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IEP closes International Student Advisory Council

Starting from 2019 Summer quarter, the International Education Programs Office (IEP) has decided to close one of their two student leader boards, International Student Advisory Council (ISAC). Meanwhile, another student leader board, Global Engagement Team (GET), will remain a student leadership board and stick to their roles of supporting both domestic and international students. 

The two teams have been in the same office, working on objectives related to international students. The difference between them would be that while the International Student Advisory Council was mainly focused on listening to concerns and comments from the school’s international students, Global Engagement Team’s role is mainly focused on setting up events for helping international and domestic students getting to know each other. 

The decision was made as the IEP office needed to save it’s budget. “The main reason for the closure of International Student Advisory Council is due to budgetary constraints and overlap with other programs in the International Education Program Office” according to Richard West of the International Education Programs Office, who is currently the advisor of Global Engagement Team and former advisor of International Student Advisory Council. Richard was the person who was in charge of this decision.  As the two groups are working on separate missions, the Global Engagement Team wouldn’t be taking over the International Student Advisory Council’s missions, and the members of Global Engagement Team won’t be changed by this decision. The International Education Programs Office stated that later it might come up with a team with asimilar role of being the messenger of the international students when needed, but it is likely to come with a different name, plans and members.

The impact of the closure to the school’s students and faculties would be that the International Education Program Office would be with less direct gathering of feedback from the international students, so the international students would be with less chance of explicit representation of themselves. However, as there are other ways that international students can connect with the school and the International Student Advisory Council was a small team of five people, the International Education Programs Office said that they don’t believe this decision brings a big negative impact to the school and the students. 

There are several student leadership boards on campus, and while most of them are funded through the Associated Student Council (ASC), some are funded by different offices of the school. As the two boards were funded through IEP Office, the decision to close the board was done by the IEP Office. The student board and government will stay in current status unless there is further modification made by the summer of next year. IEP Office and Global Engagement Team will keep focusing on helping the international students create more interaction between domestic and international students through activities such as assisting international student orientations, and keep communicating with the school’s other student boards. They will also keep organizing the Conversation Partners Program, just as they did before the defunct of International Student Advisory Council. Although International Student Advisory Council is gone, Global Engagement Team, which consists of five to six people, will keep focusing on events that are related to establishing chances for international students to network with the school’s community, which will be noticed during the quarter at the school on a board between the library and info central. 

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