However, when Angélica began her doctoral study the situation was different:
As soon as I started the semester, I received a Graduate Assistantship (GA), because my advisor talked to the division people at the meetings to get me a job and he managed to get me twenty hours a week.
It is common knowledge among the faculty and staff of the Language Literacy and Sociocultural Studies division that international students have severe financial needs, which are generally in excess of those experienced by United States students. It is not unusual for an international student—and this is precisely Angélica's situation—that after she completed her master's degree, her country terminated all future financial assistance.
The division continues to make efforts to obtain more funds for its international students, while it continues to improve financial assistance for its United States students. The University of New Mexico has reaffirmed publicly its distinctive self-characterization as “a university for the Americas.” It is a significant gesture for a leading research institution, such as the University of New Mexico, to see this issue as a major public policy, so that it is not just one department or one college, but the entire university that is included in this vision: “UNM will demonstrate that diversity and excellence go hand in hand. UNM will be prominent in our hemisphere as a university for the Americas” (University of New Mexico, 2003, p. 11).
Until several years ago there were no financial aid programs, beyond occasional assistantships, for international students at the University of New Mexico. Currently there is only one such program, the Amigo Scholarship for International Students. It is generous insofar as it allows those students who are awarded this scholarship to pay in-state resident's tuition, which is about one-third the cost of regular out-of-state tuition. The only additional funds awarded to a student holding this scholarship is in the amount of $100 per semester. More such initiatives are necessary if the University is to seriously pursue a public policy of international (with a special emphasis on Latin-American) education.
2.4 Integration into the program
The academic unit or department is a relevant community for graduate students. Their academic lives are linked to their units until they receive their graduate programs, and often beyond. Integration is the process by which students–after admission–acquire the knowledge and skills necessary to navigate successfully within their academic programs. The primary agents of socialization and integration for students in any academic program are faculty (Golde, 2000). Nevertheless, peers (mainly advanced students) are influential as a source of tacit knowledge for new students (Green, 1991). All entering students have to learn the norms, practices, requirements, and culture that influence and form life in the academic unit. Angélica’s integration into her academic unit was a process in which her advisors and peers played valuable roles. Every stage of graduate study is accompanied and punctuated by forms, letters, deadlines, etc., that the student must fully attend to before proceeding to the next stage. As tedious and burdensome as this is, there is the consolation that all of one’s peers must also comply. Angélica learned how to cope with these tasks by asking for direction and advice:
(...) I learned from the classmates who were ahead of me and I had to ask them questions along the way and also because my advisor would tell me what I needed to do. He'd say: Now it's time for this, time for that, we already have all these courses, we need to start looking at the number of courses that will lead you to a major, or something like that. But the administrative part is the kind of thing that develops along the way. And in the vast majority of situations, I had to find out by asking. I do not know of anything that is written and that tells you about how to proceed with administrative issues. For example, when is the right time to take the comprehensive exams? When is the right time to write the dissertation proposal? I don't know.
I asked Angélica if she had any recommendations about how to ease this burden. She answered:
My suggestion is that there should be a student manual (student handbook) which states explicitly what needs to be turned in from the beginning until the end of the program. That includes, for example, the number of credit hours, how to choose your comprehensive exam committee, how to choose your dissertation committee, when exactly you are supposed to take your comprehensive exam, when you need to submit your dissertation proposal.
Angélica's observations comported with reality when she discussed the international student's accessibility to important information about conformity with university-wide graduate requirements, deadlines, and departmental policies, procedures and time-lines. Her recommendation that all the information she would need to know from her admission to her graduation should be collected and organized within a single document or publication is now being implemented. Its importance should also be stressed at a well-planned orientation meeting for all new students, so that essential information about the university's and the academic unit's policies and procedures are known to students and faculty advisers alike. Such an arrangement might simplify academic advisement by eliminating time wasted on searching for information already at hand; reduce the student’s anxiety and stress; and most important of all, make the student's integration into the academic program simpler and complete.
2.5 Cultural adjustment
Depending on their preparation for the transition to a new culture, international students usually require a period of basic accommodation to the culture of their host country. Sometimes this process appears to force a student “to squeeze [one’s] identity within pre-established conventions” of the host culture (Luzio, 1998, p. 209). A model of cultural adjustment typically passes through three phases, from contact, to conflict and to adaptation, although not necessarily in that order. There is evidence, also, that some never get beyond the second stage. This process is short for some individuals and longer for others, and their experiences may include assimilation, integration, rejection, or deculturation (Pedersen, 1991). Angélica’s cultural adjustment began when she arrived in New Mexico to pursue her graduate degree. Her recollection of this process is still vivid in her use of details:
When one comes to an unknown country, of course everything is different. You start out by learning how to behave, how to handle your body language. So it is an adjustment to this kind of everyday behavior. And on the other hand, it is an adjustment to the academic life and how to show the knowledge that you acquire little by little and how to put it in words, according to the academic tradition of the country.
For Angélica, developing her social and human relationships on and off campus was central in her process of cultural adjustment and academic development. I asked her what she considered important for survival in the academic world. She answered:
I think it's the interpersonal relations that you can build into your personal and academic life. If you are able to establish a good connection or a good relationship, everything is easier. And in fact, I survived thanks to this, because I have been able to establish a good relationship with people and thus, many of the needs that I've had, I dare say 90% of them, I have overcome thanks to the support that people have given me. When you establish personal relationships, others respond to you and not to the institution or the bureaucracy. People respond because a human connection is established (...) To me, that's the key, communication with people and to be able to establish human relationships.
Angélica was entering a process of cultural adjustment, which is not always organized and manageable, “the adjustment to living in another culture presents a number of challenges. Primarily these are problems of acculturation, isolation, and alienation. But with time these diminish significantly as social networks are established” (Ziegler 1997, p. 2). It requires one to take risks and to trust those whom one at first does not know well. Although the process may seem chaotic and incidental, eventually a pattern begins to evolve. In Angélica’s case she learned how to coexist with the unfamiliar by observing carefully the human activities around her; by gradually establishing a series of inter-personal contacts that gave her the confidence to move along in the process of adjustment. In time some of these contacts grew into mature, interdependent relationships and friendships. It was a blessing for Angélica when some of these friendships were based not only on the academic but centered also in her personal life: the daily routine of going to class, exchanging ideas with fellow students, and developing professional ties with her advisors and, in some cases, with other faculty members, as well. The process of integration benefited Angélica and those around her, and not surprisingly, she completed her doctoral degree.
