Want student-first admissions processes? Look to your student services peers
“When we hewed closely to student needs and perceptions… the international student and scholar community flourished”
Ryan Fleming is a client director with IDP Connect. In this blog, he discusses the importance of institutions paying attention to students’ needs and perceptions when considering new policies or processes.
About nine years ago, I embarked on my international education career by joining the international student and scholar services (ISSS) team at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio. Though I didn’t realise it at the time, my years in Kent would prove formative for the way I approached a subsequent career lane change into the private sector.
At Kent, my role was equal parts strategic and operational: build the systems that would support and nurture students while simultaneously counselling them personally within the framework of that system. For my teammates and me, international orientation involved equal parts planning and delivery: figuring out what students needed to know, when and how they needed to know it, and then being the ones to tell them ourselves.