Welcome to the Bates student’s analysis of the International Student Need Assessment of 2019! This blog aims to share my re-analysis of the “International Students Needs Assessment” conducted in 2019 at Bates College. It also intends to satisfy the requirement of my final project for the DCS204 “Archive, Data and Analysis.”
What is the “International Students Need Assessment”
The “International Students Need Assessment” was an on-campus research conducted from the Summer 2018 to the Spring 2019. The final report identifies that the research was asking the following questions:
- What are the needs and challenges experienced by Bates College international students?
- What are the formal and informal resources available to meet the needs of Bates College international students?
- Which formal and informal resources do Bates College international students access and utilize to meet their needs?
According to the final report of the “International Student Need Assessment,” this research happened under the request of the Bates College Vice President for Campus Life and Center for Global Education. In the 2018, the Center of Global Education was a newly developing department, just launched in 2017. Before, the Off-Campus Studies office was in charge of the study abroad program at Bates. From the Dean of Student’s Office, Dean Reese, the Associate Dean of Students for International Student Program, took care of the international students. Regardless, the research itself was led by Dr. Erika Stump, who is the Bates College Learning Assessment Specialist from the Office of Institutional Research, Analysis & Planning.
This research followed the “Need Assessment Model“, attempting to analyze both formal and informal support that the international students are receiving. These are three big steps of the research.
- Initial analysis of the pre-existing institutional data
- Data collection from ten focus group interviews with the key international student research assistants. (September and October of 2018)
- Survey sent to international students via email (February 2019)
After the survey, the summary of the report was presented to international students who showed interest in the research in the Center of Global Education office in the Winter of 2019. The final version of the full report was published in April 2019, but the school decided to use the report only for internal purposes. Therefore, the international students did not have direct any access to the research since the gathering in the Center of Global Education.
This research, based on my understanding as a student who worked for the revival of the International Student Orientation and the Center for Global Education, is the only in-depth research on international student experiences on campus. It is also the major research that Bates College relies on for its international student policy, according to what I heard from the staffs on campus. I also heard from the past president of the international club that the research was the basis for restarting the International Student Orientation for first years.
So, Do you have the access to the WHOLE Research? (No)
For the information from the focus group interviews is identifiable, I will work with the anonymized survey data that the Office of Institutional Research, Analysis & Planning has provided in this blog. In this survey conducted in the February of 2019, 83 international students responded to the questions. The survey is consisted of seven sections: Goals of College Education; Bates Academic Experience; Bates Experience (my understanding of this section is asking social interaction on campus); Resources; Life After Bates; Strength & Need at Bates; Home Country (“How long have you lived in the USA prior to attending Bates?”) The most common type of questions were 1-5 scale questions. It also had some short answer questions and ‘checking all that apply’ types question.
* For information related to gender/sex & major
I want to clarify that I got the dataset that was merged some institutional data when I received the survey data from the IR office. I received a dataset with each student’s the class year and major, which were matched based on the resource of the Registrar. (In other words, the students did not report the class year or the major.) It also indicated the sex of the students based how the student respond on the Common Application’s binary option (either Male or Female).
Who are you, and why are you writing all these stuff??
Last but not least, I would like to introduce myself, who will be sharing the writing and the data visualization through this blog. I am a senior international student at Bates who participated in the research in 2019 as a junior international student. (I matriculated at Bates College in 2016 and took a leave of absence from the Fall of 2019 to the Winter of 2021.) If you are curious how I identify myself in the U.S.:
- I am an ethnically Korean with a Korean nationality.
- I am racially Asian (East Asian).
- I am a heterosexual cis-woman in the early/mid 20s.
- I am a financial aid recipient, and neither of my parents received a conventional four-year college education
- I am a native Korean speaker and also a multilingual speaker.
- I major in Philosophy (I love my major♡) but also took classes in various field of studies (some in STEM too!). I have background in Computer Science, but this course (DCS204) was my first encounter with data science.
My major reasons of reanalyzing this research are the following
- to understand why I do not feel represented through the original data analysis in 2019
- to find out why barely nothing has change since the research was conducted. (and if there was any change, to study why the change was not tangible)
- to learn about the diversity of experiences among my peer international students and amplify students’ voices
- to support the next round of the International Student Need Assessment.
I acknowledge that the data that I am dealing with are the precious live experiences of breathing students, including my own. For the lack of autonomy and representation was what lead me to this project, my utmost goal is not to harm the voices and dignity of fellow international students.
I want to express my gratitude to Dean Darren R. Gallant for providing all the administrative support for this reanalysis to happen. I am also very grateful to the Office of Institutional Research, Analysis & Planning for anonymizing the data when I shared the purpose of my project.
Please leave in the comments if you have any question about me and the blog!
