International students were told in a meeting Friday afternoon that a new interim advisory system will be put into place while the International Student Programs office works to redefine itself and search for a permanent advisor.

Although this marks the third time in the past two years in which an interim program was set up, international students said they remain hopeful that this one will be successful.

“I’m optimist in the sense that thus far [the administrators] seem like they are trying to make the best of a bad situation,” said Cheryl Lim ’05, a former member of the International Student Advisory Board (ISAB).

Lim participated in a prior search for a new advisor that was unsuccessful in hiring someone for this year.

The new advisor structure is replacing the previous one in which the office of the Dean of the College had assumed the advisor’s responsibilities, a system that dissolved when Freddye Hill resigned as Dean of the College on October 22.

Current Dean of the College Peter Patton, Associate Provost and Dean of Continuing Studies Billy Weitzer, and several other top administrators presented the new interim plan to the seventeen students that attended a meeting and reception on Friday Oct. 14.

Associate Dean of the College Lisa Gates, Dean of the Junior Class David Phillips, and Director of Principle Gifts John Driscoll were among the other administrators who attended the meeting and will be taking part in the interim system.

The advisor system will make Director of Graduate Student Services Marina Melendez ’83 as the “point person” in charge of counseling and designing programs for international students. According to Weitzer, Phillips and Driscoll will help with student programs Gates with organizing administrative support, and Associate Regristrar Sandy Niemczyk with visa processing.

A coordinating committee of all administrators involved will meet monthly to discuss issues relating to international students.

“There hasn’t been a permanent structure in place to serve international students,” Weitzer said at the meeting, adding that a strong interim structure will assist in finding a more workable permanent solution.

Weitzer said he expects the search for the new advisor to begin sometime in February after discussions with the ISAB. A new advisor should be in place no later than next September. He said that the search would not begin right away so that administrators and the ISAB can evaluate and possibly change the description of the position.

Melendez said that this interim time would be used to take the office out of crisis mode so that it can stabilize and begin to reshape itself.

“We must have feedback from students,” Melendez said. “We’re going to make sure we hear from every student who is an international student who wants to say something to us.”

Melendez said she plans to improve winter housing for international students and use the graduate student community to help and advise undergraduates.

The future search for an advisor will follow a previous search that failed to produce an advisor for this year. Patton and Weitzer have attributed the problem with the previous search to the broad job responsibilities of both visa processing and student programming given to the advisor. Weitzer said that candidates were divided between those who prefer the data entry and visa processing work and those who prefer working with students.

During the reception after Friday’s meeting, Phillips said that much of the problem concerned the expanding amount of work involved with visa processing. He said that after September 11, 2001, a new program called Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) was rushed into service before all of the problems with the program were resolved.

“It increased the workload exponentially,” Phillips said, of the SEVIS program.

He also said that keeping up with frequently changing legislation has been another source of frustration for advisors.

“I think we will be able to have a much more focused search because a lot of the people that might find the programming side of this job really exciting don’t want to be tied up doing data entry on the SEVIS side,” Patton said at Friday’s meeting about the division in the job’s description.

Terence Poon ’05, who is member of the ISAB and helped to run international student orientation this year, questioned the relevancy of dividing the position of the advisor into two. He said that because there were many applicants in the previous search, there were people willing to do both programming and visa processing. Poon said he believes that the advisor’s salary should be increased instead.

“The compensation for it has to be commensurate,” he said.

Heather McGann, the former Coordinator of the International Studies Program, had shocked international students when she informed them of her resignation in an email out during the summer of 2002. She had only been in the position for two years and gave no official reasons for her departure.

“Personally for me, I was dismayed [that McGann left] because I had a good relationship with her,” Lim said.

Other students also commented that they were uneasy about the instability her resignation created.

After McGann’s resignation, an interim program, in which Christina Engelsgaard took over the position advisor, was set up for the 2002-2003 academic year.

Students complained about problems last year in processing their Optional Practical Training (OPT) forms, which are needed to allow them to work or intern during school breaks. Several students had to decline internships because of the processing problem.

“Christina came in during a really tough year,” said Lim. “It was tough because she had to learn immigration laws from scratch and they weren’t even a fixed set of laws.”

Lim said that new requirements have made OPT a problem at many schools.

International students have also voiced frustration concerning the lack of variety in the programs designed and available for them. Several students said that there have been few programs except for shopping trips so far this year.

When last year’s search failed to find a replacement, Hill assumed the responsibilities of the advisor while still Dean of the College.

“Dean Hill did a lot for us,” Lim said.

Lim added that Lorna Scott, administrative assistant to the dean of the college, opened her home to international students for a picnic during orientation this year.

Many international students were upset because they were not told about the search’s outcome until they returned to campus.“The frustration was that students were not informed earlier,” Lim said. “The biggest issue was communication.”

Linda Dempah’05, who attended Friday’s meeting, said that the recent efforts by the administration will be successful if they are able to have a permanent advisor by the beginning of next year.

“I guess it’s a good thing that there’s something official, said Linda Dempah ’05.