Msm Staff Internationalization Workshop: First Virtual Session Held Exclusively For Red Deer College

By Author: Juhi
Total Articles: 4
Comment this article

As the world adapts to a post-COVID-19 reality, higher education institutions are adopting new strategies to attract more international students amid challenging times. Part of the game plan is to mobilize well-trained faculty and staff as an effective resource for internationalization.
Just last May 4th, MSM Vice President-Global Suneetha Qureshi and MSM Higher Ed President Donna Hooker combined their collective experience in the international education sector and successfully conducted an exclusive virtual staff internationalization workshop for Red Deer College in Alberta, Canada.
About the Workshop
In the past five years, Canada has seen massive growth in its international student numbers, with the highest percentage increase coming from India. This presents the need to adjust to the growth and familiarize faculty, staff, and administrators with Indian culture, education system, and the psyche of Indian students to lead them towards a path of success in studying abroad.

MSM has conducted about a dozen workshops of this kind for Canadian institutions. Qureshi personally leads these workshops, ...
... which she and Hooker brought to a virtual platform for the first time.
“One common problem is that we do not know enough about international students who study on campus. We are mostly unaware of their cultural values, what motivates them to study, how we can best transition them, and why they encounter problems in adjusting to the environment, their local interactions in the campus community, and even academic integrity,” she said.
Understanding & Assimilation
By identifying several insights into the current Indian education system, the presenters explained why it was important to understand where the students were coming from. Many cultural differences contribute to the challenges faced by both students and staff in a new system.

At the MSM workshop, crucial tips were shared to ease this process when on-boarding and helping international students assimilate faster and better. Hooker also facilitated interactive sessions that tackle the Canadian perspective, offering tips and advice for campus personnel to better know and understand Indian students. These help create better outcomes in academics, student integration in the local community, and academic integrity, to name a few.

Getting teachers to share their experiences with international students – as well as reinforcing the need to make an effort and know their students better – helps build a positive atmosphere in the campus community.

MSM has been working closely with partner institutions in Canada, USA, UK and Europe to help them achieve their recruitment goals in different markets. With a team of over 250 professionals in 17 countries and 4,500 affiliated education agents across the globe, MSM has develop a highly effective performance-based model to provide customized solutions in digital marketing, lead generation, market entry strategy and expansion, brand development, finance and account management, staff recruitment and local representation.
Learn more about the MSM-RDC partnership:
https://msquaremedia.com/news/on-its-way-to-university-status-red-deer-college-launches-plan-to-recruit-more-international-students/.