It’s just too much: Narratives of international educators navigating COVID-19

• In Event: Highlighted Session: New Issues on Research and Study Abroad and International Students

Proposal

Purpose
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, international educators have been on the front lines supporting international students, ensuring university compliance with changing federal policies, and assessing risk related to travel and global engagement. While media and associations reported on challenges these administrators experienced (see Fischer, 2022; Toner, 2022; West, 2021), most research related to COVID-19 has focused on students, and not university staff. The purpose of our study is to address how international educators who work with international students navigated the pandemic and what they foresee as the future of international education. Our research questions are:
• What have been the experiences of international educators during COVID-19?
• How did international educators perceive their professional work and wellbeing shift throughout the pandemic?
• What do international educators perceive will be the pandemic’s long-term impact on international education?

Framework
Our study is framed using secondary traumatic stress and compassion satisfaction. Secondary traumatic stress (STS) is defined as “the stress resulting from helping or wanting to help a traumatized or suffering person” (Figley, 1995, p. 7) and reflects individuals experiencing “symptoms as a result of repeated exposure to traumatized individuals through their occupation” (Lynch & Glass, 2020, p. 1044). STS has been used to understand the experiences of individuals in helping professions such as education (see Caringi et al., 2015; Lynch & Glass, 2019).
Research has elucidated primary stressors and trauma experienced by international students during COVID-19 (see Author, 2021; Lin et al., 2022; Song et al., 2021). Although the international educators in our study also experienced primary stressors and personal trauma during COVID-19, our focus on their professional work and engagement with international students led us to ground our study in STS.
In addition, we frame our study using compassion satisfaction (CS) defined as “satisfaction with and positive feelings of helping, as well as their sense of self-efficacy related to helping” (Christian-Brandt, 2020, p.2) alongside having a supportive workplace (Conrad & Kellar-Guenther, 2006). CS mitigates negative outcomes of STS like burnout and compassion fatigue (Ormiston et al., 2022). STS and CS support our inquiry on the professional experiences of international educators during COVID-19 and the ways their university and work with international students have impacted their wellbeing.

Methods
We used narrative inquiry to understand participants’ experiences during a specific time and context (COVID-19), with a past (professional journey pre-pandemic) and a future (perspectives on the future of international education) (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000). We recruited participants from four states with high numbers of COVID-19 cases and enrolling large numbers of international students: New York, Massachusetts, California, and Michigan. We interviewed 31 participants who worked in international students and scholars offices during COVID-19, and each Zoom interview lasted approximately 60 minutes.
Our data analysis utilizes Clandinin & Connelly’s (2000) three-dimensional narrative inquiry space: temporal, personal-social and place; and thus, we read the individual transcripts with attention to institutional context, chronology, and professional attributes of participants. Then, using Dedoose, transcripts were analyzed for narrative connections, tensions, and patterns across participants to re-story the data into a grand narrative (Josselson, 2011).

Findings
The grand narrative comprises four themes reflecting stories of navigating the pandemic as international educators: (1) Struggles with Being the First to Know About COVID-19, But the Last to Be Heard (2)

Stresses of Doing More with Less in Constantly Changing Crisis and (3) Centering Students and Maintaining Hope for the Future. Due to space limitations, we present one theme in this proposal.
Stresses of Doing More with Less in Constantly Changing Crisis
As universities began shutting down in the early time of the pandemic and international students were making the difficult decision whether or not to return home, many participants discussed their work becoming a 24-hour a day commitment:
We had our office open seven days a week. And we were here until 10 or 11 o'clock at night. We have a place in our office where students can store their belongings. We had people dropping off their belongings before racing to the airport…it was chaos, but we were trying to be here as much as possible for the students. And that's where they were getting a lot of their information - from us. They didn't know what was going to happen and they were looking to us.
Further, given that their work is so heavily connected to immigration policy and compliance, participants discussed the stress of “having no margin for error” despite constantly changing federal mandates impacting international students. As one participant noted, "It takes all of our brain cells literally every day to try and re-engineer the advising we have to do for our students and our scholars it seems on a daily basis.” However, retaining staff was difficult given high turnover, furloughing, and lack of workplace morale. One director shared that when the pandemic hit, his university offered an early retirement package and so he lost three out of nine staff members by January 2021 to retirement. He continued to lose staff including, “a study abroad advisor decided that she was just exhausted. The morale on the campus was very low because of the workload…. And [we’re] not making up [for it] - no hiring [is] going on.” Thus, international educators were expected to navigate one of the most tumultuous times in recent history with fewer staff, greater student need, and more complex immigration policy.

Significance
COVID-19 ushered in the Great Resignation, which has hit higher education as faculty and staff across campuses are leaving at high rates (Morales, 2022; Seltzer, 2022). Our study demonstrates that international education is not immune to the challenges associated with the Great Resignation, which puts the field in a vulnerable position into the future. Understanding how international educators experienced the pandemic and continue to navigate a “new normal” connects to the CIES 2023 sub-theme #4 (Critical Reflection on the Society and the Field of Comparative and International Education) as our findings can inform the Society and higher education institutions of ways to better support international educators and ensure their success and wellbeing into the future.

Authors

• Chrystal A. George Mwangi, George Mason University

• Christina W Yao, University of South Carolina

• Gaurav Harshe, University of South Carolina

• Amanda Corso, George Mason University