Writing Support for International Graduate Students: Enhancing Transition and Success 9781138483415, 9781351054980

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
Preface
1 Introduction
Study Design and Data Collection
Coding and Theming of Data
An Ecological Framework: International graduate students must explore a large, complex ecology of resources to learn how to write.
The Scholarly Context: Issues about international graduate students often call for the reset button.
2 Understanding Politics: Affecting Policy
The Politics of International Students
Empowering/Overpowering International Graduate Students: Students who feel powerless cannot learn and communicate new knowledge.
Why Pay Attention to Political Economy: Geopolitical forces shape international graduate students’ experiences and needs.
Lessons from Other Places, Times: Experiences from elsewhere, and the past, offer important lessons.
Turning Knowledge into Action: Understanding big-picture issues can help us counter their influences on academic support.
Policies, Ideologies, and Response
Ideologies Out There: There’s an abundance of problematic assumptions about international graduate students.
Beliefs and Assumptions among Students: Writing support should involve educating international graduate students about writing.
Avoiding Ideological Traps: Established beliefs among writing professionals also often aggravate challenges.
Conclusion: “Reflective Encounters”: A reflexive approach can help the most.
3 Shifting Focus: An Ecological Approach
Academic Transition and Learning to “Write”: Learning to write is a complex, multidimensional process for international graduate students.
“Who? Me?” Diversity of International Students: International graduate students are not just ESL students.
Programs versus Ecology: Formal writing support programs are only a node in the network for international graduate students.
Conclusion: Rethinking Universal Design: Differentiated support is often necessary, as well as useful.
4 Fostering Agency through Effective Support Practices
Exploring New Communities: Writing support should facilitate socialization for international graduate students.
Finding a Voice: Graduate-level writing requires finding a voice that make sense in a new country and culture.
Writing Support and Professional Development: Professional communication support is particularly useful for international graduate students.
Hacking Support and Resources: International graduate students (must) use creative strategies to learn how to write.
Conclusion: Pedagogical Applications and Implications: Writing pedagogy and support practices must be designed to foster agency.
5 Advancing Advocacy through Programs and Leadership
Writing Support and/as Advocacy: Advocacy-driven writing support best helps international graduate students.
Distributed Advocacy: Writing support should be designed as part of a broader network of support and advocacy.
Advocacy at the Center
Advocacy at the Gate
It Takes a Village
Students as Advocates: International graduate students’ own advocacy and engagement are important resources.
Conclusion: Programmatic Applications and Implications: Writing professionals can provide leadership to academic support networks and to their institutions.
6 Conclusion: Reflections on an Emerging Field: Writing support for international graduate students could be a catalyst for advancing the discipline.
References
Index

Citation preview

Writing Support for International Graduate Students

“Writing Support for International Graduate Students: Enhancing ­Transition and Success is a must read for everyone involved in writing instruction and research, graduate program administration, and international education. Through his extensive on-the-ground research at over twenty universities, Sharma has brought to light the very best ­approaches to supporting international graduate writers while also developing a theoretical framework that highlights student agency. If taken seriously, this book will be transformative to the ways in which universities across the Unites States and beyond welcome and support international graduate students.” —Dr. Michelle Cox  Director, English Language Support Office, Cornell University Past Chair, Consortium on Graduate Communication “The book provides a nuanced and in-depth exploration of how international students learn to write and communicate, with program models, support strategies, and resources that make a real difference. The interviews and practical examples will make you rethink how your program or institution approaches international student writing development and what it means for international students to ‘find their voice’ in written assignments and verbal presentations.” —Dr. Chris R. Glass, Associate Professor, Old Dominion University “Writing Support for International Graduate Students vividly captures the numerous challenges international graduate students are likely to encounter in the course of writing their way into the university, and provides an array of critical interventions faculty can call on to ease the transition.” —Dr. Juan C. Guerra, ­University of Washington at Seattle Using qualitative data collected from more than twenty universities across the US, Writing Support for International Graduate Students describes and theorizes agency- and advocacy-­ driven practices, programs, and policies that are most effective in helping international students learn graduate-level writing and communication skills. It uses compelling narratives and cases to illustrate a variety of program models and support practices that fostered the students’ process of academic transition and success. Employing an ecological framework, the book seeks to advance academic conversation about how writing scholars/­instructors and program administrators, as well as other academic service professionals working with this student body, can formulate policies, develop programs, and implement practices that best help these students grow as writers and scholars in their disciplines. Shyam Sharma is a scholar of Writing and Rhetoric who teaches at State University of New  York, Stony Brook, USA. His research and publications, which have appeared in flagship publication venues of Writing Studies, focus on writing in the disciplines, international students and education, cross-cultural rhetoric and communication, and new media.

Routledge Research in Writing Studies

Writing Center Talk Over Time A Mixed-Method Study Jo Mackiewicz Writing Support for International Graduate Students Enhancing Transition and Success Shyam Sharma

Writing Support for International Graduate Students Enhancing Transition and Success Shyam Sharma

First published 2018 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2018 Taylor & Francis The right of Shyam Sharma to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data CIP data has been applied for. ISBN: 978-1-138-48341-5 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-351-05498-0 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by codeMantra

Contents

Preface

ix

1 Introduction

1

Study Design and Data Collection 5 Coding and Theming of Data 10 An Ecological Framework 14 International graduate students must explore a large, complex ecology of resources to learn how to write.

The Scholarly Context 18 Issues about international graduate students often call for the reset button.

2 Understanding Politics: Affecting Policy 37 The Politics of International Students 40 Empowering/Overpowering International Graduate Students 42 Students who feel powerless cannot learn and communicate new knowledge.

Why Pay Attention to Political Economy 45 Geopolitical forces shape international graduate students’ experiences and needs.

Lessons from Other Places, Times 50 Experiences from elsewhere, and the past, offer important lessons.

Turning Knowledge into Action 53 Understanding big-picture issues can help us counter their influences on academic support.

Policies, Ideologies, and Response 59 Ideologies Out There 62 There’s an abundance of problematic assumptions about international graduate students.

vi Contents Beliefs and Assumptions among Students 66 Writing support should involve educating international graduate students about writing.

Avoiding Ideological Traps 70 Established beliefs among writing professionals also often aggravate challenges.

Conclusion: “Reflective Encounters” 75 A reflexive approach can help the most.

3 Shifting Focus: An Ecological Approach 82 Academic Transition and Learning to “Write” 85 Learning to write is a complex, multidimensional process for international graduate students.

“Who? Me?” Diversity of International Students 97 International graduate students are not just ESL students.

Programs versus Ecology 104 Formal writing support programs are only a node in the network for international graduate students.

Conclusion: Rethinking Universal Design 113 Differentiated support is often necessary, as well as useful.

4 Fostering Agency through Effective Support Practices 125 Exploring New Communities 128 Writing support should facilitate socialization for international graduate students.

Finding a Voice 132 Graduate-level writing requires finding a voice that make sense in a new country and culture.

Writing Support and Professional Development 138 Professional communication support is particularly useful for international graduate students.

Hacking Support and Resources 143 International graduate students (must) use creative strategies to learn how to write.

Conclusion: Pedagogical Applications and Implications 147 Writing pedagogy and support practices must be designed to foster agency.

5 Advancing Advocacy through Programs and Leadership 158 Writing Support and/as Advocacy 162 Advocacy-driven writing support best helps international graduate students.

Distributed Advocacy 168 Writing support should be designed as part of a broader network of support and advocacy.

Contents  vii Advocacy at the Center  168 Advocacy at the Gate  171 It Takes a Village  173

Students as Advocates 176 International graduate students’ own advocacy and engagement are important resources.

Conclusion: Programmatic Applications and Implications 181 Writing professionals can provide leadership to academic support networks and to their institutions.

6 Conclusion: Reflections on an Emerging Field 191 Writing support for international graduate students could be a catalyst for advancing the discipline.

References Index

209 225

Preface

Since I had landed in the city of Louisville in Kentucky about a month earlier, along with my spouse, in fall 2006, I had been feeling as if my ability to navigate any physical space and social system had somehow become impaired. From finding transportation for getting to essential places to figuring out a way to call home, and from understanding basic academic concepts and practices like “course registration” to reading about “tutoring” at the writing center (where I would start working), every step in the transition process had been overwhelmingly new. But when classes began, I had started feeling more comfortable. As I walked into the third and final class meeting of the second week, I was actually feeling jubilant about a grand achievement I had just made, albeit largely out of luck. Having learned about something called the Student Housing Office earlier that week, I had visited it and been offered an on-campus apartment where a student had just vacated a unit (a rarity at that point in the semester, I was told). Moving into a building that was well furnished and located right across from the Writing ­Center where I had started working as a tutor was a relief for an international student who came from the Nepalese capital city of Kathmandu, an overcrowded place where basic amenities were becoming increasingly inaccessible after a violent conflict for a decade and dramatic internal migration. So, having taken care of accommodation, transportation, work permit, and the like, I was truly ready to enjoy the university as an MA student and teaching assistant in English and Writing Studies. It was when the professor of one of the three graduate seminars I was taking started describing the instructions for the first major assignment that it dawned on me that I hadn’t really thought about academic transition. Here I was, having studied English all my life and taught it for more than a decade, unable to understand an assignment about a language item in the context of teaching writing (I had done the reverse before but that didn’t help). The instruction seemed simple on the surface: to pick a topic from two different handbooks, compare how the authors approached it, and develop one’s own best way of explaining it to students. The idea of making my own pedagogical decision by assessing different teaching materials and methods makes sense today; in fact, I think that it is a great

x Preface exercise for tutors and teachers of writing. But it seemed pointless to me at the time. “Why make a big deal about how two books describe something” I asked a classmate, “instead of explaining it as the author does in the text you use?” Where I came from, curriculum meant textbooks and pedagogy usually meant lecture. My colleague seemed to better appreciate the task: he seemed to not only have a better grasp of stylistic and rhetorical nuances in his primary language (though I probably had more grammatical knowledge), his familiarity with academic concepts and the conventions and genres of writing also accorded him much greater confidence. My confusion didn’t seem to make sense to him. I did my best and submitted a draft, which repeated a few rather vague points about the importance of “consulting different kinds of teaching materials” (which the assignment instruction already assumed). And I hoped that the professor would help me revise substantially. To my surprise, her comments focused instead on linguistic and stylistic idiosyncrasies in my writing, challenges she apparently wanted to help me overcome first. I could appreciate the underlying generosity even then, but I remember being upset about her focus on the deviations from standard edited academic English in my South Asian variety and perhaps some errors. Even as the course moved on to increasingly complex readings and assignments, the professor’s approach to helping me remained the same, and I continued to find it discouraging. I didn’t want surface errors to obscure the more significant challenges that I was facing, such as with understanding the discourses, genres, contexts, and research skills that I needed for writing more successfully at the graduate level, in a new discipline, and in a new society and culture. Luckily, the same professor remained, throughout my time at the university, my go-to person for any questions about education, society, and culture. Her willingness to mentor me in the broader process of my academic transition was far more useful than the (unproductive) attempt to help with my odd wordings and syntaxes in my writing, which I knew would gradually disappear if I didn’t lose the desire to learn and confidence to keep writing in the first place. Six years later, when I started working as a faculty member at another large public university, I kept coming across international graduate students who faced even tougher challenges than I had. Many of them had good command of the English language but were daunted by the type and level and variety of writing skills they were required to demonstrate, often right upon arrival. Others were confused by social and cultural issues undergirding research and scholarship in their disciplines. Some were lucky enough to have faculty advisors who both had the skill and time to guide them with their writing, but most learned the hard way over time. Meanwhile, research and scholarship on graduate-level writing support rapidly emerged, shaping and shaped by innovative graduate writing and communication support programs around the country.

Preface  xi While I embarked on my research for this book, a robust professional organization, called the Consortium on Graduate Communication, was being established. Topics about international graduate students frequently appeared in this community’s conversations. I was truly fortunate to be able to learn from the most knowledgeable and dedicated scholars and educators in this community; I couldn’t expect a more fortuitous time to do the research and write this book. I am deeply grateful to many colleagues, including Michelle Cox (Cornell University), Steve Simpson (New Mexico Tech), Talinn Phillips (University of Ohio), Jim Tierney (Yale), Gigi Taylor (University of North Carolina at Charlotte), John Swales and Christine Feak (University of Michigan), and many more in this inspiring professional community. The result of a three-year-long research project, involving visits to twenty universities of various types and sizes across the United States and data collected from many others, this book primarily speaks to teachers, scholars, and administrators of Writing Studies who provide or want to develop support with (or related to) writing and communication skills for international graduate students. Beyond discussing themes about effective programs and practices, including political and social issues affecting international students, the objective of this book is to offer new perspectives toward new conversations. So, the book may also be relevant for administrators and staff members at writing centers, other writing programs and language/communication support units, and graduate schools, as well as to graduate directors and faculty mentors of international graduate students. Because the book addresses broader issues, such as global mobility and geopolitical dynamics, political and ideological challenges, and issues of national interest, institutional leaders might find it useful for policy discussions about international students and internationalization of education. In addition, while I focus on writing support at the graduate level—situating that process primarily in the context of academic transition—scholars in other fields, such as applied linguistics and student affairs might also find some of the chapters relevant for their academic research and programs. The book could be useful for other professionals working with international graduate students, such as in international student centers, student recruitment offices, counseling service, academic advising, the library, and graduate schools (especially if they provide or facilitate academic transition support to the students). I could also imagine international students benefiting from this book. This work was possible because nearly 200 individuals, including students and a variety of academic professionals, gave me their invaluable time and trusted me with their stories and perspectives. While my research protocol requires me to anonymize contributors, my gratitude and memory honor the precious gifts of ideas from every kind interviewee who agreed to participate in this study. I cannot sufficiently

xii Preface describe my gratitude to them. Nor can I sufficiently thank many academic colleagues—­such as Uttam Gaulee, Michelle Cox, Beth Boehm, Michelle Rodems, Steve Simpson, Krishna Bista, Shakil Rabbi, Dickie Selfe, Iswari Pandey, Suresh Canagarajah, and many others—who helped me by suggesting or connecting me to potential interviewees and facilitating my research visits. I am truly indebted to my mentor and colleague, Gene Hammond, who not only read rough drafts and gave me invaluable feedback but also kindly listened to my often-rambling chapter outlines and theoretical frameworks as I developed them. As if his guidance and prodding weren’t enough, Gene also provided resources needed for this ambitious undertaking. Because of Gene, my research project became far larger than it could otherwise be, and this book far better. I am also grateful to Jilleen May and Adam Schultheiss, two extremely kind colleagues in my department’s administration, as well as to Kristina Lucenko and Roger Thompson for both administrative and intellectual support. I can only pay it forward to honor my colleagues’ generosity. I am most grateful to my family—first, to Umber and Ava who have been waiting, far too long for their age, for proper weekends and evenings, with a pile of books that they want to read to me, and me to them. Then, most importantly, I owe the successful completion of this project to Soni Adhikari, my partner and colleague. Just the number of ways in which Soni has supported me along the way is itself staggering, her patience and understanding so humbling that I cannot try to describe in any language. I hope you find something useful in this book, and I thank you for reading it.

1 Introduction

Since our class entered college, the faculty has introduced … A ­ rnold’s Latin and Greek prose composition…. Now you know probably the many disadvantages in which I labor aside from these additional ­studies…. I therefore request you to send me up the keys to those [texts]. (Yung Wing, a Chinese student at Yale College, 1851; Yale University library archive) The Chinese students fail out of the program. We have never graduated the Chinese students…. I think that the challenge is that few people in the program understand that these students are shell shocked, and [instructors] don’t understand the [educational backgrounds] that these students came from. (Interview with an instructor at a California university, February 2016)

The first quotation above is from a letter sent from Yale University in 1851 by the first Chinese student to graduate from a U.S. college, named Yung Wing, to a former classmate named Albert Booth, who had moved to New York City. Brought to Connecticut four years earlier by a ­Christian missionary, Yung Wing had completed high school in ­Hartford before joining Yale College. At the end of the first year in college, he wrote to seemingly the only person he could turn to for help with purchasing the “keys” to two new Composition textbooks that he had just found out were extensively used by other students. The contents of the letter powerfully illustrate the multiple layers of challenges that students face when they pursue education in a new country and culture away from home, challenges that often extend far beyond their studies but affect their academic experience and success more than they would at home. The second quotation is from an interview with an instructor at a business school in a public university in California who was responding to my question about what kinds of writing-related academic support was provided to international graduate students at her institution. The instructor’s response reminded me that international students still face some of the same challenges that Yung Wing did in the 1850s.

2  Introduction While today’s international students in most American cities can find more company, are better treated by peers and professors, and can find more resources, they still encounter additional “disadvantages” that aggravate the challenges of reading, writing, and other aspects of pursuing higher education in a foreign country. Besides “additional studies” for improving and adapting their linguistic and communicative skills, they must tackle challenges related to immigration laws and political climate; deal with often overt prejudice outside campus and subtle stereotypes that obscure realities about them even within; and overcome financial, emotional, cultural, and social challenges that affect them in ways that are often not visible to those who haven’t gone through similar experiences of international education. Yung Wing’s process of learning to write involved acquiring significant proficiency in the English language, the aspect of learning to communicate in a new place that is most visible to others. He had started learning English before he came to Hartford in 1847 from Macao, with a missionary named Samuel Brown, continuing it at a preparatory school named Monson Academy and through the mentorship of Brown’s friend, Charles Hammond. When he joined college, learning to write further demanded significant command of rhetorical conventions and communicative practices in a new culture and society. He evidently did all of that well. Unfortunately, as historical accounts of this international student indicate,1 even after he had become proficient enough to win much-coveted composition contests, he was never accorded the same treatment and understanding as his fellow domestic students because perceptions about his language and communication were shaped by his identity as a foreigner. In a book on the history of international students in the United States, Bevis and Lucas (2008)2 note that Yung Wing, even though he was engaged in student clubs and the debate team, was considered a “loner who had little social interaction although he was a common sight around campus” (44). Generally speaking, Yung Wing’s experiences reflect a critical but often overlooked dimension of foreign students’3 educational journey: how their status as outsiders affects almost every aspect of their education, including their learning and their performance of academic writing. As we can see better from a distance today, Yung Wing wrote the letter during a period when, even after his graduation in 1854, fluctuating political relations between China and the United States (including such events as the Chinese ­Exclusion Act of 1882) seriously undermined his passionate but frequently unsuccessful, 58-year attempt to be an academic and social ambassador between the two nations. My field notes from visiting 20 universities across the United States, between 2014 and 2017, as well as an analysis of the interviews that I conducted with 44 international graduate students, reveal striking patterns of challenges about the process of learning to write and communicate

Introduction  3 that are unique to international students in general and also distinct from those of their undergraduate counterparts. Interviews with three times as many scholars and academic professionals who worked closely with these students strongly reinforced the same patterns. In individual interviews and focus group conversations, students shared powerful stories about how that process was shaped and affected by a variety of challenges and realities, both in kind and degree, beyond what domestic graduate students generally encounter. For example, a doctoral student in pharmacology at the University of Louisiana, Monroe, whom I call “Vijay,”4 said that he was “completely lost” during class discussions when he first arrived because he couldn’t make sense of the rhetorical moves made by the professor and his classmates. He struggled to remain motivated due to social isolation and continued culture shock and almost had to discontinue his degree when his grant-based funding ended (given his visa status). He did not know about writing support before he tried it and then found it inadequate. Eventually, he learned to create and use his own ad hoc networks of support toward eventual success. As with many other students I interviewed, faculty and staff members who paid attention to what Vijay was facing as an international student better understood political and ideological forces/realities against which he learned to academically succeed (the subject of Chapter 2 in this book). Their attention to Vijay’s true needs helped faculty advisors and academic support professionals develop better perspectives for supporting international graduate students (the subject of Chapter 3). The key factor that enables international students to more quickly and effectively learn and use writing skills for navigating a new academic culture and for negotiating their intellectual positions is the design of support that fosters their own agency to explore the ecology of resources at their disposal (Chapter 4). This agency best thrives when support is driven by advocacy for the students (Chapter 5). While the experiences of individual students I interviewed were unique, and the issues discussed by the academic professionals I interviewed were contingent on their distinct institutional contexts, my research identified significant correlations between seemingly extraneous forces and students’ process of learning to write, interactions that deserve exploration in the context of graduate-level writing support for these students as international students. Thus, I view “writing support” as a means for helping students to learn and use writing skills in the broader context of academic and professional “communication”—in the same sense as the emerging professional community uses the term “graduate-level communication.” Furthermore, in the case of international graduate students, I consider learning to write as a complex puzzle requiring a number of linguistic, rhetorical, cultural, and social skills that they must gather from a variety of places and processes, formal and informal, visible or invisible to writing support professionals.

4  Introduction The demographic that this book focuses on is the more than half a million foreign students at the graduate level in the United States (ICE, 2017), 5 roughly a third of whom are new to American academic culture when they first arrive from around the world every year.6 Whether permanent residents, refugees on any status, or undocumented students, students with prior education in other countries are typically excluded by the term “international” due to a definitional focus on immigration status; however, the thematic scope of this book includes all students, in any visa/immigration status, who received all or nearly most of their pre-graduate education outside the US.7 The academic professionals8 I  interviewed for this book included writing scholars and researchers, instructors of writing and of language who taught writing skills, faculty advisors and graduate program directors in other departments, administrators and staff members in various academic support units, graduate deans and deans of specific schools, and a few institutional leaders above the level of deans. These professionals encompassed the broader ecology in which the students learned graduate-level writing and communication skills. The goal of this book is not to present a full and objective picture of graduate writing support for international students in the United States, but to describe and draw theoretical insights from the findings of a research project that studied what made a number of selected programs9 most useful for foreign students, further exploring how these students use additional support and resources available in the larger ecology of their institutions. My objective was also not to present program profiles10 since I did not study the programs long-term or extensively; my focus was to analyze data from across institutions in order to identify important issues about programs and pedagogies while also discussing policy implications. While I revisited some institutions, conducted follow­-up interviews remotely about others, then gathered additional information about all programs from secondary sources, I used the data collected principally to explore themes emerging from reiterative analysis of the data. Similarly, the narratives that I have chosen for discussing student experiences are only meant to be illustrative of salient themes that I identified from analyzing the data, rather than being considered case studies of students. I also use themes emerging from perspectives shared by academic scholars and professionals working with international graduate students as the basis for discussing broader geopolitical issues that shape and influence international education. So, I encourage readers to pay attention to the situatedness of the programs and support practices, themes in students’ experiences, and perspectives shared by academic professionals who worked with the students. I hope this book will add to and help foreground additional topics and themes about international students in conversations about graduate-level ­writing support in the United States and, hopefully, beyond.

Introduction  5

Study Design and Data Collection Between the spring of 2014 and summer of 2017, I conducted 168 interviews, of which 12 were follow-ups. Among them, I transcribed 157 interviews for coding and analysis, excluding 11 interviews that didn’t provide considerable context or focus vis-à-vis my project objective. Among the interviews included, four were with groups of students with an average of six participants, four more involved faculty and staff members with an average of six participants, and five were with two academic professionals each. The total number of individuals involved was 191. Most of the interviews were conducted at 20 university campuses,11 and 22 of them were conducted at six academic conferences (for the most part early in the process); seven of the initial interviews were by phone/videoconferencing; two were by email, with participants who requested that as the medium. Including the institutions of participants whom I interviewed virtually or at conferences increases the number of universities studied to 35. Most of the follow-ups were conducted by phone, and new participants were interviewed when revisiting four of the 20 visited institutions. Research consent was acquired by asking interviewees to sign them before interviews done in person; they were secured by email in other cases. It would be too complicated to describe all the overlapping roles of participants, but to focus mainly on the primary roles, 16 of the 157 interviews were with writing program or writing center directors (including six graduate writing support specialists); nine associate directors or coordinators of writing programs; 32 writing instructors, including seven ESL specialists (19 of whom also did research); 19 directors/coordinators of academic services (such as English language support, international teaching assistants support, library support, student success centers, and centers for teaching and learning); 27 staff members in the academic services just mentioned; six directors of international student offices and seven academic liaisons/coordinators who worked in or with international centers; 22 faculty members from other disciplines (one retired), including six heads of academic programs or departments; four university administrators (vice presidents and vice provosts); 11 deans (including five graduate deans); 44 international graduate students (11 of them graduate teaching assistants); and five members of the community who were informally involved or had experience of providing academic support for international students. In addition to students and academic professionals, two interviewees were editors of biology journals at a publishing house. Their interviews were included in the data set as offering some additional perspectives. Besides formal interviews with professionals in nonacademic positions (with research consent), such as with one housing program assistant director, one director of “global connections” community on campus, and one officer from a state department of education, a number of informal conversations have also indirectly informed this study.

6  Introduction The research for this book was designed by using a “constructivist” version of Grounded Theory approach to data collection and analysis. This specific method as described by Charmaz (2006)12 provides a set of “systematic, yet flexible guidelines for collecting and analyzing qualitative data to construct theories ‘grounded’ in the data themselves” (2). Adapted from earlier Grounded Theory scholars, including sociologists Glaser and Strauss (1967),13 who originally developed this methodology in response to the dismissal of sociological research by many at the time as lacking objectivity and reliability, the strategies described by Charmaz fit my research purpose because they allowed me to “construct theories through [my] past and present involvements and interactions with people, perspectives, and research practices” (10). Furthermore, the Grounded Theory method not only helped me start “with an area of study [in mind] … allowing the theory to emerge from [analyzing] the data” (Strauss & Corbin, 1990; 12),14 instead of starting with “preconceived theory in mind.” Charmaz’s version of Grounded Theory also provided a variety of more specific affordances, including allowing me to draw on relevant scholarship, to be clear about my identity and positionality as a researcher, and to approach data without the rigidity and jargon associated with other developments in the methodology. This approach acknowledges that subjectivity and ambiguity in study design and data interpretation are inevitable in all research, and it helps researchers use that awareness self-consciously and productively. ­Regarding a researcher’s own past experiences and perspectives, Charmaz notes that prior knowledge can be helpful in sensitizing the grounded theorist, encouraging writers to provide readers with a theoretical framing as an anchor and to show how one’s Grounded Theory “refines, extends, challenges, or supersedes extant concepts” (169). Knowing that researchers are “part of [their] constructed theory and [their] theory reflects the vantage points inherent in [their] varied experiences, whether or not [they] are aware of them” (149) helped me to be alert and to use my positionality and experience meaningfully rather than unrealistically try to disown it. This research paradigm also assumes that discourses, beliefs, and institutions are constructed and shaped by social and political forces and conditions and that they are also complex and can be interpreted differently (Cresswell, 2007; 20).15 The constructive approach is also flexible about using and adapting relevant tools and strategies of research. I have used additional guidelines from Saldaña’s (2009)16 Grounded Theory coding manual and relevant strategies from other Grounded Theory scholars—to try not to force the findings from a broad and complex data set into rigid and jargon-filled structure or process. Finally, constructivist Grounded Theory method acknowledges that the researcher’s work is shaped by the discourses, beliefs, and values of his or her discipline and profession. It doesn’t require rigidity about the relationship between new findings and current scholarship on the

Introduction  7 subject. As Charmaz (2006) suggests, I delayed most of my literature review (rather than avoid it, as some earlier Grounded Theorists recommended) until completing data analysis—revisiting prior study of relevant scholarship after developing themes and arguments from my own data set. As I situated my analysis and theory about writing support and about the academic success of international students in the context of research in Writing Studies, I further drew on relevant scholarship from related disciplines that I studied in order to enhance theory-­building about seemingly extraneous issues from data analysis. In short, using data to illustrate the themes identified from analysis was most fitting and productive for the nature and development of my research. For this research project, I selected institutions that I wanted to visit and also participants with whom I solicited interviews by using a combination of the snowballing method—which involved contacting new participants based on recommendations or references from interviewees and knowledgeable professionals in the field—and theoretical ­sampling—which involved collecting additional data based on findings of data analysis “aimed toward theory construction … not for population representativeness” (Charmaz, 2006; 12). As Charmaz emphasizes, “grounded theory strategy of obtaining further selective data [in order] to refine and fill out … major categories” of themes and theories in data analysis must emerge from analysis of prior data and also prompt the collection of additional data (12). Using this approach does not require a researcher to start with representative sampling for objectivity or ­coverage; instead, researchers can use theoretical sampling, which means “seeking and collecting pertinent data to elaborate and refine categories in [one’s] emerging theory” (96). Accordingly, I selected new sites and participants based on theoretical insights emerging from coding, memoing, and comparing themes from earlier data. By allowing me to add new programs and to focus on what seemed like the most effective support practices and policies, the approach helped me refine my questions, identify new connections and gaps in the data set, and decide what else I must try to learn. And by helping me to purposefully select new institutions and participants, it helped me enrich my data and the emerging theory from it (Rosenthal, 200417; Charmaz, 200618). Letting data collection and analysis shape each other was productive (and even necessary) because my objective was to make sense of particular practices in their contexts in order to identify meaningful patterns, so I could draw useful lessons for other contexts. The flexibility of research design made possible by the constructive approach of Grounded Theory uniquely suited a study about international graduate students. I started the first stage of the research with informal conversations and then conducted semiformal interviews with roughly a dozen writing scholars at various conferences and a few more on the phone. I used those preliminary conversations for developing research

8  Introduction questions19 for what had been intended as a small-scale project based on visiting a few universities. After visiting the first three universities and conducting initial coding of the data gathered from them, though, it was evident to me that the complexity of the subject—especially the interactions between writing-specific issues and broader political, ideological, and policies issues regarding international graduate students—required more data than I had initially expected. I repeated the process with four more major stages of data collection, with data from three to five new sites each, using new findings to fine-tune the research question and methodological strategies, following major guidelines from Charmaz’s (2006) constructivist Grounded Theory approach. This approach was very useful in identifying sites and participants and for analyzing their experiences and perspectives regarding what worked best in their own different contexts. With such a flexible research methodology, I could increasingly focus on what seemed to make particular writing support practices as effective, particular programs as successful, and particular policies as productive. The broad research question that prompted the initial design of the research project behind this book was “How can writing programs best support international graduate students?” As expected in Grounded Theory-driven research, that general and straightforward research question also evolved, prompted by the need to address the entanglement of the core questions about learning to write with a variety of broader issues. That is, while I continued to focus on writing support, as the study developed, I adapted my research design to explore issues interwoven with writing support as well. Most significantly, I situated the research more squarely in the context and process of academic transition: How do international students learn to write and communicate as part of (or influencing and influenced by) their academic transition to American graduate education, and how can writing support be most effective in that context? This focus also naturally opened the door to macro-level issues that productively reshaped the study. Throughout my research, student interviewees prompted me to view their perspectives and their stories and experiences as crucial to helping writing programs create and improve support. This shift in perspective seemed necessary in order to better address many gaps that I found be­ rofessionals20 tween current conversation among the majority of writing p and the perception and use of current support by international graduate students. Similarly, as the study developed, analysis of interviews with international students and other participants increasingly showed that the students’ academic transition was shaped and affected by political forces and ideological issues that many academic support professionals seemed unaware of. So, the broader perspectives, as identified in the research early on and expanded or complicated by more data, include: the political climate and its effects on international students; policy

Introduction  9 ambivalences engendered by political and economic forces; the diversity of international graduate students’ identities, needs, and proficiencies that tend to be overlooked; disciplinary ideologies about language and writing; and gaps in support programs created by dominant beliefs about these students or endemic to the current structure of ­A merican graduate education. As I brought these perspectives to bear on discussions of findings about writing support, especially in the context of international graduate students’ academic transition, I broadened the scope of my review of scholarship, following emerging public discourse about these students in the news media by setting up Google news alerts with varying keyword combinations related to my research questions. The Grounded Theory approach to this study allowed me to ask questions about writing support and Writing Studies in institutional and social contexts. How could writing scholars and professionals help international graduate students use the education we provide them about writing to best utilize support and resources from their own disciplines, other relevant academic support programs, and the networks and communities of support that they create? What theoretical perspectives could we develop by studying the dispersal of support and resources— including the dynamics of power and ideologies, beliefs, and motivations behind that dispersal—in order to formulate more productive policies, programs, and practices? How could we use our professional expertise to enrich that broader ecology of support and to provide leadership to those who support these students? Indeed, how could that leadership create opportunities for interventions and contributions to institutional missions about, and broader challenges of, graduate education for all students? Support for international graduate students was more effective wherever they were not lumped together with their undergraduate counterparts and/or with domestic graduate students. So, I also asked: How could emerging graduate writing and communication support best address the needs and challenges of international graduate students that may sometimes be distinct from those of their domestic counterparts? How could that support be adapted to the process of international students’ transition into American academia, as they come to understand and to navigate through the society and culture and to succeed as writers and scholars in their disciplines? The flexibility and evolution of the design and focus of my research was most useful when creating and adapting interview questions, especially given that my research participants were in a wide variety of roles and positions and in a variety of institutions. All interviews were conducted as semiformal and semi-structured, with initial questions in the following areas: (1) academic backgrounds and experiences of transition to U.S. higher education with a focus on learning to write (in the case of students), (2) observations about the needs, challenges, and strengths of international graduate students (for other participants), (3) effective

10  Introduction policies, programs, practices for learning, teaching, and promoting writing skills among international graduate students at their institutions, (4) observations about writing support and discourses about them, in the academic disciplines on campus, and (5) personal or professional experiences, motivations, and aspirations related to learning academic writing/­ communication or facilitating that learning. Based on preliminary research, these questions were adapted to the context of the institution, its writing program, and specific interviewees, further fine-tuning the questions during interviews. The last three questions, for instance, were adapted to fit the position of interviewees and what they seemed to know most about. During my campus visits, I was able to observe institutional and teaching/learning contexts, and to learn about related support beyond formal writing programs, including from often rich conversations beyond formal interviews with my hosts. I took extensive field notes during and after visits, also saving relevant documents and information shared by participants. These resources were carefully reviewed for contextual information and insight while coding and analyzing interviews.

Coding and Theming of Data Preliminary codes were created from summary transcripts after each round of university visits and after individual interviews in the case of phone interviews. Interviews were fully transcribed after completing most of the data collection and after each set of interviews gathered thereafter. In vivo, process, and initial coding of complete transcripts was done during that process. Field notes were reviewed alongside close reading and annotation of interview transcripts in order to mark and give preliminary names to major issues and perspectives shared by the interviewees and included in the field notes. Transcripts were printed out in order to circle key terms, a process Saldaña (2009) calls “pre-coding” (16), also using those words as in-vivo codes (or actual words of the interviewees). Working on paper at first gave me “more control over and [a sense of] ownership of the work” (22). While preparing for initial coding, sentences were underlined or marked with large marginal brackets for identifying significant segments of the conversation, using summary or comments on the margin about “what is going on” in the data. Subsequent rounds of coding were done to generate focused, axial, and theoretical coding (42), as broader categories and themes for the chapters and the entire book gradually emerged. The process of “analytic memoing” (Saldaña, 2009; 32) helped to “document and reflect on … coding process and code choices; how the process of inquiry is taking shape; and the emergent patterns, categories, themes, and concepts in [the] data—all possibly leading toward theory” (32). It also helped to identify significant details about writing programs and their institutional contexts, perspectives discussed by academic

Introduction  11 professionals, and experiences shared by students. Annotations were added to the margins of the roughly 1,350 printed pages of transcript (categorized by institution) until they were transferred and organized in a Microsoft Word table where more extensive data interpretation could be done. As Charmaz (2006) recommends, researchers should “remain open to all possible theoretical directions indicated by their readings of the data” (46) during the theming process. So, emerging codes and themes, in the form of circled/underlined words in the text and margins, were reviewed carefully and iteratively during the next two stages of focused and axial coding in order “to pinpoint and develop the most salient categories in large batches of data.” Thus, “theoretical integration [began] with focused coding and proceed[ed] through all [the] subsequent analytic steps” (ibid.). Initial coding was open-ended in that it tried to delineate significant data segments (rather than using word-by-word or sentence-by-sentence coding that some Grounded Theory analysts use), as well as to identify key codes and thematic possibilities. Focused coding was done to develop “more directed, selective, and conceptual” codes (Glaser, 1978). In the words of Charmaz (2006), “[A]fter you have established some strong and analytic directions through your initial … coding, you can begin focused coding to synthesize and explain larger segments of data” (57). Axial codes were added to the coding table during this stage, which helped to create categories and subcategories where clear patterns started emerging (see Charmaz, 2006; 61 for a discussion about the usefulness of axial codes). While axial codes helped to compare how different interviewees in the same and different institutions talked about the same issues and vice versa, they also helped to “apply an analytic frame to the data” (62). The axial codes also helped to identify themes about what worked best across institutions, as well as what was distinct to their particular contexts. To give an example of the aforementioned process, when analyzing a focus group interview with relatively new students, I noticed and marked a pattern of terms like “confused,” “alone,” “silent,” and “they didn’t like me.” When closely reading the transcript of another group conversation among more advanced students, I noticed and marked “realized,” “independently,” “described my situation,” and “was appreciated.” This contrast occurred in the data from across institutions and was therefore worth developing into a theme about transition: international graduate students’ writing challenges seemed to be a function of often rapid adjustment and learning process, so writing support would seemingly have the greatest effect during and if situated in their academic transition. Similarly, recurring contrast in codes about transition suggested that new students tend to focus more on negative experiences and frustration than their more experienced counterparts, as well as blaming themselves and others for feeling silenced or passive. So, interviews with new and advanced students were

12  Introduction put in two groups and the in-vivo codes about them were compared side by side. This further helped to develop “axial” (or comparison) codes, such as “gaining awareness,” “seeking independence,” “developing hacks,” and “taking action.” Toward creating broader and more theoretical interpretation of the in-vivo and axial codes, similar terms were combined into “focusing” (or blended) codes, such as “knowledge of context” and “action for growth.” Throughout the process, particular caution was used about researcher positionality because using this method requires researchers to use their own perspectives “as representing one view among many” (54) and letting new findings challenge and refine their knowledge of the subject and interpretive tools and methods. Memo-writing was done throughout the data collection and analysis processes, in the form of notes and plans about how the data could be analyzed and what issues seemed worth focusing on (Charmaz, 2006; 72); it then continued with annotating interview transcripts in their margins. But the most extensive memos were written as annotations of data segments in a Word document table (see Liamputtong & Ezzy, 2005) where columns contained: interviewee names and pseudonyms, institutions, programs/units, interviewee position 1, interviewee position 2 (for sorting by different roles), selected data segments (for selective coding), and memo annotations (for generating themes). The final c­ olumn was split when necessary, beginning with in-vivo and open codes, ­gradually developing axial and emergent codes, and ultimately categories and themes (corresponding to chapters and sections). While drafting the book, I used an additional column (added after completing all stages of coding) for referring to key sources in the scholarship. Organizing annotations helped to create “transitional link[s] between the raw data and codes” (Saldaña, 2009; 17), also later guiding the development of open and emergent codes, with emergent codes further helping to develop broader categories and themes. They helped to “catch” the thought process, especially to “capture the comparisons and connections, and crystalize questions and directions” of the research (72). Besides showing codes and themes alongside data segments and coding/theming memos, the table served a crucial sorting purpose (see Ruona, 2009), bringing together the same codes and themes, or putting the data back in the original order by interviewees (data segments from whom were numbered for this purpose). As Saldaña (2009) notes, “when major categories are compared with each other and consolidated in various ways, you begin to transcend the ‘reality’ of your data and progress toward the thematic, conceptual, and theoretical” (11). Accordingly, the table was used for reading the selected data segments alongside the codes and categories that were developed beforehand, each time with the purpose of further “theming,” or producing theoretical claims by drawing inferences from the data and finding support for them. In order to develop chapter and subchapter titles,

Introduction  13 the data was reviewed as comparisons and contrasts were made with the broad themes in the analyses of interviews among different participants and institutions. After reviewing the codes and themes, a few telling cases, anecdotes, and details were finally selected from the transcript and field notes and used for illustrating discussions of the themes. In identifying and using narratives for illustrating major themes and theories, I followed Creswell’s advice to “develop a ‘story’ that narrates these [finalized] categories and shows their interrelationship” (240). The theories presented through or alongside narrative and discursive reporting of findings are abstract constructs created out of broad patterns of themes in the data (Saldaña, 2009; 139). Theoretical arguments about diversity, transition, agency, and advocacy were similarly drawn from persistent themes—or “central categories” (163)—in the coding and analysis of interviews among students and the people and programs that supported them most effectively. Similarly, the argument that understanding political and ideological issues affecting international graduate students improves writing support is a conclusion drawn from discussions among writing and other professionals who recurrently emphasized this theme. Likewise, theming—or the process of finding increasingly broader and thematically consistent patterns among the codes—from students’ narrative and reflective accounts about “learning to write” pointed to one key term that best encapsulated the stories of struggle and success: “agency.” This term best shared semantic values with a range of codes and categories identified and developed from analyzing the data. Chapters were developed around the emerging thematic categories, going back and further refining the focusing codes as the thematic bases of subsections for that chapter. Data was triangulated by including interviews, field notes about programs and institutional contexts, relevant documents and artifacts gathered during data collection, information about the programs and initiatives from websites, and professional presentations and published scholarship in some cases. Questions were asked about the same issues with participants in different positions within the same institutions and programs: students, their faculty advisors, writing professionals, staff and administrators in a variety of academic service units, university administrators, and members of the community who worked with international students. This triangulation of sources was facilitated by the sorting table used for organizing and reorganizing codes and themes, along with segments of interview transcripts, relevant field notes incorporated within analytical memos, and notes for relevant citations after completing data analysis. By using this sorting tool, responses about the same program or issue were referenced from different interviewees at the same institution, which also helped to triangulate data and deepen my understanding of their ideas and experiences. As broader themes emerged from specific-to-general codes, the table allowed me to indicate

14  Introduction what theme best belongs to what chapter and section. The process helped to shuttle among different data inputs and emerging themes/theories, also allowing me to ultimately connect my findings and theorization to relevant scholarship, following what Luckerhoff and Guillimette (2011) call the helical path of Grounded Theory approach.

An Ecological Framework In the iterative process of gathering and analyzing data from different universities, the people, programs, and institutions that I was learning from and about became increasingly diverse. The constructivist Grounded Theory approach to gathering and analyzing data provided flexible strategies for understanding and discussing writing support at different institutions by learning from the “experiences [of participants] within embedded, [often] hidden networks, situations, and relationships” (Cresswell, 2007; 65)21. Yet, I increasingly felt that I needed a methodological theory to even better account for contextual complexities of programs and practices and the variety of experiences and perspectives shared by participants. As I completed analyzing the data that I had gathered, I found it useful to adopt the “ecological orientation,” a philosophical view of the contexts, participants, and process of research that acknowledges their complexity and fluidity. Considering that the ecological view of research is consistent with Grounded Theory methodology’s focus on the use of data analysis for theory-building, I adopted it while developing thematic outlines for chapters and the sections within them. In a classic article titled “The ecology of writing,” Cooper (1986)22 reflected on the emerging theoretical frameworks for describing writing and its programs and pedagogies, which seemed after some time to become more dogmatic and less capable of describing writing in all its complexity. To address that challenge, she proposed “an ecological model of writing, whose fundamental tenet is that writing is an activity through which a person is continually engaged with a variety of socially constituted systems” (367). She similarly viewed the writing researcher as an ecologist who “explores how writers interact to form systems…. made and remade by writers in the act of writing” (368), which is “both constituted by and constitutive of these ever-changing systems, systems through which people relate as complete, social beings” (373). Cooper’s view of learning to write is also relevant to understanding how a group of learners like international graduate students explore the complex new ecology of higher education in a new country and the complex, often hidden, networks of support and resources for learning writing and communicative skills. So, using the ecological view about writing made it easier to articulate the theoretical inferences that I had made while analyzing data about the dispersed and rich networks of support systems

Introduction  15 and practices in the different types and sizes of institutions, as well as the decentralized context and structure of graduate education and the very nature of learning to write. This view was also useful for me to best understand the political and ideological forces influencing international education and the ad hoc solutions that students created by hacking and going beyond established support systems. In addition to adopting Cooper’s (1986) ecological view of writing, I also borrowed insights from writing scholars who have further advanced the theory and applied it to different areas, including theory and methodology of writing research, program building and sustainability, and discussions about our discipline and profession. Writing in the discipline’s flagship journal College Composition and Communication, Fleckenstein et al. (2008)23 presented a substantive framework of writing research using ecological theory. In this book, I draw on the interpretive perspectives provided by Fleckenstein et al.’s article to explain findings related to diversity, fluidity, and change in international graduate students’ identity as they interact with and negotiate power and relationship with people and programs across institutions. I found it particularly useful to view the students, and the people and programs supporting them, as “actors, situations, and phenomena … [that are] interdependent, diverse, [and] fused through feedback” (390). Fleckenstein et al. posit that an ecological approach to research directs the researcher to focus on relationships, including their own to the rest of the system, thereby fusing the “knower, the known, and the context of knowing” (395). Such an orientation, they argue, “emphasizes the need for research diversity: multiple sites of immersion, multiple perspectives, and multiple methodologies within a particular discipline and research project.” Such an orientation also “destabilizes that monoculture [of traditional research], requiring researchers to consider who is empowered to ask questions and solicit answers, who can be the object of study, who can be authorized to analyze the data, and who can conduct and report research” (401). The ecological view of research as described by Fleckenstein et al. facilitated my thinking about the research project at the level of exigency, responsibility, and rigor (404). It also helped me better capture how international graduate students, a highly diverse group of learners, explored and interacted with new systems and cultures as they learned to write and communicate as part of larger and complex processes of academic transition and intellectual and professional growth as writers and scholars. Analyzing and theming the data about the many types of writing support programs and initiatives also required a flexible view about those programs. In this regard, I have been inspired by various writing ­scholars, such as the authors who contributed to an edited collection by Reiff et al. (2015).24 This work uses ecological views as the authors present ­“profiles of programs in context.” While I focus more on practices, ­strategies, dynamics, and policies of writing support, I build on Reiff et al.’s

16  Introduction perspectives on how writing programs are situated, interconnected, and interactive within the broader ecology of their institutions. The collection has sought to foreground theoretical scholarship in Writing ­Studies that “works from an inherently ecological perspective, envisioning writing as bound up in, influenced by, and relational to spaces, places, locations, environments, and the interconnections among the entities they contain” (3); such perspectives were helpful for interpreting graduate-level writing and writing support as involving “discursive and material ecologies” where complex networks of people and relations change and respond to political and economic forces, institutional and programmatic contexts, and the processes and dynamics of learning and support. In addition to building on concepts of “interconnectedness, fluctuation, complexity, and emergence” to understand how writing programs were ­institutionally situated and developed support for international graduate students, I considered the notion of “third spaces” to account for how the students seemed to develop much of their writing skills. This helped me to update the research and to analyze data with an awareness of how graduate students seek out university resources in such spaces (Grego & Thompson, 200825; Soja, 199626), outside their departments and formal writing programs, and how international graduate students do so more often, even developing their own underground ecologies of resource and support networks. I also borrowed ecological perspectives when theorizing how international graduate students were taught writing skills within and across the academic disciplines. In WAC for the new millennium: Strategies for continuing writing-across-the-curriculum programs, McLeod et al. (2001)27 urge writing scholars to take a long-term and big-picture view of WAC: “How will WAC survive? How will it grow and change—what new forms will WAC programs take, and how will they adapt to some of the present program elements and structures in the changing scene in higher education?” (4). Responding to calls like the above, writing scholars have conducted national and international surveys of WAC/ WID programs (e.g., Thaiss & Porter, 2012)28 and are developing theoretical models and perspectives (e.g., Melzer, 2013). 29 Cox, Galin, and Melzer30 have also illustrated theoretically grounded models for development, management, and sustenance of WAC programs. Building on sustainability methods drawn from a Canadian sustainable development mission and the “Imagine approach” developed by Bell and Morse (2008), 31 the scholars propose an integrative WAC model that emphasizes understanding campus context, planning by gathering support and setting goals, developing and implementing projects, and leading to manage growth and change in campus writing culture. An ecological view of writing programs helped me to address a conundrum about growth and sustainability of writing support programs in relation to the need to empower international graduate students to explore the larger

Introduction  17 ecology of support and resources across and beyond the institution. I recommend that writing programs adopt an advocacy approach and focus on writing education in order to foster students’ epistemological agency, helping them to find and use the support and resources they need, and empowering them to tackle challenges affecting the process of developing identity and voice as writers and scholars especially as they learn to participate and negotiate with power and ideology within their disciplines and beyond. I argue that this approach could also help writing programs provide leadership to their institutions, especially toward addressing emerging challenges of graduate education created by local and global influences of economic and geopolitical forces. In addition to building on this scholarship in Writing Studies, I draw on ecological perspectives from other disciplines. In particular, I adapt ideas from the “socioecological approach” to research in education as described by Krasny, Tidball, and Sriskandarajah (2009).32 Reviewing prior scholarship on “social and adaptive learning theories,” the authors illustrate the relevance of that literature in educational research, especially because it complicates “systems notions of unpredictability, emergence, and interactions” (1), which they find inadequate for describing more situated and adaptive modes of education. Besides being robust systems in themselves, writing support programs might have to continue (and I argue will benefit from) taking a participatory approach to the support they provide students and the role they play in their institutions. In the case of international graduate students in particular, I found the students themselves making it particularly necessary for writing support to participate in, contribute to, and, to the benefit of all parties, take leadership: writing professionals have the expertise for providing critical support for higher education, but graduate education also demands a more sociological approach that is described in the scholarship on educational reform. The students I interviewed essentially described their experiences of developing writing skills and their identity as scholars in their disciplines through “sheer number of interactions … multiple pathways … [relying] on flexibility and adaptive capacity…” (2). Understanding those interactions could prompt writing programs and professionals to develop support practices that help to promote situations where, “through ongoing interactions with the social and ecological elements of the larger system, students [can] develop the capacity to play a meaningful role in shaping their own future and that of their larger community” (2). It is productive to view international graduate students’ writing skills as emerging from their interactions with a complex network of professionals and from exposure to a variety of communicative opportunities within and beyond the university, and their development of identity and voice as writers and scholars as a process of participation and negotiation with power and ideology within their disciplines and beyond. W ­ riting support programs can be most sustainable and effective if they are built with a deep

18  Introduction understanding that encompasses global, national, social, and institutional realities affecting these students. Finally, ecological perspectives are useful for theorizing educational policy at all levels. I was inspired to theorize data, as have been numerous scholars of higher education policy, by Weaver-Hightower (2008)33 and Banathy (1992), 34 as I further developed perspectives about change and sustainability of writing support programs and practices. Weaver-­ Hightower, for instance, shows how the “ecology metaphor helps us to conceptualize policy processes as complex, interdependent, and intensely political…. [It] is more appropriate than one of stages and circuits because the interactions of environments, groups, and events capture better the fluidity of processes” (154). I explore major issues about international graduate students with this view of politics and policy in higher education, including political and policy ambiguity about international students, disciplinary ideologies and gaps/tensions affecting them, context and process of their social/academic transition/­adjustment, and diversity and complexity of their identity and experiences, in the next chapter.

The Scholarly Context International students have been a hot topic not just in the news but also in academic scholarship for at least a few decades; so, there is abundant literature that scholars, program leaders, and instructors of writing can draw on. But most of the scholarship does not focus on international students as international and instead views them merely as English as a second language (ESL) students, albeit with changing terms. This section foregrounds certain issues in the scholarship while I argue that there is a need for explicitly and substantively focusing on international graduate students as international, especially in the context and process of their academic transition when they (begin to) learn graduate-level writing skills in the United States (or in similar contexts), both generally and within their specific disciplines. Given the significant influence of “market” forces upon international graduate students, I also draw insights from within and beyond Writing Studies for asking and exploring new questions and issues relevant for a transition-focused inquiry. In contextualizing my work, especially given that an extensive review is outside the scope and objective of this book, I include a few reviews already done by other scholars during the last two decades on the more than four decades of relevant scholarship. Visually put (Figure 1.1), while most international students are “second language”35 users of English (e), and while there are other overlaps that this simple visual doesn’t represent, viewing international students only in terms of their language identities and proficiencies (nn) leaves out many other issues about them as international or foreign students (f), especially the fact that most of them came from academic cultures and

Introduction  19

nonnative English speakers (nn) domestic students (d)

native English speakers (n)

international students (f)

“ESL” students (e)

Figure 1.1  I ntersections of identities/identifiers.

Development of graduate-level writing skills & knowledge x

Academic & disciplinary socialization

y

A

Adjustment to US higher education, plus social, cultural z & professional contexts shaping the discipline

Figure 1.2  I ntersections of experiences.

systems that were different from what they encounter here. For example, native English-speaking students from Australia or India may face challenges of academic transition and social/cultural adjustments that a focus on their language identity or proficiency could obscure. In fact, that focus may also obscure the distinction between graduate and undergraduate international students. So, to put it visually again, the intersection from which I seek to borrow insights from existing scholarship in order to discuss specific issues could be represented by the area marked “A” in Figure 1.2. For instance, all graduate students in a given American university may face shared challenges as they develop skills and knowledge required for graduate level writing (x) and in a shared context and process of academic socialization into their discipline (y). In addition, international students must also learn about and adjust to the general culture and system of U.S. higher education and the social/­cultural and professional contexts in which the academic discipline is situated (z). Many writing scholars tend to focus on the intersection and find similarities in the abstract or justify a “universal design” for pragmatic reasons, but when the objective is to understand international students and their experiences and needs, looking at the intersection “A” does not have

20  Introduction to entail overlooking the rest of the entire circle “z.” However large we deem the intersection to be, international graduate students’ experiences of learning to write is shaped by a large number of issues within that shaded circle on the right. Compared to the conventional focus on the undergraduate level (or of an complete lack of distinction) in both scholarship and practice, I also highlight here the need to focus on writing support for international graduate students. Discussing the results of an international survey of graduate writing support included in an edited collection by Simpson et al. (2016), 36 Caplan and Cox (2016)37 state that although there is a substantive body of related scholarship, there is still limited scholarship on “systematic graduate communication support, support that moves beyond the individual initiative to the program level, as well as research that moves beyond a single institution to understand how graduate student communication is supported across institutions nationally and internationally” (23). The authors state that a more comprehensive “snapshot” is necessary in order to “begin to outline the state of the field,” in the same way as comprehensive studies of writing across the curriculum (WAC) at the undergraduate level were done in the 1980s to help understand WAC as a national movement, as well as to establish it as a field in its own right (23).38 At most institutions I visited, I found graduate writing support to be quite “fragmented,” as Caplan and Cox also reported in their chapter; this fact was also corroborated in the interviews I conducted with a number of writing scholars39 whose institutions I didn’t visit. Caplan and Cox write that while this fragmentation may generally be a function of the decentralized structure of graduate programs in the case of many countries, it also means that the scattering of support across institutions could make it difficult for students to utilize it, for support professionals to connect and coordinate existing programs, and for scholars to assess the status of the field. Focusing on the graduate level showed that both the dispersal of writing support on campus and the fragmentation of scholarship are even more significant in the case of international students. I found that international students significantly magnify the fragmentation of support on campus, especially because of the diversity of their educational backgrounds and proficiency in language and communication and of their needs and strengths as writers. Given the increasing mobility of students across the world40 and host institutions’ efforts to diversify international enrollment, that diversity continues to increase. Changes and fluctuations in macro- and micro-level political and economic forces affecting graduate education and international students also shift student demographics and change the ways in which they use available support, affecting existing programs’ ability to effectively support all students. The ways in which international students exploit existing support programs and resources are also changing in light of technological advancements.

Introduction  21 Attitudes toward international students seem to be changing among faculty mentors and others working with them, creating new dynamics of mixed messages about language and writing in and across disciplines. For reasons like the above, available scholarship only provides us ingredients necessary to understand and address certain issues. Creating the kind of snapshot that Caplan and Cox have called for will require more research and more perspective-building, including drawing on scholarship from outside the context of graduate writing support, such as the scholarship on multilingual and translingual issues, transnational writing, international education, and even student affairs and other academic and cocurricular fields of support. With the aim of developing more systematic writing support for all graduate students, and also for developing a more consolidated view of available scholarship, Caplan and Cox call for further research focusing on a variety of questions, including what role intensive language support programs play, how writing centers address especially the needs of second-language writers, whether graduate communication support designed for all students can serve the needs of different linguistic, cultural, literacy, and educational backgrounds, and how dispersed but collectively rich support initiatives can be researched and shared more broadly in the interest of professionalizing the field of graduate writing and communication support. This book responds to the calls for more research in the field at large by focusing on international graduate students (i.e. in the sense of foreign students, rather than non-native or second-language speakers/writers). In the same edited collection’s introductory overview of “new ­frontiers” in graduate writing support and program design, Simpson (2016a) noted that even though scholarship on graduate-level writing support for all students is relatively new, research and scholarship (as well as programs and practices) focusing on international and second-­language graduate students have been developing for several decades now. ­Emphasizing that “graduate writing program growth is outpacing the research” and adding that “practitioner knowledge that has been generated is valuable,” Simpson also called for more scholarship on “how the parts that we have developed fit into a more meaningful whole” (9). ­Specifically, he invited the professional community to “better account for how graduate student experiences and needs change with the economy and with the structural changes to graduate education that are underway”; to broaden the lens from the currently excessive focus on international students (paying more equitable attention to other minority students); to further explore how the current writing support mechanisms that are “tactical, point-of-need, and spread across an entire campus” can be “sensitive to the quirks of the advisory relationship [of students with their disciplinary instructors in graduate education] and complement— not compete with—advisor feedback”; and to add scholarship that explores cross-campus partnerships and cross-departmental responses

22  Introduction toward creating a “more holistic look at how graduate student needs are spread throughout the university system” (9–11). As I highlight with a brief outline of the wide-ranging scholarship in the rest of this section, there has indeed been much focus on international students. However, for the reasons that I indicated, past scholarship may not be adequate to guide the emerging professional community toward new frontiers. On the one hand, only a certain amount of that scholarship has looked past issues of language. Even though many scholars have used language as a window from or vehicle with which to explore other issues about providing communication and writing support to foreign students, more substantive shifts in focus seem necessary, especially as a mainstream trend nationally, beyond at select institutions. On the other hand, if we must focus on the economic issues and institutional contexts that ­Simpson has highlighted, new research is necessary for better understanding those issues, as they evolve, regarding international graduate students. More significantly, we need to pay attention to changing geopolitical and global/local sociocultural conditions and changes in order to further understand how they affect graduate education and the academic support for international graduate students. Dramatic shifts in their countries of origin, educational backgrounds, and other aspects of identity and experience may aggravate the fragmentation of support as discussed by Caplan and Cox (2016),41 challenging writing researchers and practitioners to help make support programs, practices, and policies more flexible, varied, and responsive to the complexities and changes. As Simpson reminds us in the concluding chapter of the edited collection, “Essential questions for program and pedagogical development,” graduate-level writing doesn’t fit neatly into academic departments as currently conceived, posing challenges that can only be solved through partnership and strategic collaboration and advocacy. The research I conducted showed that paying attention to the intensification of the dispersal of support by international graduate students can prompt change and innovation in support programs for all graduate students—even though this is not to suggest that we must seek a teleological path toward a unitary and assimilationist support system for all. The point of somewhat elaborately discussing some of the recent and broader calls for further research on graduate-level writing support is to highlight that this is an emerging field whose scholarly conversations are developing new dimensions. As Simpson (2016a) aptly puts it, the “emerging study of graduate writing programs has been fast and exciting” (9), and I believe that it offers tremendous opportunities to writing professionals who are interested in graduate education. The field needs, and is gaining, more substance and complexity in its scholarship. In that context, I seek to situate this book in current scholarship about graduate writing support not so much by finding “gaps” to fill or issues to critique as I do to add new issues and stories, to offer new questions and

Introduction  23 perspectives. I have drawn on past scholarship throughout this book whenever relevant; however, it would not only be difficult to do justice to all prior conversations related to every finding based on the data but also unproductive to try to do so. So, I have paused less and less to engage past scholarship, instead focusing on data analysis and theorizing, giving more weight to emerging programs and practices being developed by practitioners, many of whom are experts in graduate writing support for international students. I have tried to create “rhetorical rigor by articulating careful connections between the context of the study and the groundedness of [my] own position” (Fleckenstein et al., 2008; 412)42 in relation to my research participants while interpreting their experiences and perspectives with as situated an understanding of their contexts and stories as possible. Ultimately, the book’s objective is to illustrate the unique and powerful roles that writing professionals can play when they put on the hat of specialists supporting international graduate students, as well as to highlight the need and value of awareness and of cultivating broader perspectives and interest in the changing local and global dynamics of higher education vis-à-vis international graduate students. Scholarship that directly and substantively addresses the challenges of writing faced by international students at the graduate level goes back several decades. In fact, concerns about teaching writing to these students, especially the challenge posed to writing teachers by the language proficiency of increasing numbers of foreign students, can be found in journal articles going back to the middle of the last century, such as in workshop summaries from the Conference on College Composition and Communication not long after it was founded in 1949. The University of Michigan’s English Language Institute, which was established in 1941 on the foundations of English language courses for foreign students that were taught as early as the 1910s,43 seemed to have started supporting these students with language and communication skills. Within the scholarship about language and writing support, Matsuda (2006)44 provides a “situated historical perspective” on how writing support for second-language writers (in general) historically emerged within, and often diverged from, Writing Studies (see Matsuda, 1999),45 noting that second-language writing did not suddenly become an issue in the 1960s (20), as it might seem when viewed from the lens of Writing Studies’ own professionalization. There is no research yet on how universities have been supporting international graduate students with communication and writing skills outside of formal writing programs. But among my interviewees, a few former international students (now professors) who had first come to universities in Michigan, Florida, and Illinois in the 1960s and 1970s said that while they didn’t use formal writing support, the informal help they received from the broader campus community for dealing with

24  Introduction academic “culture shock” involved support with writing in one way or another. They not only received such help from advisors at the international center or, more often, from Christian missionaries who served at the periphery of universities and often within, but they also repurposed academic success tutoring, language-focused help at the writing center, and so on, for learning graduate-level writing skills. I hope my research contributes somewhat to the study of the informal ecology of writing support for international students; there is great need to advance scholarship in this area, especially focusing at the graduate level. Within Writing Studies, some attention for graduate-level writing support for international students—however problematic the views about these students from today’s vantage point—seemed to appear in the mid 1970s. For instance, the author of a 1976 CCC article titled “Wanted: More writing courses for graduate students” (Struck, 1976)46 discusses challenges posed by increasing numbers of foreign graduate students, an increase he related tongue-in-cheek to the rising demand for oil from the Middle East (the students weren’t as profitable). While Struck encouraged instructors to develop and teach more graduate writing courses, he warned that “foreign students can be a problem” because of their faulty idioms, misused prepositions and articles, and unintelligible English that “can make class discussions grind to an embarrassing halt.” The author concluded that “[t]he best answer to this problem is to admit only students who have lived for several years in countries where English is the major language” (96). The calls to teach graduate-level writing courses and the attention to international graduate students seem like good news in themselves. The number of foreign students had risen from just over 3,000 studying in a handful of colleges in 1904 to 30,000 students from 126 countries and enrolled in 1,354 institutions in 1968 (Bevis & Lucas, 2008; 5), and then to 200,000 in the academic year 1976/1977 (which was 1.8% of total enrollment of about 11 million students in the country) (IIE, 2016).47 Fortunately, histories of international students in the U.S. show that a variety of social and academic support programs, as well as professional organizations focusing on these students, had developed by the 1970s. As the numbers had continued to rise in response to economic and political conditions like the postwar economy, the ­Sputnik crisis, and then the emergence of an international student market (exceeding half a million in 1999/2000 and a full million in 2015/2016), international students were also gradually an important topic of pedagogical conversation and research, including within and around writing programs, even though they primarily focused on language proficiency. Nevertheless, the focus on graduate international students remained thin in Writing Studies. Historical reviews based on database search on “international graduate students” reflect evidently more multidimensional approaches to supporting foreign students in disciplines like sociology and education than in Writing Studies.

Introduction  25 Substantive scholarship focusing on writing support for international students at the graduate level started appearing in the 1980s, as indicated in a review by Leki, Cumming, and Silva (2006).48 ­“Research into the 1980s and early 1990s on L2 [English as a second language] graduate students writing examined these students’ bid to join target disciplinary communities through conformity to disciplinary genre, language, and discourse conventions” (150). Some of the earliest works mentioned in this review, whose perspectives are often relevant today,49 used the “community of practice” framework. The theme of ­community of practice has been debated in the particular context of international and minority students. As early as 1991, Prior50 pointed out that learning to write involves becoming a member/insider in a sociocultural and disciplinary community that problematically defines disciplines as static and exclusionary rather than dynamic and ­constantly changing when new members enter. Referring back to the works of writing scholars such as Bartholomae, Bizzell, Harris, and Cooper, Prior reminds us that the metaphor of community, “with [its] roots in hunter-gatherer cultures and the family,” may need to be replaced by “a metaphor closer to modern day society…. [that can] reconceptualize disciplines as specialized microsocities in which harmony, order, and mutuality intermingle with conflict, chance, and difference” (268–69). Prior used the case of foreign students as a reminder for updating the framework of writing scholarship and support programs. He reminded us that the “different language, cultural, and educational backgrounds that NNS bring to their courses raise both theoretical and practical questions,” adding that ­“particularly at advanced levels of study, [they] sharply frame questions of relationship of general culture to specialized culture in a discipline” (271). This critique is particularly important for scholars and practitioners working with international graduate students today, who should note that some of the challenges pointed out by the critique have been addressed by other scholars who have used the concept, such as in the context of pedagogy focusing on genre- and activity-­ theory (e.g., Braxley, 200451; Hyland, 2003, 52 200453; Swales & ­Lindemann, 200254; Tardy, 200955). In the late 1990s and early 2000s, a few scholars also focused on disciplinary socialization of international graduate students as non-native speakers of English (or NNES students), especially exploring their difficulties due to ­linguistic and cultural differences. Work produced in the 2000s additionally addresses issues such as “loss in status from social, professional, and familial positions they occupied at home … [limited] understanding of the educational ­context…. [challenges related to] thesis and dissertation advisors,” and intuited ­versus projected identities in writing in English (Leki, ­Cumming & Silva, 2006; 151). 56 Seen in light of the major findings and themes of this book, another significant milestone in the scholarship would be an edited collection

26  Introduction led by Belcher and Braine (1995). 57 Academic writing in a second language: Essays on research and pedagogy included a more diverse group of scholars who wrote from their experiences of navigating graduate school away from their home countries. Readers can also trace the focus on international graduate students by reading another notable review of scholarship by Braine (2002)58 who highlighted the importance of learning from international students’ and scholars’ emic perspectives. Using his own experience as a former international student for some of his perspectives, Braine pointed out methodological weaknesses, the lack of focus on international students’ voices, and an inaccurate representation of international scholars in the literature. He also called for more work adopting longitudinal methods to produce case studies, which could capture the essential issue of transition and change rather than creating generalizations and static pictures. One of the works Braine praised was by Schneider and Fujishima (1995), 59 a case study of a Taiwanese student on the West Coast. The study had analyzed interviews and written texts including a journal by the student. Another work featured in Braine’s review that focused on transition and is worth reading today is Dong’s (1996)60 study involving three Chinese students in the sciences at an institution in the South. Dong wrote about how professors initiated the students to their disciplines, examining explicit and implicit instructions related to citation and formatting of graduate-level writing. Highlighting the affordances of the emic approach to research, Braine also featured a study of four Iranian students at a Canadian university by Riazi (1997).61 In his article, Braine argued that scholars need broader conceptualizations of academic literacy at the graduate level: international graduate students “not only need to build interactive relationships with their teachers, thesis supervisors, and peers, and develop effective research strategies and good writing skills, they also need to adapt smoothly to the linguistic and social milieu of their host environment” (2002; 60). ­Unfortunately, not many works have appeared in recent years that respond to Braine’s calls for longitudinal studies, broader pictures, or etic/emic approaches. An important edited collection by Casanave and Li (2008)62 followed the tradition of etic/emic research by including theoretically rich chapters that explored the experiences, struggles, successes, and relationships of graduate students and their mentors, a few of them international scholars and former students (e.g., Fujioka, 2008; Li, 2008). Some of the issues that make the Casanave and Li collection an important reference include enculturation and identity development as part of academic socialization (for all graduate students); cultural, social, academic, and political challenges faced by international students before they became successful scholars; and textual and sociopolitical dimensions of graduate education at large. However, because the apparent focus of the book

Introduction  27 was to explore common and general challenges of graduate school, stories and reflections of former international students did not substantively explore if and how the challenges and issues were distinct for them as international students. Indeed, as Casanave (2014)63 and other scholars (e.g., Curry, 2016)64 have argued, many issues such as the development of a research agenda, learning to work with research advisors, reading and writing strategies for graduate school, and personal and social issues are deemed similar for all students—and, therefore, worth addressing together. But if we either look just for what challenges are shared or what are only distinct, we can find plenty of each kind; I have found the need to pay attention to both. A third notable review of scholarship related to writing support for international graduate students, Cox (2010b)65 includes a number of works on second-language writing with a view to providing WAC/WID program administrators key perspectives for supporting faculty, developing resources, and assessing programs by using a multilingual and multicultural lens. While presenting a “picture of the complex linguistic, cultural, and identity transitions made by [all] L2 students as they write across varying social, disciplinary, and rhetorical contexts,” Cox’s WAC/WID-focused review included some works focusing at the graduate level. Though only a few of the 26 works reviewed focus directly on international students, all of them provide critical programmatic perspectives that make the whole set a must-read. Some of the works in this review were part of edited collections by Murray (1992)66; Belcher and Braine (1995)67; Harklau, Losey, and Siegal (1999)68; McLeod et al. (2001)69; and Cox et al. (2010).70 Along the lines of scholarship that Cox included, an edited collection by Zawacki and Cox (2014)71 brought together a rich range of scholarship situating writing support for second-­ language writers in the context of writing across the curriculum (WAC). ­ dministration A recent collection titled Transnational Writing Program A ­(Martins, 2015)72 has made similar contributions with a focus on global and transnational contexts and perspectives. As scholarship focusing on graduate-level writing and language support is growing, scholars focusing on second language or non-native writers, transnational issues, and other areas of Writing Studies issues seem to be paying increasing attention to international graduate students. Beyond chapters represented in edited collections such as Simpson et al. (2016),73 many articles can be found in journals such as Across the Disciplines (e.g., Ferris & Thaiss, 2011)74 and Praxis: A Writing C ­ enter Journal (e.g., Phillips, 2013).75 A related source of knowledge about supporting international graduate students is a large number of practical guidelines, such as on grammar (Caplan, 2012),76 professional writing, and dissertation writing (Casanave, 201477; Paltridge, 199778), genres of academic and professional writing in graduate school (Swales & Feak, 201279), general support with academic writing (Bailey, 2015),80 general

28  Introduction writing guidelines (Holt, 2004),81 guidelines for supervisors ­(Hutchinson, 2014),82 and specific support for students in the law (Butler, 2015).83 As reflected by the variety of works just mentioned, for practitioners working with international graduate students, available resources can at first seem too scattered, their focus largely incidental, or the perspectives in them somewhat outdated. So, a closer reading is n ­ ecessary in order to derive useful insights from works whose contexts, ­objectives, and focus may have been different. It is also ­necessary to look at the intersections of our own discipline and related fields (and not-so-­related ones when the scholarship is relevant). One of the disciplines where the most relevant scholarship is available is Applied Linguistics, which offers rich theoretical perspectives and pedagogical strategies often directly focusing on international graduate students and academic ­writing or communication. A good example is Hyland’s (2004)84 book that established the usefulness of genre-based teaching of writing to second-language students, also exploring issues of ­disciplinary contexts and socialization. Similarly focusing on genre theory, Tardy (2009)85 used a qualitative study involving four international86 students to present a theory of how graduate students develop genre ­knowledge. Tardy presented a four-­dimensional model—involving content knowledge, ­rhetorical knowledge, process knowledge, and ­language knowledge—which could help instructors support both first- and second-language writers. Genre theory was the basis of another study, by Swales and ­Lindemann (2002),87 on the teaching of literature review to i­nternational graduate students. Among a now rich field of scholarship, a particularly thought-­ provoking recent work that focuses on teaching international students was written by Shapiro, Farrelly, and Tomaš (2014)88: the work highlights the need for holistic and ethical perspectives that instructors of writing need for effectively supporting and ­addressing the unique challenges faced by international students, at all levels. While some of the above works directly focus on international graduate students, others offer useful perspectives for the graduate level or about international students. Yet robust scholarship focusing on both the graduate level and on international students while also addressing macro- to micro-level issues about writing support is yet to emerge. Beyond Writing Studies, there is relevant research and scholarship that we could draw on in fields like higher education, student affairs, library science, and counseling. There is not yet a cross-fertilization of writing research between Writing Studies and these fields, but even though scholars in them use different methods and theories or do not focus exclusively on graduate education, their works cover many pertinent issues and offer many perspectives relevant for writing and communication support for international graduate students. Issues covered include the role of advisors in international students’ ­success (Bista, 2015),89 faculty views about students (Cao et al., 201490; Trice, 201691),

Introduction  29 the perspectives of international student offices on students’ academic transition (Kwon, 2009),92 academic transition issues specific to Chinese students (Huang, 2012),93 stress and its effects on academic performance (Bradley, 2000),94 social and academic c­ hallenges faced by female international graduate students (Fatima, 2001),95 “adjustment strain” among graduate students in comparison to their undergraduate counterparts (Poyrazli & Kavanaugh, 2006),96 the relation between socialization and engagement in class (Hanassab, 200697; Surdan & C ­ ollins, 198498), failures of ESL programs to engage international students (Miller-­W hitehead, 200599; Song, 2006100), the benefits of a graduate writing center at a university in the Middle East (­ Murshidi, 2014),101 academic adjustment (­Andrade, 2006),102 students’ difficulties with instructors’ expectations with writing (Arkoudis & Tran 2010),103 ESL learning experiences beyond the classroom (Liu, 2011),104 coping strategies during transition (Leki, 1995105; Stallman & Khawaja, 2011106), and exposure to language use (Ranta & Meckelborg, 2013).107 If we look beyond scholarships in writing and language, we can find relevant research on international graduate students from as far back as the 1960s, as reflected in the writings of Valdiriz (e.g., 1982).108 Indeed, one can find a rich history of scholarship on international s­ tudents—a history that studied academic support in broader and more complex sociopolitical terms—in a recent article, “The international student question: 45 years later,” written by a former international student and the former president of NAFSA (Aw, 2013).109 ­H ighlighting a global, political, and economic perspective that academic scholars miss or ignore, Aw argues, among other things, that most of the challenges about supporting international students have persisted for more than four decades in U.S. higher education at most institutions because new political and economic forces keep challenging discourses and perspectives about these students within academia. For instance, pointing to the big picture of international education in the United States, Aw states that nearly 60% of international students attend just 170 universities, with a vast majority of graduate students (who come from a few major countries) being in just the few STEM fields. It is important for writing and language support professionals to study the shifts in global and regional mobility as well as local and global dynamics affecting international graduate students; there is a plethora of scholarship on these issues, scholarship that often overlaps with subjects that we study, such as academic transition and writing and communication support. One recent book (Glass, Wongtrirat & Buus, 2015)110 reported a multisite study, focusing on ­issues such as networks of academic support (34), students’ exploration of the support ecology (55), and their vulnerability and resilience (84–85). Many articles in journals like the Journal of International Students focus exclusively on international graduate students and on academic writing.

30  Introduction A July 2017 search of “international student” on the EBSCOhost academic database, for instance, showed 76,801 results, with 19,410 “scholarly journal article” items; while only 1,365 total items and 634 journal articles were listed when “graduate” was added to the filters, an observation of the disciplines and names of journals, as well as article titles, showed that Writing Studies and related disciplines were not yet well ­represented in the databases. One of the most represented journals in such search results has been the Journal of International Students,111 which publishes research, theoretical discussions, and narrative/­reflective essays including former and current international students112 —­representing a rich intersection of disciplines and backgrounds and perspectives of the writers. Other journals appearing in search results indicate that conversation about international graduate students has been taking place in a variety of fields, including about writing, communication, and research skills. The keywords in the top 100 journal articles discuss a number of fundamental issues related to how international students learn to write, which writing scholars and practitioners often overlook: isolation, satisfaction, experience, perceived (language/­communication) difficulty, language performance, fostering academic self-concept, ­adviser relationship, mentoring approaches, bias and discrimination ­toward ­students (often by country/region/cultural background), ­security, acculturative stress, academic stress, persistence and resilience, global citizenship, information literacy, noticing and listening, motivation, strategic reading, rapport, and transition. News items listed by the same database search focused predominantly on issues of economic and national interest, including large numbers of reports and stories written for more academically oriented and other reputed venues, such as the Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside HigherEd, Times Higher ­Education, The Economist, New York Times, and so on. While adding “graduate” to the filter radically shrank the size of search results (218 via EBSCO), the high number (32,600) of news items on “international students” in general indicated the popularity of the topic in news media and public/political discourse. The significant public attention given to international students as a subject of national interest has, in fact, led to highly informative reporting by some media outlets that is often richer than academic research; for example, a University World News article (Patel, 2016) delved into a number of creative strategies being developed at half a dozen U.S. universities for facilitating classroom communication among new international teaching assistants. This book draws upon a broad scope of reading for contextualization and perspective-building. Equally important as the perspectives that we can draw from different disciplines has been the scholarship on international graduate students produced in and about other countries and regions of the world, ­including Australia (e.g., S­ teinmetz & Mussi, 2012113; Melles, 2005114), where international students have been as much as 20%

Introduction  31 of the total student population,115 the UK where ­scholars of language and academic writing have recently produced substantive scholarship on academic transition (e.g., ­Jindal-Snape & ­Rienteis, 2016116; Sovic & Blythman, 2013117) and other important subjects (e.g., Bagnall, 2015; Harwood & Petrić, 2016118; Davis, 2013; Watson, 2013119; ­McCulloch, 2013120), and ­scholars from elsewhere (e.g., Lavalle & Shima, 2014121; Thomson & Esses, 2016122). Scholarship within the larger field of Writing Studies has highlighted the need for broadened and more nuanced perspectives for graduate writing support. Citing prior scholarship, Brooks-Gillies et al. (2015)123 note that on top of structured writing support, graduate students’ writing needs to “extend beyond the scope of being explicitly taught to write.” Because writing instruction is not integrated into graduate curricula in most departments, graduate students seek support and resources from across the university and often develop their own support networks, an issue that many of the student participants in my study shared. As Brooks-Gillies et al. pointed out, “[g]raduate education is fraught with identity struggles and self-doubt, much of which centers around the ability to write effectively to meet the expectations of faculty mentors and the field at large.” These issues are particularly relevant to the case of international graduate students, as I discuss in the next two chapters, and illustrate with effective support programs and practices in the subsequent two. In addition, looking beyond our own discipline and national context not only provides new perspectives but also helps us reflect on overlooked aspects of the complex ecologies of support across institutions. It could help us better understand how students go about learning to write and how they use and don’t use existing support, how different kinds of programs and strategies foster or inhibit their agency, and finally how writing professionals could best create and enhance writing programs with a view to also advancing institutional support and leadership with regard to these students.

Notes 1 There is much information about this famous international student in a variety of sources, including Yale library and archive, websites of local historical and social organizations, and local papers that published stories about him around the 150th anniversary of his graduation in 2004—in addition to mentions in books and journal articles. 2 International students in American colleges and universities. 3 I use this phrase for foregrounding the students’ citizenship, education, or experience in other countries. 4 All names in the book are pseudonyms. Vijay’s story is elaborated later. 5 The June 2017 update of “SEVIS by the Numbers” report from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency shows that among the 1,184,735 foreign students on the student visas, 31% and 12% of the total number were enrolled at the masters and doctoral levels respectively.

32  Introduction 6 Estimate from Institute of International Education’s “Open Doors” data from the last few years; no clear numbers about students moving up from undergraduate degrees were available. 7 The graduate students I interviewed incidentally included all the above groups; however, while I tried to diversify participants as much as possible, I didn’t design the research for statistical representation of the diversity. Instead I designed it to theorize from stories told by students, whose backgrounds were highly varied. 8 A phrase I have used to encompass all interviewees other than students, unless otherwise specified. 9 Given that international graduate students receive writing support from “language” focused programs in many universities, including many institutions I visited and programs I learned about, I included both types of programs in my study and specify both terms whenever relevant, generalizing them as academic writing and/or communication support in some cases. Furthermore, I refer to related academic services, such as ITA training offices, graduate schools, academic liaison offices at the international students office, and so on, as academic support in general. 10 For an excellent collection of program profiles, alongside important perspectives on graduate writing support for all graduate students, see S­ impson et al. (2016), Supporting graduate student writers. 11 Universities visited: Cornell University, California State ­University at Northridge, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Michigan State ­University, New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, Ohio  ­University, ­Portland State University, Pennsylvania State University, Stony Brook ­University, State University of New York at Albany, U ­ niversity of C ­ alifornia at ­Berkeley, University of Connecticut, University of ­Florida, ­University of ­Houston, ­University of Louisiana at Monroe, University of M ­ assachusetts at Boston, University of Maryland, University of ­Michigan, ­University of ­Louisville, Yale University. Interviewees from other ­institutions: ­Graduate Center of the City University of New York, Maryland ­Department of ­Education, Elsevier’s Cell Biology unit, F ­ ordham University, Morgan State University, North Carolina State ­University, Purdue U ­ niversity, ­Syracuse ­University, University of Illinois, University of M ­ innesota, ­University of ­Toronto, University of California at Santa Barbara, University of ­California at Los Angeles, University of North ­Carolina at Charlotte, University of Utah, University of Southern ­California, York College of the City University of New York. 12 Constructing grounded theory: A practical guide through qualitative analysis. 13 Theoretical sensitivity. 14 Basics of qualitative research: Grounded theory procedures and techniques. 15 Qualitative inquiry and research design…. (2nd ed.). 16 The coding manual for qualitative researchers. 17 Biographical research. In Seale et al., Qualitative research practice. 18 Constructing grounded theory: A practical guide through qualitative analysis. 19 These were not included in data analysis and are not quoted from. 20 I use this phrase as defined by Adler-Kassner’s (2017) in her CCCC chair’s address, to “refer to us writing instructors, consultants, tutors, students, administrators” (318). 21 Qualitative inquiry and research design… (2nd ed.). 22 The ecology of writing. College English, 48(4). 23 The importance of harmony…. CCC, 60(2).

Introduction  33 24 Another edited collection, titled Ecocomposition: Theoretical and pedagogical approaches Weisser and Dobrin (2001), also used a similar approach to writing discourse, pedagogy, and research. 25 Teaching/writing in thirdspaces: The studio approach. 26 Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and other real-and-imagined places. 27 WAC for the new millennium. 28 The state of WAC/WID in 2010…. CCC, 61(3). 29 Using systems thinking to transform writing programs. Writing Program Administration, 36(2). 30 In conference presentations and workshops in the past few years; the authors’ book titled Sustainable WAC: A Whole Systems Approach to Launching and Developing Writing across the Curriculum Programs was published while this book was under page proof. 31 Sustainability indicators: Measuring the immeasurable? (2nd ed.). 32 Education and resilience…. Ecology and Society, 14(2). 33 An ecology metaphor for educational policy analysis…. Educational Researcher, 37(3). 34 A systems view of education: Concepts and principles for effective practice. 35 This diverse group of students have been described with a variety of terms, including users, speakers, or writers of English as second language or ESL (as in “ESL writers” or “second-language writers”), EFL/English as a f­ oreign language, EAL/English as additional language, and of world Englishes. They are also described as NNES/non-native English speaking, bilingual, multilingual, and plurilingual, or as engaging translingual communication. Some of the terms are more limited to specific disciplinary or curricular ­contexts like courses in ESP/English for specific purpose, EAP/English for academic purpose, ESOL/English for speakers of other languages. Others like EIL/ English as an international language, ELF/English lingua franca, LEP/­ limited English proficiency, and CLD/culturally and linguistically diverse students are seldom used at the tertiary and/or graduate levels. P ­ luralization of acronyms (ESLs or internationals) is considered problematic. 36 The most recent and comprehensive work on this subject. 37 Supporting graduate student writers. 38 Also see Cox (2014): In response to today’s “felt need”: WAC, faculty development, and second language writers. In M. Cox & T. Zawacki (Eds.), WAC and second language writers. 39 Including Cox, Phillips, Simpson, and many other experts of graduate-level writing support. 40 For instance, some of the students I interviewed had studied in two or three other countries before coming to the U.S.—and yet, they still faced some new struggles of a major, multidimensional transition. 41 The state of graduate communication support…. In Simpson et al., Supporting graduate student writers. 42 The importance of harmony…. CCC, 60(2). 43 International students in American colleges and universities by Bevis and Lucas (2008; 62) describes programs that most likely included language support for these students. 44 The myth of linguistic homogeneity in U.S. college composition. College English 68(6). 45 Composition studies and ESL writing…. CCC, 50(4). 46 Wanted: More writing courses for graduate students. CCC, 27(2). 47 Open Doors, 2016: Report on International Educational Exchange. 48 Also see review in Perrucci and Hu (1995) in Research in Higher E ­ ducation, 36(4).

34  Introduction 49 esp. Canseco and Byrd (1989) in TESOL Quarterly, 23, and Swales (1990) in Genre analysis. 50 Contextualizing Writing and Response in a Graduate Seminar. Written Communication, 8(3). 51 International graduate students’ appropriation of the genres of academic writing…. Dissertation. 52 Genre-based pedagogies…. Journal of Second Language Writing, 12. 53 Genre and second language writing. 54 Teaching the literature review to international graduate students. In Johns, Genre in the classroom. 55 Building genre knowledge. 56 Second-language composition…In Smagorinsky, Research on composition. 57 Academic writing in a second language: Essays on research and pedagogy. 58 Academic literacy and the nonnative speaker graduate student. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 1. 59 When practice doesn’t make perfect…. Belcher & Braine, Academic writing in a second language. 60 Learning how to use citations for knowledge transformation…. Research in the Teaching of English, 30(4). 61 Acquiring disciplinary literacy…. Journal of Second Language Writing, 6. 62 Learning the literacy practices of graduate school. 63 Before the dissertation. 64 More than language…. In Simpson, et al., Supporting graduate student writers. 65 WAC-WID and second language writers, WPA-CompPile Research Bibliographies, 8. 66 Diversity as resource: Redefining cultural literacy. 67 Academic writing in a second language. 68 Generation 1.5 Meets college composition. 69 WAC for the new millennium. 70 Reinventing identities in second language writing. 71 WAC and Second language writers. 72 Transnational writing program administration. 73 Supporting graduate student writers. 74 Writing at UC Davis…. Across the Disciplines, 8(4). 75 Tutor training and services for multilingual graduate writers…. Praxis: A Writing Center Journal, 10(2). 76 Grammar choices for graduate and professional writers. 77 Before the dissertation. 78 Thesis and dissertation writing: Preparing ESL students for research. ­English for Specific Purposes, 16. 79 Academic writing for graduate students (3rd ed.). 80 The “foreign TA problem.” In Bailey et al., Foreign teaching assistants in U.S. universities. 81 Success with graduate and scholarly writing: A guide for non-native writers of English. 82 Enhancing the doctoral experience: A guide for supervisors and their international students. 83 Developing international EFL/ESL scholarly writers. 84 Genre and second language writing. 85 Building genre knowledge. 86 One of the students was born in the U.S. but with mostly international educational experience.

Introduction  35 87 Teaching the literature review to international graduate students. In Johns, Genre in the classroom. 88 Fostering international student success in higher education. 89 Roles of international student advisors…. International Education, 44(1). 90 Motivators and outcomes of faculty actions towards international s­ tudents…. International Journal of Higher Education, 3(4). 91 Faculty Perceptions of graduate international students…. Journal of Studies in International Education, 7(4). 92 Factors affecting international students’ transition …. College Student Journal, 43(4). 93 Transitioning challenges faced by Chinese graduate students. Adult Learning, 23(3). 94 Developing research questions through grant proposal development, 27(7). 95 International female graduate students’ perceptions of their adjustment experiences…. Paper. 96 Marital status, ethnicity, academic achievement, and adjustment strains…. College Student Journal, 40(4). 97 Diversity, international students, and perceived discrimination…. Journal of Studies in International Education, 22(1). 98 Adaptation of international students: A cause for concern. Journal of College Student Personnel, 25(3). 99 Why measuring growth is especially important in evaluation of English language learners. Paper. 100 Failure in a college ESL course… Community College Journal of Research & Practice, 30. 101 International graduate students socialization in organized tutoring ­sessions at writing center. American International Journal of Contemporary ­Research, 4(4). 102 International students in English-speaking universities…. Journal of ­Research in International Education, 5(2). 103 Writing blah, blah, blah…. International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 22(2). 104 An international graduate student’s ESL learning experience beyond the classroom. TESL Canada Journal, 29(1). 105 Coping strategies of ESL students in writing tasks across the curriculum. TESOL Quarterly, 29(2). 106 Understanding the coping strategies of international students…. Australian Journal of Guidance and Counselling, 21(2). 107 How much exposure to English do international graduate students really get? …. The Canadian Modern Language Review, 69(1). 108 Foreign students’ language proficiency, their perceptions of language adequacy and their performance at the graduate level. Dissertation. 109 The international student question: 45 years later. Journal of College ­Admission, 214. 110 International student engagement. 111 I am presently an associate editor with this journal. 112 The journal has sought to balance diversity of voices with rigor in research and writing styles. 113 “Settling in”: Postgraduate research student experiences, an international perspective. Paper. 114 Familiarizing postgraduate ESL students with the literature review in a WAC/EAP engineering classroom. Across the Disciplines, 2. 115 Compared to roughly 5% in the U.S., with less than 20% at the graduate level.

36  Introduction 116 Multi-dimensional transitions of international students to higher education. 117 Equals or others? …. In Sovic & Blythman, International students negotiating higher education: Critical perspectives. 118 Experiencing master’s supervision. 119 Combining international student social and academic transition online. International Student Experience Journal, 1(2). 120 Investigating the reading-to-write processes and source use of L2 postgraduate students…. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 12(2). 121 Writing histories… In Zawacki & Cox, WAC and second language writers. 122 Helping the transition…. Journal of International Students, 6(4). 123 Graduate writing across the disciplines. Introduction. Across the Disciplines, 12(3).

2 Understanding Politics Affecting Policy

When I came to this country, I thought I was so powerless, that the system is so powerful. Now, I feel that you can make—maybe lower in the chain of power—you can negotiate what you want, negotiating with [your] power. (“Ajit,” a doctoral student at Cornell University) They are coming here to change the world fundamentally—and we look at [them as?] stakeholders. We know they are our students who are going to be connected everywhere, and … when they step into the classroom I don’t want them to apologize … for who they are or the way that they communicate. (An academic program administrator at Cornell University)

The first quotation above is from an interview with a student from India, whom I call Ajit. This advanced doctoral student in Sociology at Cornell was describing how he learned to explore resources and opportunities for improving his writing skills, also discussing their importance for international graduate students. He said that international students in particular find it challenging to develop their own voice because they tend to take too much time before they realize the importance of “soft skills”; he connected their avoidance and often resistance against learning the skills with a feeling of powerlessness. While he appreciated programs and professionals supporting graduate students, as well as American academic culture in general, he also felt that the system can stifle international students’ agency, until they learn to negotiate with it and develop an intellectual voice of their own as scholars in their disciplines and in a new culture and country. The second quotation is from my interview with an administrator at the international teaching assistant (ITA) training program at Cornell; the administrator was discussing the importance of international students for the university. As the interview progressed, however, while the expert described how the program worked, I couldn’t help wondering how the ITAs felt “empowered” or went to class to “be themselves” if the support was as disempowering as it sounded to me. “If a student is an intermediate mid-level speaker—and there’s really

38  Understanding Politics two kinds,” my interviewee paused, “they may need to tweak phonemic control. Their suprasegmentals may be a larger issue.” If the students’ “grammatical structure” didn’t “make sense,” she added, “then that’s going to be a challenge in their classroom.” The teaching assistants took multiple courses at the center, usually for two semesters. The training seemed rigorous, but I sensed a striking tension between the valorization of international students and the seemingly daunting nature of strategies for helping them improve communication and teaching skills. The notes I took the following day on this issue after listening to Ajit’s insightful reflections about how he learned academic and professional skills eventually helped me identify the theme of “tensions” between discourses about and support for international students. While the program was evidently designed to enhance ITAs’ effectiveness in the classroom, the overly standardized process, described with many technical jargons, reminded me of the extreme anxiety1 that I used to have during the first semester of working as an ITA myself. The tension manifested in a variety of other ways in interviews with many other students, who felt “powerless” for a variety of reasons, which the rest of this chapter discusses. While all students share many of the same challenges, from political to economic to psychological, certain groups face additional ones or at least exacerbated forms of shared challenges. Like their domestic counterparts, international graduate students have to deal with various kinds of power dynamics, such as in their relationship with mentors as they develop their intellectual voice and identity in their disciplines. But in addition, international graduate students also exist within a broader regime of power endemic to the nationalistic/­capitalist political economy of international education. Macro-level politics shape and affect these students’ transnational mobility, educational experience, safety, well-being, self-perception, and confidence. Then there are power dynamics created by beliefs and ideologies about international students as foreign students who are usually non-native speakers of English, especially if they are from certain cultural backgrounds. Here are some of the challenges that are unique or more intense for international graduate students: (1) immigration laws and political climates which may inject ambivalences about them into institutional policies and academic ­programs; (2) ideological differences among disciplines and professionals that have more serious effects on these students than on their domestic counterparts; (3) the obscuring of diversity and complexity in their backgrounds, proficiencies, and needs; (4) the tendency to focus on the most visible challenges such as language proficiency while ignoring the broader context of these students’ academic and sociocultural a­ daptation; (5) misalignment between how conventional writing programs support them and their complex and rapidly emerging needs (further aggravated by the decentralized nature of graduate education); (6) the tendency of academic support professionals

Understanding Politics  39 to overlook distinctive challenges faced by these students because they also face many challenges similar to those of their domestic counterparts (including a persisting argument that considers the two realities as mutually exclusive); and (7) a lack of advocates within academic programs and institutions at large who have the experience or expertise related to these students. Knowledge about these dynamics can help program administrators and instructors alike to better understand who their students are and what they need most and when, as the students adapt to the new country and academic culture. Some sensitivity about the dynamics can help academic leaders to make good decisions about what language or logistical approaches to use for creating a welcoming environment, how to train tutors to engage as well as help the students, and how to respond to the affective dimension of education that may be different for international students. So, underlying the discussion of key issues in this chapter is the broader question of how internationalization and globalization of higher education reinforces or mitigates the effects of the current “political economy” (Scott, 2016)2 of international education and therefore the efforts of academic professionals and institutions to educate/support international students. I argue that international students are not just individuals with varied identities and ambitions who strive to find a place in often contested intellectual and professional domains in and beyond graduate education (like any graduate ­students); they are also foreign bodies accepted conditionally and largely in the “national interest” and ultimately for the economic and intellectual benefit of receiving nations and institutions; the institutions and programs and people within them further define these students by the foreignness of their language, culture, and identity. That foreignness, while frequently glorified and often working to the students’ advantage, shapes policies and sustains ideologies that many of the local professionals do not realize they may be perpetuating through their actions and relationship, even as their discourses and intentions suggest otherwise. It is these forms of power that this chapter explores with the aim of developing a theoretical framework that I argue could help writing support professionals more fully understand the status, needs, and strengths of international graduate students. I use the term “politics” and “ideology” as referring to distinct realms as I explore how the larger political/economic regime of international education shapes the experience of international graduate students and how institutional and programmatic policies (which are usually not stated and are often contrary to stated claims) are shaped by discourses and ideologies about foreign students. During my research, the writing and language professionals I met with were positive and generous toward their international students. But viewed in the broader context of international education, political and

40  Understanding Politics ideological forces have a far greater role in shaping institutions and academic programs, the disciplines, and their discourses. The often adverse and usually unintended effects partly stem from specialization: certain issues are overlooked when others are attended to, and students’ experiences are often ignored while professionals focus on their distinct specialties. So, my argument here is that in order to make academic support effective, scholars and practitioners involved must pay a certain amount of attention to how broader political and economic forces and established assumptions/ideologies shape academic discourses and influence support practices.

The Politics of International Students “I think we are increasingly globalized so it’s really hard to talk about [our state’s] citizens alone anymore,” said a dean at the University of Louisville, in a phone interview. “The only way we can meet the goals for us is by recruiting students from across the country and also across the world,” she emphasized. But a few months later during my visit to the university, when this advocate of international students joined a group discussion (which she organized for me) with half a dozen other faculty and staff members from across campus, the other academics brought up a theme that contrasted with her idea of “educating the world.” Participants of the group, all working with international students, suggested that public education as a state mandate was pushing investment in international students to the margin. From the state’s point of view, embraced by many in the university, the institution has greater responsibility to local citizens than to foreign students, said one professor. As the dean was emphasizing how important graduate writing support was, the discussion turned to the difficulty of creating and sustaining support for foreign graduate students. Like I also heard at many other universities, the graduate writing course in Louisville had discontinued, moved, and morphed over the years. One faculty member said that it had to do with a “pushback from [our] state” against the university’s strategic plan for internationalization, “with the viewpoint that they don’t want [state] money wasted on international students”; another professor added that, in fact, only a few departments and their faculty members wanted to admit international students and fewer still were committed to supporting them. Some professors, he added, “are like ‘this is not my job’,” not only because they were not trained to support the students with writing but also because “there is no desire for more international students … there is not.” The politics about international students remained an undercurrent in many interviews with writing and other academic support professionals. Writing professionals generally do not seem to directly address geopolitical forces and national politics in decisions or conversations about

Understanding Politics  41 writing programs or pedagogies, but quite a few of my interviewees explored the issues. On the one hand, knowledge about political and policy challenges seemed to erode their passion and confidence, often making them “cynical,” to borrow a term used by a writing scholar. “Some of ­ niversity them see new programs as doomed from the start,” a Cornell U scholar said, because they feel that “anything can happen anytime.” ­A nother writing scholar who had tried and failed to create graduate-level writing support especially so that international students would benefit shared her frustrating experiences: “I would put money on the fact that what’s the huge, big, vibrant thing right now may well change in five years because the person in charge will change or something will happen.” She was glad that a new graduate writing center had been started at her institution, “but you know how many years I asked for one, begged for one? Twenty-five.” Experience had taught her that change was difficult to make and achievements difficult to sustain because of a lack of long-term institutional commitment or political interest. On the other hand, knowledge about political and economic dynamics affecting students and support programs seemed to greatly enhance the impact of their professional expertise. In fact, as both these scholars went on to discuss, those who had experienced political, economic, and institutional power dynamics disrupting their work shared best strategies for supporting each other, making the case for students, and tackling challenges when they arise. Institutions, the first scholar added, have their own reasons and interests or obligations to create support for international students, ranging from attracting more domestic students to the “global experience” of studying with foreign students, to economic incentives of recruiting more of the latter, to genuine interest in updating/­improving higher education in an increasingly globalized world. And because prevalent arguments about internationalizing education are fraught with political and economic dynamics, political awareness becomes necessary alongside educational vision and specialized expertise. Scott (2016) explores the “dynamic relationships between political processes, institutions, work, affordances, and everyday assumptions, relations, and behaviors” (12) that are part of what he calls the macro-and micro-political and economic forces shaping higher education nationally and internationally today. “Toggling between the granular and the ­aggregate,” he suggests, can help us try to “mak[e] sense of how particulars ­relate to whole ecologies constituted by mobilized resources, ­capital, ideas, struggles, and emotions” (12). Citing Trimbur, who noted that while writing professionals benefited from the “Johnny can’t write” national crisis (report of 1975), Scott reminds us that that development was also part of a self-legitimizing hegemony of a certain political class dynamic. ­Likewise, writing that academic professionals risk the same kind of myopia if they only try to capitalize on internationalization if they are not, at the same time, conscious about the politics and ideologies driving it (21).

42  Understanding Politics Instead, a politically informed approach, as Scott implies, could better enable us to shape internationalization of higher education3 in educationally meaningful ways. Doing so would allow us to help address critical challenges of graduate education,4 given the important roles writing skills play in graduate students’ academic success and professional growth. Two writing program administrators at the University of Houston shared a powerful illustration of the effects of political dynamics on their effort to increase support for international graduate students. While international graduate students dominated the use of their support (about 85% among graduate students), they had to create that support without publicizing it: they used the space and resources meant for undergraduate tutoring, finding creative ways to train their tutors to address graduate-level issues and the needs of international students, and looking for short- and long-term funding from any source they could find to meet the demand. I came across such surreptitious programming in multiple other institutions, especially where international students’ demand was high but institutional support and interest not (yet) sufficient. It was not just that universities’ discourses about the “value” of international students didn’t always translate into resource allocation for them; other stakeholders who wielded considerable power or influence over academic support programs viewed international students as a burden, and, consciously or unconsciously, ignored or undermined the academic support for these students. This ambivalence seems to be related to the question of who is responsible for supporting graduate students in general (Simpson, 2016a)5 as well as supporting international students at any level (­Shapiro, Farrelly & Tomaš, 2014).6 As a former writing program administrator at SUNY Albany told me, the explosion of international students since the turn of the century has clearly led to many institutional leaders to assume—if not argue, as the provost of her institution once did—that “if they are expensive, there’s no point in having them.” In short, tendencies to celebrate or benefit from but not invest resources and efforts for the success of international students is a manifestation of the macro-level politics at the national and state levels, as it also reflects in micro-level dynamics where, for instance, some faculty members may refuse to invest their time or attention in foreign students. This dynamic seems abstract and also applicable for all students, but it can be more significant with international students—though we can only see it if we pay attention to it. As I discuss in the first half of this chapter, in order to create and grow support for international graduate students, to truly empower them as students and scholars, political and policy issues must be studied and addressed. Empowering/Overpowering International Graduate Students As I coded transcripts of interviews with students after gathering each new batch of interviews from new institutions, the theme of power that

Understanding Politics  43 the Cornell student I have called Ajit had discussed emerged as an important lens with which international students’ experiences and issues about learning to write and to communicate effectively at the graduate level could be productively explored. So, before I recoded interviews for overall issue of power—­looking for patterns within and between interviews with the students and the academic professionals7—I requested a follow-up interview with Ajit, along with a few other students and academic professionals. When I called Ajit for the follow-up conversation, he spared another 90 minutes for me, unpacking issues about language and communication in the context of teaching, with the same gusto as before. He had gone through the required assessment at the ITA office, which, like in most American universities, ensured that foreign-educated teaching assistants are linguistically (and, in this case, pedagogically) equipped to enter the classroom. He had tested out of the training that would have followed, then attended a variety of other useful teaching-related events across campus over the years; but he knew about the program from having to prepare and deliver a teaching demonstration and from helping his junior colleagues who went through it later on. He had observed the program to be “very overpowering”; he didn’t like that the support was designed to “micromanage everything.” He argued that it “felt like a formality,” adding, “like they are doing it for the numbers, and their own job.” I asked him to unpack the critique. He paused to acknowledge that all the academic support programs he had come across were useful: “however bad they are, they expose international students to the system here.” He also valued their “ideas and ideals about diversity,” even when he thought some were largely a part of the “romanticization” of international students. When the support was “programmed,”8 however, and when it was based on “testing” and “levels” and “standardization,” he believed that students’ challenges and needs were overlooked and students were “silenced.” The standardized approach Ajit critiqued seemed to be common across institutions because I heard the same kind of language at several other places. A particular example that Ajit shared during this second interview helps to illustrate how academic support “without understanding students’ perspectives” can confuse and disempower international students, especially when they are new: Many people here want you to say “gas” for “petrol.” You say, “petrol.” They ask, “What?” and you say, “petrol” again. They will say, “Oh, gas,” even after they’ve understood it and they’ve learned that “petrol” is standard English also—or maybe they didn’t learn it. They just want you to conform to “gas.” The challenge Ajit faced was not simply that of language; he said he was fine with his English, even though he believed he had a strong Indian

44  Understanding Politics English accent. It was more significantly a challenge emanating from ideology and attitude. When many of my student interviewees kept focusing on British versus American, or Indian or Chinese Englishes as a source of concern, I had been coding the subject under “talking point response” (TPR) in the context of “academic transition”; this is the type of response that I’ve found interviewees in many of my research projects using at first, when they are asked questions about complex subjects. Instead of digging deeper into their own knowledge and experience, they seem to grab the most common reaction/discourse from their discourse community and deliver it, often even using such a point to frame the whole conversation. However, when I asked even the student interviewees more critical, probing questions about their experiences, they used language differences to discuss issues about power, ideology, confidence, and so on. Perhaps for this reason, a closer look at in-vivo codes about “language difference” and its patterns and connections continued to show how students evidently experienced the demand for “correct” or “American” English as a means of power and control, marking them as foreign—even when the interlocutor had the best of intentions to help the student. For instance, a graduate student at Penn State University described how she had to “flip” the situation by telling a classmate who had been correcting her speech for several years that she was “more interested in contextual way of using language” than about correct forms. As this teaching assistant was discussing the corrosive effects of linguistic marginalization, she added that “that was a moment for him to learn.” Clearly, power dynamics around seemingly insignificant language variations are not just interpersonal: they have to do with larger cultural and geopolitical dynamics affecting foreign students’ experience of studying abroad and of learning and using writing skills. It is how power and resistance play out when phonemic control and suprasegmentals become the curriculum of required, gatekeeping courses that are designed to help international graduate students as teaching assistants. The educational objective for training ITAs—including assumptions about what they need in order to sound acceptable to local students—are not only educational but also political, and it is only educationally meaningful and fair to acknowledge both the dimensions. The broader political dynamic is illustrated by the fact that as more than 40 years of research on ITAs shows, these training programs were usually put in place in response to concerns about foreign accents (see Bailey, 19849; Finder, 200510; Hoekje & Williams, 199211; Yook & Albert, 199912).13 The issue of language ideology and language politics has been extensively discussed in the scholarship of Writing ­Studies (Horner & Lu, 200714; Horner & Trimbur, 200215); however, the rich theoretical perspectives from that body of knowledge are yet to be considerably brought to bear on the context of graduate-level writing support. Monolingualist ideologies, for

Understanding Politics  45 instance, still persist in the name of practical needs to “fix” international students’ language problems as a curricular goal or to ensure that someone “out there” doesn’t judge them (or the teachers who taught them) when they graduate. But the “practical,” as Ajit put it, “intersects with the political. When people are trying to first of all fix your accent, they are expressing a certain kind of value.” That value is also a reflection of national/social, institutional, disciplinary, and programmatic politics regarding language and culture, identity and relationship. Of course, students are not necessarily reliable judges (and the more experienced ones shared how they had “completely changed” their views since they first came to the U.S.) and, of course, their views were “all over the map,” as one graduate writing specialist put it; however, students’ critiques and dissatisfaction about certain issues were consistent, as was the tension between discourse and practice among writing professionals. This tension prompted me to interview a third, g­ radually very diverse, group of interviewees: institutional leaders (provosts, deans, etc.), administrators of academic services across campus (international center, student life, graduate school, etc.), and others whose support fostered students’ learning of writing and/or other communication skills. Analyzing my interviews with these professionals for a number of issues related to the learning of writing skills—such as culture shock, academic/­disciplinary socialization, academic success, professional growth, psychological and health issues, and personal/legal and financial challenges—explained many of the criticisms shared about the university and its academic units and support ­programs by the students. In fact, studying the perspectives and experiences of many of those other professionals who paid closer attention to international graduate students started revealing that in most institutions, there was a hidden ecology of support and resources that was created by the lack of understanding or by negligence of international graduate students’ needs. As I will illustrate in the next chapter, these students gravitated towards people and places where they felt better understood and respected. Based on the triangulation of different perspectives and by examining one set of themes or contradictions with themes drawn from another subset of data, I discuss in the next three subsections some of the major issues about politics and power that seem to deserve more attention in scholarship on graduate-level writing support. I start by shedding some light on the connection of micro-level issues of power to the macro-level context of international education. Why Pay Attention to Political Economy The macro-politics of international education shapes the micro-politics of power and privilege, bias and prejudice, ambivalence and disinterest on the ground—as much as the micro-politics of resistance and empowerment

46  Understanding Politics can counter the effects of larger forces. So, it is important to understand the bigger picture of global geopolitical and economic forces behind the “market” of globally mobile students. Let me begin with an example. When I asked Guo, a master’s degree student from China at the University of Maryland, which has both an excellent general writing center and also a graduate writing center (GWC), why she never used either of them, she said, “It is because we don’t have the fear of not passing, because most of us will pass,” adding, “the professors have pressure to give us higher grades.” What Guo told me seemed reflective of how the economics of international education can shape their view of education. Seemingly reflecting the department’s (and perhaps university’s) apparent interest to maximize revenue by recruiting a disproportionate number of students from China, the professors focused on content-based tests and did not require long written assignments; another interviewee said that the professors didn’t want to deal with paper drafts. That made Guo and her peers less likely to use writing support. “I think they only fix the grammar or simple things,” she said about the center, sharing an assumption she didn’t need to test. She also considered speaking far more important than writing. She was “extremely busy … participating in two campaigns … on environmental issues” because she thought that community engagement was “a good way to improve my spoken E ­ nglish, which is really helpful for an interview for a job, where they may not ask you to write a paper.” She added, “It’s about communication,” clearly excluding writing from the term’s definition. While lack of knowledge and perhaps some exaggeration was involved in Guo’s response, the issue of how shifting geopolitical powers and dramatic increase of international students from countries making rapid economic development came up many times in interviews with various academic professionals as well. In this case, the fact that more than 90 out of about 100 students in the program were from China had probably shifted the focus of the curriculum in it. Guo also added that she “will still be okay” even though she had “very basic writing” because she thought that jobs in her field only required “basic language”16 —­ another claim that seemed questionable but was significant in relation to the for-profit nature of degree programs like this that I came across in several prestigious public universities. In a similar master’s program in California, an instructor had tried and failed to assist underprepared international students with their writing needs described a similar situation. Her department had come to rely on Chinese students to maintain enrollment numbers, even though few students it had been recruiting were completing the degree: We have six out of 36 students who are international…. We have never graduated the Chinese students…. We admit students that

Understanding Politics  47 are too low in their level. We really do. We take international students for the money, as you know; they’re paying three times the regular amount, and that offsets a lot of the cost. The program that I teach at is a for-profit program [within a public university], so we have to hit a certain amount of enrollments each year and graduate a certain amount each year, and because of that, the entry scores of students coming in was very low for the past few years. An instructor of marketing whom I also quoted at the beginning of the first chapter, she said that she had given up trying to help international graduate students because the bar kept coming down in terms of enrollment standards and concern about student success from her institution and department. Similar concerns were shared by instructors elsewhere. Writing programs cannot make their support effective and cannot get the buy-in of faculty and administrators if tutors, teachers, and administrators do not understand and address any adverse effects of the shifting political economy (Scott, 2016)17 of international education. For instance, the trend of admitting underprepared graduate students, as well as the perception that there is such a trend, may be connected with overall international student mobility data nationally and internationally, including academic backgrounds and distributions by degrees and disciplines or regions and institutions. Fortunately, more fine-grained numbers about graduate students are starting to be available, which writing program administrators (WPAs) would benefit to study in order to better anticipate and address new challenges and opportunities. In their 2015 report for the Council of Graduate Schools (CGS), O ­ kahana and Allum (2015)18 state that the first time that the Council broke down international graduate student numbers, it identified a stunning trend: there were many more international students in master’s degree and certificate programs than previously assumed. Among first-time enrolled international graduate students, 77% were masters and certificate students; this is significant for writing programs and pedagogy. Even though doctoral students may need more writing support and more kinds of it, the numbers of master’s students could mean that they are relatively more ­overlooked—not to mention that their needs are not yet as well recognized. On the positive side, these shifts also offer tremendous professional opportunities for writing programs. Understanding distribution and change among different groups of international students can be quite useful toward making better policy decisions as well as developing new programs and support practices. For instance, international doctoral students in the U.S. were 16% of total international students in 2015, but 70% of South Korean applicants were doctoral, whereas only 36%

48  Understanding Politics among Chinese applicants were doctoral (Okahana & Allum, 2015). Given these numbers, a university with high concentration of Korean students would do well to not only update its recruitment strategy for more diversity but also shape academic support accordingly. Similar benefits could be drawn from knowing the fact that most international master’s students are going into just a few fields: the CGS report showed that 26% of international graduate students were in Engineering, 21% in Business, and 18% in Math and Computer science—with as few as 1% in ­Physical and Earth Sciences and seemingly even fewer in the ­Humanities. ­Support programs in institutions in different regions of the U.S. could also draw inferences from trends by region of destination or by looking at the composition of graduate versus undergraduate students in their home institution. For example, the vast majority of international students went to just a few states in 2016 (ICE). Similarly, graduate international students comprised 43% of all international students in ­Tennessee but 85% in North Carolina. The regular June 2017 update of student visa numbers by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE, 2017) showed even more striking trends, especially in distribution by institutions: among the 8,774 institutions that the agency certifies to enroll regular and exchange foreign students, fewer than 1% (or 80 or so) of the institutions enrolled more than 5,000 students, whereas 76% (or nearly 7,000 institutions) admitted 50 or fewer international students. The top 10 universities among the nearly 9,000 that were certified only enrolled 10% of the total students. The following summary of a few numbers about the top three countries of origin of international students in U.S. universities compiled from the “SEVIS by Numbers” report by the ICE (2017)19 reflected yet other surprising realities about international graduate students, including their differences from undergraduate students, their gender distribution, and their enrollment outside of tertiary education (Table 2.1): Table 2.1:  A few striking numbers about international student enrollments Country

India

China

South Korea

Active Students Male Female Doctorate Master’s Bachelor’s Associate Secondary Education Language Training Others

206,708 140,720 65,954 17,970 162,651 19,253 2,648 231 1,349 2,596

362,370 188,368 173,910 48,441 106,715 130,702 15,472 36,798 12,300 11,938

71,206 37,605 33,587 10,684 9,324 28,306 6,122 6,398 6,435 3,935

Understanding Politics  49 Just the three countries represented here offer useful insight about international graduate students, with the total from the Asian continent being a stunning 77% of national numbers. More detailed data from the same source showed that while 83% of all Indian students were in the STEM fields, less than 42% of Chinese students were in those fields (ICE, 2017). The distribution was similarly skewed among graduate students in particular. Similar but even more striking details can be found in the CGS report cited above, which was based on information from nearly 400 U.S. universities, including 80 of the top-ranking 100 that together granted about 70% of the graduate degrees that international students earned in the U.S. This report showed surprising changes across time, as well as surprising distributions. By 2017, for instance, masters-level students have come to constitute 31% of total international students (ICE, 2017), whereas doctoral students were only 12% in 2017 (a possibly significant decrease from 2015, per the earlier CGS survey). Furthermore, numbers like these become more significant when seen in the context of domestic enrollments and distributions. International graduate students are increasing at a faster rate than their domestic counterparts; and while 17% of domestic graduate students were in doctoral programs, 37% of international their counterparts were at this level (Okahana & Allum, 2015). Citing the CGS President Suzanne T. Ortega, the authors of this report stated that the data on degree objectives is illuminating for U.S. graduate schools: [The data] leads to more questions about the goals and motivations of international graduate students…. Are students preparing for careers in the U.S. or at home after earning their degree? Are they drawn here by academic reputations, employment prospects, or professional advancement? How do economic conditions in the U.S. and abroad influence international graduate enrollments? (Oretega, cited in Okahana & Allum, 2015) In a phone interview, a scholar of graduate education who writes in national academic media discussed this issue in the context of a crisis in graduate education at large, the crisis of its overproduction of graduate students in relation to their demand in society and professions. “How do you help students professionalize when the students know more than you do about at least one aspect of the market that he or she is planning to enter?” he asked, referring to the challenge of adapting graduate curricula and professionalization of students in response to the increasing number of international students. In short, understanding the changing global/local political economy, as reflected by numbers like the above could help writing professionals make better policy and program decisions, as well as make more impact

50  Understanding Politics on institutional conversations about internationalization on the one hand and graduate education on the other. Writing scholars could also use the numbers and changes to guide them to study education systems and the nature of writing education in major countries of origin of international students. And writing instructors could adapt their teaching materials and strategies if they learn that their classes reflect the larger trend where, for example, four of ten graduate students, according to the 2015 CGS report, were from China and nearly three more from India. Lessons from Other Places, Times Paying attention to global pictures is important because overlooking economic and political forces behind them has occasionally precipitated the implosion of the international student “market” in other countries. For example, after many years of creating and exploiting a boom in international education as one of the country’s major “export,” A ­ ustralian universities suddenly faced a crisis around 2009. As Mohamedbhai (2015)20 described for the American audience in Inside HigherEd, ­Australian media started exposing—or, rather, creating a significant hype out of particular incidents of—fraud and abuse in the enrollment, education, and graduation of international students. The alleged abuses involved “fraudulent recruitment agents, universities graduating poorly qualified or unqualified nurses, widespread plagiarism, cheating and exploitation.” In 2014, a national TV news channel aired an extensive “investigation” titled “Degrees of Deception,” using an ideological framing to show how “foreign students and other poor English speakers” were essentially a threat to society. The report included the notorious case of an Indian nursing student whose negligence caused the death of an elderly Australian. The nursing student, news media charged, “could not read the label” on the medication. A retired writing instructor who was interviewed for the documentary strongly endorsed the story line. Interestingly, the nurse’s personal weaknesses (such as incompetence or irresponsibility) or the possibility of a one-time human error (due to oversight or exhaustion) were never taken seriously. In recent years, scholarship focusing on international education has begun to explore the politicization and other challenges in Australia. 21 The Australian “market” seemed to be back in full swing, but it seems as vulnerable to political forces as it was before. Many news alerts generated by Google Search over the course of the last two years, in response to keyword settings for “international student,” “graduate,” and “writing,” included increasing numbers of news items coming out of Canada. Most news stories started with headings that glorified international students—especially in contrast to the U.S.—and they celebrated the “global” experience for local Canadian students, but a closer look usually revealed serious problems. For instance, after expressing the typical excitement about “internationalization” and “diversification” of

Understanding Politics  51 the universities, the news items mentioned, typically in passing, that international students (largely Chinese) pay roughly four times what their domestic counterparts do. The articles often ended with university officials glossing over the exploitative cost by citing an extra orientation program or English language support. But it was hard to ignore the escalation of market logic alongside the “celebration” of international students. “They enrich the fabric and diversity of the university,” said a Canadian university official in one news story22 (Brown, 2014), 23 while international students told reporters that the very expensive private insurance that they had to buy upon arrival wasn’t accepted at the emergency room in the local hospital. “A lot of my international friends here have had to pay emergency room expenses out of pocket because the health coverage we get isn’t recognized,” said one Chinese student. “Some had to wait for their parents to send money before they could go to hospital.” Note that this is in a society that has a reputation for universal healthcare. So, the Canadian case exemplified how narratives that romanticize one country or another can obscure serious problems, such as financial exploitation that is justified by market logic or everyday prejudice that may be o ­ verlooked because it doesn’t fit the dominant national narrative. Scholars need to pay attention to the fuller, more complex, and nuanced pictures. The market of international students in the United Kingdom has been further complicated by politics even before the problems were felt in the United States. Blogging for The Spectator, Slater (2016) discusses a Times Higher Ed article, which reported a new Home Office policy that required “university staff … to report their whereabouts … ­[including] when staff are visiting different parts of the university campus, such as the library or a colleague’s office.” Noting that “UK academia is an international business,” Slater described a critical situation where “foreign-born academics … [who were as much as a quarter of UK academics] face an increasingly precarious existence.” While the Ministry of ­Universities tries to “increase education export[ed] to £30 billion by 2020,” the environment for international scholars, and the students who contributed a quarter of universities’ income, was “becoming more and more hostile” to both groups. A crackdown on admissions scams related to allegedly fraudulent language tests in 2015 rounded up and deported as many as 19,000 foreign students; but it was soon revealed that the Prime Minister, who got behind the action, “had almost no evidence, other than the fact these students all took the same test” as some students that were found fraudulent. Slater concluded that international students have “become a political football … in the ensuing kickabout between [political forces represented by] Osborne, Johnson and May.” At the same time as they are “rinsed for all their worth … their rights [were] being curtailed again and again.” It is not just that politicization of international scholars and students inhibits the free flow of ideas and the strength of the nation’s institutions of higher learning. The author added,

52  Understanding Politics “more profoundly, anyone coming to work and live in a free society should not expect to be submitted to surveillance, extortion and deportation even when they do exactly as [they’re] told.” In order to be effective academic leaders and sensitive educators, scholars must engage their institutions in conversations about the dangers of overreliance on market logic that relegates academic support for and the well-being of students into passing comments. We must study the effects of politically expedient but prejudiced arguments about students from certain regions and nations. The groundwork for effective academic support programs requires an awareness and interest in the composition and mobility of international students and how they are shaped and shifted by political forces of the nationalistic regime (­Marginson, 2013)24 within which international education takes place today. The political landscape in the United States has radically changed for international students and education after the 2016 presidential election. As Choudaha, an expert on international education and student mobility, pointed out, the policy perspectives of the current presidential administration seem to be “insular and not in line with the values of international education. It is likely that the future policies will start looking inward and slow down international education exchanges and student mobility” (cited in Redden, 2016). 25 The policies might benefit other nations temporarily, but the larger questions about what values higher education is espousing on a global scale remain ignored. Hare (2016)26 has argued in an article written for The Australian that when one country becomes “isolated and divided” in competition with others about such fundamental global issues as the free flow of ideas and people, it hurts the advancement of knowledge and well-being of people everywhere. Competition would do no good for “global higher education, even if Australia makes some profit from America’s misfortune” or vice versa. The subject of the “Trump effect on higher education,” which was the title of Hare’s article, published the day after Donald J. Trump won the 2016 American presidential election, seems too messy and uncertain to discuss insightfully at this time; but the impacts on universities and international students has clearly been adverse and could be long-­lasting. Just while I was drafting this chapter, the new White House administration changed, eliminated, or instituted several programs that made education for international students more difficult. One of them was a bill that the administration got behind, trying to encourage only the “best and brightest” from around the world, turning university administrators’ idea of competitive, quality education on its head by essentially putting it into an ethno-nationalist framing. The recent waves of anti-immigrant rhetoric and political developments in Europe and the U.S. have similarly led to restrictions and difficulties against international students. Writing for Times Higher Education, also the day after the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, Choudaha (2016)27 stated that

Understanding Politics  53 “after Brexit, the U.S. election reaffirmed that nationalist viewpoints [were] gaining momentum…. It is also likely to have a chilling effect on the experiences of international students on campuses that have more conservative, anti-immigrant communities.” As the author predicted, ­A merican and British universities and colleges certainly have been “up for a tough time,” with their international students and faculty facing more visa denials, travel restrictions, and crippling uncertainty about safety and well-being necessary for academic success. It is clear that “the sociopolitical environment in the countries that are the leading destinations for international students has dramatically changed.” International education (and students) are by nature highly susceptible to political forces and changes, including what message national leadership creates with each election or sociopolitical development. Some national leaders in the U.S. have been personally invested in the advancement of international education, for reasons appropriate to their times; John F. Kennedy has been perhaps the best example. In a 1961 letter to his Secretary of State, he asked to create a national plan rather than leaving the welfare of international students to the universities (with no public policy and guidance), writing, “I feel very strongly that we must not allow these students—especially the Africans and Asians—to leave this country disappointed any longer” (Bevis & Lucas, 2008; 157).28 But other presidents have done the opposite, taking cynical political approaches and capitalizing on fear and resentment toward foreigners, which directly affects international students and institutions and professionals that seek to promote international education. Vigilance to macro-­and micro-politics about international students, therefore, means asking questions, difficult as they may be, about what battles we must pick, which positive forces we want to capitalize on, and what our value systems are about students from other countries. In sum, learning lessons from different nations, as well as from the past in a given country, can help educators develop and implement intellectually meaningful and socially/globally just visions of international education, without being either paralyzed by cynical politics or blinded by romanticized economics about globally mobile students and scholars. Doing so can not only help us avoid repeating the same mistakes and anticipate challenges but also look beyond the growth and sustainability of our programs, designing pedagogies that can contribute to a more just and fair world for future generations. It will help us help the next generation exchange ideas and advance knowledge, across national and political borders, more freely and fully than our generation could. Turning Knowledge into Action I remember a unique interview with a professor of nuclear physics at the University of Florida when I think about macro-politics that scholars

54  Understanding Politics (including myself) usually believe we can do little or nothing about. This professor told me that he hadn’t had international graduate students in his lab since the 9/11 terrorist attack in New York City because they were no longer enrolled in his department or perhaps discipline. But he offered to be interviewed while I was on campus because he was interested in international students. He said the lack of international students in the discipline would soon be detrimental to future American scientists, who would miss “multicultural experience in education”; he said he also missed the “work ethic” that international students used to bring to his lab and department. In addition to security concerns, partly because money had become scarcer and partly because of the concern about disproportionate number of foreign-born scientists in the U.S. (see Graham, 2002: Collision course 29; Stossel, 1999: “Uncontrolled experiment”30), he sensed that STEM programs were increasingly ranked by the number of domestic scientists. Yet, he connected himself to the institutional network of advocates for international students, 31 including professionals from the international student office, international student organizations, the housing department, admissions units, relevant deans, the graduate school, and professors from various departments. Since the prepared interview questions were largely irrelevant, I let the professor share his experiences of international students and education. So, among other things, he discussed how a student from Korea remembered an invitation to a Thanksgiving dinner nearly 40 years ago, how another invitation for him and his family for international travel had changed his perspectives on education, and so on. This early and unique interview made me aware of the important phenomenon among those who worked closely with international students: the additional commitment combined with experience made them more responsive to macro-and micro-politics affecting the students. Data analysis consistently showed that such commitment can greatly enhance academic support programs. In another striking interview, an assistant dean at Cornell University discussed the vulnerability of international students. “So, form an international student perspective,” I said—as she handed me a signed research consent form—“to focus on the international students, what are some issues that you have observed in your position here?” She started by noting that “there’s always a cultural element that is sort of unknown that needs to be worked through,” pausing to mention that more than half of the graduate students she supported were international. In less than two more minutes, she was delving into issues of power quite insightfully: I find international students understand power, but I think they magnify it and forget that as students, that they are powerful…. But there’s, sort of, something hanging over them as far as to have them be connected here, and wanting to rock the boat. I think they tolerate [and they’re in]—the crisis mode as far as—in their ­mentors—I

Understanding Politics  55 think they tolerate … a lot more…. [With] international students I’m wondering, “Ok, are they finally just tolerating it, or do they think this is normal, or they just don’t have any power to ask?” Apparently making sure that she wasn’t just blaming faculty advisors, she highlighted the need to pay attention to vulnerability of international students. She said she created support programs with that dynamic in mind. The same kind of deep interest that the nuclear physics professor had shared was reflected in her responses. From a research perspective, while directly answering my prepared questions, this early interview further foregrounded the theme of power and politics that I kept coming across in many later interviews and while theming the data during the analysis of the final data set. I later found that the issue has been dealt with by some European and Australian scholars and by scholars in other disciplines in the United States as well. For instance, as ­Marginson (2013)32 reports from his research, even though the challenges of power dynamics related to nationality/citizenship, culture, and race affecting foreign students gradually diminish over time, they never fully disappear. Also, even where there are similarities between international and domestic students—such as power relations with faculty advisors and other members of the university, potential for exploitation of labor, and sexual harassment—international students don’t typically have similar courage or recourse for redress. I began my research with the assumption that writing support has little to do with issues of safety and well-being, political climate and power ­dynamics—at least not very directly. However, analysis of interviews, especially with more advanced students, kept countering that belief. Students in different universities shared experiences ranging from being worried about hostile political discourses to the sinking feeling when health insurance was denied for a dependent child because of not being a citizen. And because I followed up with questions about whether and how those experiences influenced their academic transition and learning to write, students went on to give examples of experiences that I cannot imagine from my position today and hadn’t had when I was in their position. One was a graduate student who had been paying more than nine-tenths of his stipend as a graduate teaching assistant to rent a university apartment before his status as a doctoral student was downgraded to the master’s level because of his communication difficulties. But it was evident to me that he needed medical and psychiatric support more than he needed the basic writing class that he was sent to, which he greatly resented. I found that writing professionals who were informed about and interested in issues of politics and power could translate their knowledge and interest into policies, programs, and practices of support. Here is an example from Cornell University again. Late in the afternoon on a day with subzero temperatures, an academic program director took me to a coffee

56  Understanding Politics place called the “Big Red Barn,” where a group of international students played language games about American English idioms. To begin with, the students were learning and using language with greater motivation than they normally might in a typical language class. That “programming” of academic support also went beyond what formal programs can normally do, shifting the focus of language learning to socialization and comfort-building. An hour before, some of those students had shared their anxiety and frustration in a group interview with me. While this encounter was one of the more memorable ones, other encounters with students at a variety of universities similarly highlighted the importance of informal and low-stakes learning, empowerment, and sympathetic support. In fact, perhaps opening up to me as a former international graduate student, many of my student interviewees frankly described the something that is “sort of hanging over them” as the assistant dean above discussed; they overcame that anxiety when they could relate to people, when they sensed understanding and empathy. So, the action I indicated in the title that knowledge can lead to didn’t always require space and resources, institutional support, and specialized/­separate expertise. It needed the affective dimension, informed by knowledge about the big picture, behind professional support. Researchers who have studied the broader social conditions in which international students fail or give up have shown how often these students “face violations of human security in all domains of public, institutional and private life and cannot access the full range of human rights … they are granted less than full rights, entitlements and protections of local citizens” (Marginson, 2013; 9). As Marginson acknowledges, “[i]t is hard for national systems of regulations to encompass cross-border persons. It is harder for the students, at the sharp end of national-global ambiguities and tensions” (10). But “political and legal ‘Othering’ of mobile students by national governments functions as the master Othering process” and affects international students’ academic performance uniquely: “The duality of citizen/non-citizen shelters, legitimates, and amplifies the other subordinations … including racist Othering, the exclusions, and the abuse and violence.” Even as they are celebrated for their role in “diversifying the campus,” they evoke ambivalence. Are they “included equals or subordinated Others?” Marginson goes on to add: “The first, liberal impulse is to answer ‘included equals, of course.’ Yet some who so answer are unreflexively national in outlook” (10). The assistant dean at Cornell who discussed the issue of vulnerability was speaking in the context of a prestigious university known around the world for its history of welcoming treatment of international students but also a history that has been recently tumultuous when it comes to providing essential support with language and writing skills necessary for academic transition and social/disciplinary adjustment. As I learned from other interviewees at the institution, support for international and ESL students had been

Understanding Politics  57 terminated, outsourced, marginalized, and so on, before it had recently been reinstated to a level that was starting to match with the university’s global ranking and prestige, if not driven by an institutional desire for effective education for all and just treatment of foreign students. For these reasons, academics who support these students must often work against the current nation-based and excessively capitalistic regime of higher education. They must often counter direct and indirect impacts of a world made of nations, borders, laws, and regulations that tend to undermine education as a global social cause. They must find ways to help their institutions to be driven by the basic transnational agenda to advance knowledge for universal human good. There are also very pragmatic reasons why the politics of international education cannot be overlooked. Here is one illustration based on the experience of a language program director at the University of ­Maryland. Hers was a self-supported unit: it was not state-funded and instead based on additional tuition fee paid by international students who were tested into the program. Even though the tuition was fairly low, the fact that students had to take the courses when they failed a test changed the whole dynamic. Some students were offended about having to take a “remedial” class after being accepted as “outstanding” scholars: “What do you mean I need help and I think my English is good enough?” they challenged her, “I don’t need this.” Others said: “Yes I know I could improve my English, but I’m going into the sciences.” Many students thought that the program existed just to make money, making it extremely difficult to help them. The courses caught them off-guard, undermining their motivation to learn and sometimes their willingness to continue graduate education. How helpful the program was didn’t make a difference to many of the students. Knowing the fact that revenue happens to be a strong driver behind internationalization at many institutions, the director didn’t read student resistance superficially but instead designed and delivered her support with an understanding of the issue. The director of a similar language support program at Michigan State University had a punching bag in her office, on which she said she let the students “take out their anger” if they started spending too much of their time to vent their anger with the university. Situations like these cannot be explained without confronting the capitalistic, neoliberal argument about “internationalization” that often lacks a vision or focus on education itself. Writing support programs should respond to international graduate students’ challenges by using curricular and pedagogical approaches that treat “the teaching and learning of English as a complex social phenomenon instantiated in particular contexts for specific purposes” while attending to “complex interplays between policies, pedagogic practices, institutional constraints, and migrations” (Mallett, Haan & Habib, 2016; 126, 119).33 And more discussion of macro- and micro-politics of international students is necessary in the scholarship of graduate writing support.

58  Understanding Politics Being broadly informed can help us capitalize on the opportunities where there is demand or recognition of our work, as well as to respond to marginalization of existing programs. In an era of “big data,” the effect of support programs can be further amplified by using numbers about larger political and historical pictures at state, national, and global levels. Doing so can also help academic administrators and staff members participate in institutional conversations on policy, program-­building, and negotiation for continuing or changing existing support systems; to formulate new policies and tackle new challenges in realistic manners; and to collaborate with rather than confront university administration when institutional challenges affect existing academic programs. Even scholars involved primarily in classroom instruction can tremendously benefit from an awareness of sociopolitical, economic, and cultural conditions that affect their international students directly and indirectly. What groups of international students are increasing and what are their most significant needs and strengths? Which groups of students are most vulnerable in a given political climate and what, if anything, can academic support services do to alleviate the effects through academic support? What are the different educational, sociocultural, and class backgrounds of students from a given country? While the use of generalization is limited and can be counterproductive, at least an awareness of issues and possible questions to ask can lead to better understanding and support, whether the support is academic writing or psychological counseling. For program administrators and instructions who wish to study issues like these for intellectual and practical input toward creating more inclusive, safe, and engaging environments where international students can learn language, writing, and other communication skills, there is some research and scholarship in other disciplines on a range of issues ranging from social policy (Trilokekar, 2015)34 to institutional engagement (Glass, Wongtrirat & Buus, 2015).35 In fact, some journalists have countered the more superficial mainstream reporting with both broad and fine-grained views about international education. One such report was published by The Economist (2016),36 showing how political and economic forces in the four major destinations for international students (US, UK, Australia, and Canada) have shifted the global mobility of international students. The article, titled “Brains without borders,” showed how the changes in national (especially immigration) policy, political discourse, and economic and social environments affect international education. Analyzing push and pull factors in the global market, the article suggested that only a genuine focus on education can sustain the national branding campaigns. These dynamics, alongside developments in information technology, could also change the current culture toward more transnational education where students mix and match curriculum at home and abroad. Academics need to find a handle on them.

Understanding Politics  59 The increase in the number and diversity (in terms of nationality, ethnicity, gender, class, and other factors) of international students after every new wave can easily give the impression to academic leaders and experts that changes always happen in positive directions; enlightenment ideals and assumptions about American exceptionalism somehow seem dominant among scholars when it comes to international education. Experts and educators tend to develop policies, programs, and practices on the basis of the positive trends. In reality, the numbers and mobility of international students in the U.S. have been the ficklest aspects of the history of U.S. higher education. Each large-scale increase or shift in the distribution of international students coming to the United States has happened in response to a major sociopolitical event or climate, such as rapid social or technological development (e.g., in the mid 1800s, when Yung Wing and large numbers of Chinese students arrived, or since the turn of the current century), national crisis (e.g., the Sputnik moment, Iran hostage crisis, 2001 terrorist attacks), or political upheavals (e.g., anti-immigrant laws such as the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, politics after World War II, anti-immigrant election rhetoric during and after the 2016 presidential election). Economic conditions have also had direct effects; for instance, the oil boom of the 1970s exploded the number of Iranian students from 5,100 in 1970 to 51,000 in 1980 with the Iran hostage crisis taking the number down to 1,800 by 1990 (Trines, 2017)37. In fact, there are also less visible but significant cultural forces behind the history of international education—and not just those related to the politics and policy of immigration. Christian missionaries, for instance, facilitated some of the earlier waves of international students; they sponsored support and gave them shelter when political crisis turned them into refuges overnight; even today, they continue to work alongside international student offices in many universities, often serving as the only support system for social/cultural adaptation. Understanding the history and politics, culture and economics behind the macrocosm of international education is necessary for scholars and academic leaders, and it is also useful for instructors working with international students.

Policies, Ideologies, and Response In the same way as “elections have consequences” in democratic polities, political and economic stances adopted by nation-states and institutions shape or influence education for all students and often distinctly for different groups of them. Some of these policies arising from political actions and economic changes may never be officially stated. In fact, stated policies may contradict with or even counter what is done in practice, a situation that marginalized groups in any social/political setting face quite often. In the case of the United States, while there is no official national policy regarding international education and students

60  Understanding Politics (Trilokekar, 2015), organizations such as the National Association of Foreign ­Student Advisors (NAFSA38) have described policies they find beneficial for the nation. For example, in a call to the U.S. President to formulate a national education policy regarding foreign students and study abroad toward maintaining “US leadership, competitiveness, and security,” NAFSA (2007)39 recommended the following, among other actions, regarding international graduate and professional students: “Through graduate and professional training and research, enhance the nation’s capacity to produce the international, regional, international business, and foreign-language expertise necessary for U.S. global ­leadership and security” (2). As this organization for international ­education has consistently done, it went on to urge the President to advocate a more internationalized education for American students as well to adopt a strategic approach to maintaining global competition and leadership in international education. As the document reminds us, in lieu of formal national policies, the U.S. instead uses visa and immigration regulations, work and mobility restrictions, and occasional provisions to ease one kind of difficulty or another for international students—­ typically based on the political will and economic interests of the time. Like NAFSA, most academic institutions try to mitigate the effects of political forces when they are detrimental by providing a welcoming stay and productive educational experience for their international students. Such responses, as well as mission statements regarding international students and education, collectively contribute to higher policy in the U.S. For example, in response to the contentious “travel ban” ordered by President Donald Trump in early 2017, universities quietly wielded tremendous resistance. Many universities released their official policy or position statements; the professional organization of writing scholars and teachers, ­Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC), released one of such statements supporting the free movement of scholars. Among a number of statements released within four areas (digital, ethical, linguistic, and professional), CCCC statements also address issues of ethnicity/race (which are related to its historical stance on “students’ right to their own language”), language and power, national language policy, and teaching second-language writing and its writers. Political/economic regimes and forces constitute or shape macro-level policies that influence foreign students’ education. So do institutional policies (such as policy statements), whether they are meant to counter adverse political forces or they are philosophical statements from professional organizations, guidelines for employees by academic institutions, or mission statements. However, policies go beyond explicit statements because policies also function, subsume, and manifest themselves in beliefs and ideologies, attitudes and behaviors vis-à-vis certain groups of people. Jones (2013)40 reviews four approaches to policy in the context of education: “policy as text, policy as value-laden actions,

Understanding Politics  61 policy as process and policy as discursive” (3). The first approach (policy as textual statements) too often produces simplistic thinking about complex issues and overlooks “power dynamics regulating dominant trends and uses of education”; it also makes it difficult for researchers to represent students’ “experiences of practices and their own navigations of the field” (4). The second approach (policy as “value-laden action”), which I have borrowed and adapted for analyzing and discussing the findings of my study, “locates education policy within the realm of values and politics” (Kogan, cited by Jones, 2013; 5); this approach “places policy in a context of wider fundamental questions about what and whom education is for, and who decides” (5). While this approach has its own weaknesses, it allows me to discuss national and institutional policies about foreign students as they are reflected in value-laden beliefs and ideologies about the students and about three particular subjects pertaining to them—language, writing, and international students. I also build on one of the ideas from the fourth approach to policy in education, in which groups’ and individuals’ language use is seen as reflecting how certain individuals and groups are situated within “contentious social spheres regulated by powerful institutions” (Leitch et al., cited by Jones, 2013; 10). In the process of my research, when I regularly came across varied but significant effects of unstated policies about language and writing, in the form of ideas and beliefs shaping support programs and practices, and how they affected international graduate students’ process and experience of learning to write, I started coding the data for “ideology” in relation to the three subjects (language, writing, and international students). I used this stronger term (than, say, “discourse” or “argument”) due to the consequential nature of what interviewees said about the subject. The emergent theme of “ideology” was not necessarily meant to capture negative ideas; for instance, “international” and “internationalization” were almost always used with tonal emphases suggesting a positive view by interviewees. However, as I started writing the current chapter and the next, I found it necessary to foreground the element of “bias” in order to theorize the challenges (in this chapter) and critical perspectives (in the next) facing writing/communication programs in the context of supporting international graduate students. Also, even though only a minority of the interviewees who were faculty members and academic leaders expressed some of the “biased” beliefs and ideas about international students vis-à-vis language/communication and writing, I wanted to foreground those beliefs/ideas because I found them to be (1) consequential, even when they seemed innocuous in themselves, (2) built into normal and normalized discourses and practices, (3) relational in that different individuals seemed to perceive bias differently, and (4) an expression of power and power relations (including resistance by students who may at first feel “powerless” and unable to negotiate).

62  Understanding Politics It was not very surprising that faculty members in different disciplines expressed or implied views about “language” and “writing” that differed from mine or from those that I recognize as widely held by language and writing professionals. There is a significant amount of scholarship about ideologies and discourses about language and writing (e.g., Horner & Trimbur, 200241; Russell, 200742) especially in disciplines beyond those that focus directly on these subjects. Given that my student interviewees had come from many different backgrounds and were immersing in different disciplines, it was also not surprising that they too viewed and approached the learning of language and writing in varied ways (see Leki & Carson, 1997).43 Although the usefulness of generalized “contrasts” of students’ writing styles have been sharply debated (Hum & Lyon, 2009),44 writing professionals do not question the usefulness of understanding academic backgrounds of students coming from particular ­educational contexts, provided that generalizing by countries or cultures is not too simplistically relied on. What I had not expected, though, was how strongly prior experiences and current beliefs about language and writing seemed to shape international graduate students’ decisions to use (or not use) available writing support, a subject current scholarship hasn’t explored as much but was significant in my data. In fact, the conversation on graduate-level writing support hasn’t yet focused on specific effects of academic faculty and staff members’ ideologies about language and writing in relation to foreign students, or of the students themselves. So, in lieu of stated policy about what kind of language and writing support international graduate students need, I also drew inferences from the interviews about beliefs and biases, which I coded under “ideology,” whose influence on support programs and practices I further explored. Briefly put, whether and how those programs and practices were created by the providers, endorsed by faculty advisors, and used by the students depended on their “ideologies” about language and writing. This is not to say that students’ ideas about writing somehow constitute “policy” about language and writing support for them. But since they are not passive receivers of support, it made sense to consider that their ideologies, or value-laden actions and discourses, also shaped and influenced their use of writing support. Ideologies Out There Ideologies about language and writing affect all students, and they have been written about extensively. Scholars of Writing in the Disciplines (WID) such as Russell (2007) have explained ideologies about writing in disciplines that do not directly focus on writing; other scholars who have explored the “politics of language” (e.g., Horner & Trimbur, 2002) have shown how this politics further shapes stated and unstated language policies in academe and affect non-native English-speaking

Understanding Politics  63 students, including within Writing Studies. Interviews with international graduate students and those who provided them writing support consistently showed that language ideologies disproportionately affect international students, magnifying the effects of power dynamics that I discussed before. A language specialist with expertise in graduate level communication support best explained the difference with the example of a common statement graduate students made when they came to her for help. If a domestic graduate student says, “I’m a terrible writer,” the expert told me, he or she means “something different” than if the same statement were made by an international non-native English speaker, adding that the statement could point to yet another set of challenges if a domestic non-native English speaker had said it. If the students are not referring to the same challenges, the challenges cannot be addressed with the same support and resources either. Here is how one of the two University of Houston writing program administrators I cited earlier described the effect of the ideologies: We’ve had graduate students who … have tears in their eyes. They say: “…[my advisor] said that I should have never been added to their program … I have two days to fix [my paper] or I can’t graduate.” So, we also have to train our consultants in dealing with those types of situations. How do you help someone in that situation realistically who doesn’t have the time to go back to the basics and have a grammar lesson in a day and a half? As writing tutors, they did not know what to do when the students’ advisors simply told them, “This is terrible writing” without specifying “what they are to produce, what format, what they’re looking for…. [and] students are trying to go at their writing in the dark.” Another insidious assumption about graduate writing support is that it is only for the deficient, or those on the lowest rung of the proficiency ladder. Even when resources are available for international students, they are only provided to address the “needy” student rather than as support that all of them could use for a smoother transition and greater academic success. The undergirding discourse about “linguistically deficiency” among international students can push support programs in the wrong direction, undermining their quality and sustainability. A university, for instance, may only fund language support or “remedial” writing help, or it may simply raise language proficiency test scores for admission (so that “deficient” students are not admitted, to begin with) while eliminating the support program altogether. “Language support” programs actually teach a wide variety of writing and communication skills, but the assumption that the support (should) focus on fixing language deficiency is also used as a justification for shrinking such programs. Thus, academic program leaders must inform/educate the community that even to the most linguistically proficient international students, writing

64  Understanding Politics support provides what an instructor at the University of Michigan said she described as “advanced academic literacy” with the administration. As the instructor also suggested, continuing support until the end, as with dissertation boot camps, can also help to drive home this message. The assumption that writing support for international students is limited to language support is further reinforced by a second assumption that international students are, or should be, brought in because they are the “cream of the crop” globally. As one STEM student who was working as a writing fellow at the New Mexico Tech put it, evidently sincerely, “in my experience, international students, very commonly, had an excellent work ethic, were very dedicated, spent time, were very organized.” There were dozens of instances in the data where this positive sentiment was expressed, in a variety of ways. Unfortunately, as the director of a graduate medical program at the University of Louisville admitted, universities and departments tend to use this logic to “only hire students who are already able to do the work” (meaning, they are “already able to write at the graduate level”). In reality, not even domestic students are already able to do advanced academic communication—not to mention students coming in to a new country and culture without at least some transition support. In fact, universities use that logic to try to temper public resentment about the disproportionate number of international students in public institutions, if not worse. For instance, even when universities do look for the best and brightest, they may practically target the richest instead, all the while using the narrative to deny or degrade support for international students, to outsource whatever support is provided, or to only use contingent faculty. Ideologies about foreign students are usually tangled in a variety of ways. When beliefs about language, writing, and the person using either of those means of communication interact with each other, the interaction can lead to complicated challenges. Amir, a writing center assistant director in Penn State University (an international graduate student himself), discussed this complexity from the perspective of “affect” in graduate-­ level writing. He said that international students’ writing challenges are oversimplified and misunderstood for a while, including by themselves. So, the students overcome their “writing” challenges not so much when they start mastering the language and style of their writing as when they become able to negotiate their research topic and agenda with their mentors through language and writing. Amir illustrated this by using the example of a female doctoral student from Taiwan who had been reportedly “unable to work above the sentence level.” He found that the student lacked both confidence and interest in local subject matter she thought she had to write about—until she “figured it out.” She gradually understood “the system well enough here” to realize that if she started with a theoretical framing about violence and education as they were familiar to her advisors, she could then write about education in Taiwan, and the

Understanding Politics  65 moment she did so, she was able to write a lot more and complete her dissertation much faster. The advisors who were worried about her language errors, and her writing skills, were pleasantly surprised. Among the many other examples of the ideology about language (further entangled with assumptions about cultural differences) was the enforcement of an “honor code” at Penn State University law school which prevented students from using the writing center, a seemingly discontinued practice also mentioned at Ohio State University. In both cases, the interviewees discussed how the policy could be applied differently on international students because of beliefs/ideologies about them. Thus, to put it generally, on the one hand, faculty and students in many academic disciplines tend to espouse—at least when discussion or practice is not framed critically—what Rose (1985)45 and Russell (2007)46 called the “myth of transparency,” or the idea that writing is transcription of ideas/ reality with language as a transparent medium, and the myth of “transience,” or the idea that writing is a general skill that can be acquired once and for all. Following the lead of Rose and Russell, many writing scholars have also studied faculty perceptions in the disciplines and how they shape and affect teaching and learning of writing in the disciplines (­Jordan & Kedrowicz, 201147; Leydens, 200848; Winsor, 2003; Zawacki & Habib, 2014 49). On the other hand, in the context of international graduate students, beliefs like the above make any problems with their writing seem like deficiencies in language (or cultural background). Some faculty members said that if the students focus on the logic and content of their discipline, they shouldn’t normally need writing support; others asked their students to make the effort and find the support to eliminate nonstandard English and non-native styles of writing. Unfortunately, all these assumptions ignore the reality that graduate students in particular must learn to use writing as means of “negotiating competence, identities, and power relations” (Morita, 2004; 573). 50 They obscure the multidimensionality and complexity of the challenges of graduate-level writing especially for international students. The intersection of ideologies about language, writing, and foreign students among different stakeholders constitutes unstated institutional policy. But it also shapes the educational environment and support programs and pedagogies. So, writing professionals should make their programs more welcoming and their practice more inclusive. They should also inform institutional leaders and administrators who shape institutional policy and decisions, allocate resources, and promote the programs. An experienced scholar at an English language support program best illustrated that need: You get a change in the dean, and the new dean has no background or experience, and if you’re unlucky, these things just wither away. I mean every time there’s change in the senior administration, there

66  Understanding Politics [tends to be] an increase of ignorance about what the English language support people are doing. Hardly anybody seems to come to the job of a dean who knows about this. One has to be educated, this scholar suggested, in order to inform university administrators and to counter their beliefs and ideologies about language. It is important to note here that contrary to the confrontational approaches described by some of the writing scholars, the more effective program administrators sought to understand the ideologies in their broader political/economic context and in light of what different disciplines value; doing so enabled them to better address differences, to find support, to create alliances, and to best engage stakeholders. As one of the graduate writing specialist I interviewed noted, graduate students and their faculty advisors are “all over the place about their view of language and writing—[and] we’re not going to convince everyone.” The issue of language ideology is indeed complex and potentially divisive. So, instead of trying to counter ideologies, program leaders should engage faculty advisors and other stakeholders on the latter’s terms, at least as a starting point. Certainly, avoidance may not always be a more effective strategy than countering. But some efforts must be made at informing and educating the community about writing support as a multidimensional and complex phenomenon. Beliefs and Assumptions among Students I also coded student interviews for their beliefs and ideologies about language and writing. While their views about these subjects were as diverse as the student body, there were a few patterns, which evidently had significant connections with whether and how they used writing support. First, many of the international students I interviewed bought into the dominant assumption that if they fixed their language, they would just write better. Many of them believed that high TOEFL scores were a reliable measure of their language and writing proficiency, so if they had a good “writing” score, they tried to get out of any required learning, as well as ignoring recommendations to further improve their writing. Their view about writing support also had to do with their sense of purpose and priority about coming to the United States for graduate education. Ajit, whose interview I have cited before, best explained this issue while discussing how his peers viewed “additional skills” like writing: “[m]ost of us who come from other countries come here just for learning, the academic scholarship part.” Commenting especially on the views of students from India, he added: “[Writing skills are] like one of those brochures we’ll pick up on the way.” Such beliefs and ideologies among students seemed to be a significant obstacle against writing support programs that sought to help them with the different dimensions

Understanding Politics  67 of graduate-level writing, especially beyond support for fixing language problems. Many of the more advanced students did look back to realize that they needed more than linguistic proficiency to be effective writers—­and, indeed, some students’ views seemed to change quite rapidly. But their improved understanding didn’t always lead to more frequent or better use of writing support: other challenges complicated their use of the support, ranging from needing to focus exclusively on language as demanded by their mentors to lacking information or understanding about available support programs to finding little time to use the support. New students seemed to actively look for available support, but they were too overwhelmed at the time to use what they found; by the time they could manage the time to visit support programs, many of them didn’t find the support as necessary. Second, many of the students I interviewed said that they did not find available writing courses useful for them. Reflecting a pattern at many universities, a master’s degree student in Michigan, where the writing center director described a range of support adapted to international graduate students, had stopped visiting the center because she said the tutors “don’t really understand what I’m trying to write [as a graduate student and in the department of criminal justice] so they ask me to find out the errors [in my writing] by reading it aloud. That’s it.” That “not understanding,” which students described differently at different places, usually coincided with an evident lack of rapport and trust between international students and writing centers. Data analysis indicated that the cause of this challenge seemed varied and complex; this is an issue for further study. Among other things, students found support practices (such as writers reading their drafts aloud and tutors asking questions instead of giving direct suggestions) new and strange, and they suggested that the support providers weren’t interested where they were coming from. Because such beliefs shaped their view and use or non-use of the support, they are worth scholarly and programmatic attention. In short, international graduate students not only need writing support but also education about it, including education about the approaches and expectations of how writing is done and taught in a new country and in varied contexts. Third, students also ignored available writing support because of stigma attached to being “ESL” or similar terms. As one student in a group discussion at the University of Louisiana, Monroe said, “ESL support is not very helpful, because it’s for undergraduates,” referring to the Writing Center! One of the nine students had asked me to join a group over tea at a nearby student apartment, where I requested written consent and then largely listened to a conversation that often involved strong emotions. “Because the writings there are not for graduate, they start from abc, and we have learned that in grade one.” Other students also found the support infantilizing. “Writing is very difficult, you know,”

68  Understanding Politics said one of the more advanced graduate students, moving on to struggles he had with publishing a journal article. He suggested that tutors could not help him with rhetorical skills, genre knowledge, and communicative proficiencies required for his graduate-level writing. Other students shared their own challenges, before Vijay, a student who was soon graduating, shared a story of breathtaking struggle and eventual success, which I elaborate later. Generally, writing center staff members do not yet have as much scholarship on supporting international graduate students (Phillips, 2016). 51 Instead, even though students incorrectly associated stigma about “ESL” writing support, the more language-­focused centers often adopted more sophisticated approaches to supporting diverse students. A simple explanation of this could be that language specialists paid attention to language issues and international students and they practically addressed the students’ challenges with more nuance. Because international students are among the primary group of students that these programs are designated to support, they have more knowledge and more professional incentive to advocate and sustain the support for them. This difference was best articulated by a language program administrator at MIT who was discussing the need to train writing tutors to better support international students, who were 40% of all graduate students at the university: Few writing centers are adequate in supporting international graduate students with writing.… I mean they’re lovely, hard-working wonderful people, and they certainly do things nobody else is doing… but I get emails like, [Mary], I’ve been working with these nonnative English speaking students. Can you give me some tips on working with them?’ And I’m just thinking, “Like, what? I mean is there a list? First of all, who are they? What’s their first language and where did they get their prior education? What is their exact problem?” I mean it’s just impossible to answer like that. As this candid comment on the admittedly hardworking tutors reflects, simplistic understanding of international students as just “second language” or “non-native” English speakers/writers were more common in interviews I gathered at writing-focused programs. Other than graduate-­specific writing centers, only a few others (generic centers) seemed to have trained their tutors to tackle the many facets of “language problems” among international students. In spite of decreasing institutional support that I learned about across the country, language support programs also seemed generally more flexible than writing support programs, as I see in program descriptions in recent publications such as Simpson et al., (2016). 52 It seemed to me that writing support programs tend to embrace more fuzzy views about international students because many of them are yet to pay attention to the side effects

Understanding Politics  69 of using language-­based identification. In short, writing support programs must address assumptions and resentments regarding language among international students, as well as language ideologies among other stakeholders and themselves. Fourth, various beliefs that students bring from their national/­cultural and educational backgrounds shape and influence the students’ attitudes about and learning of writing skills. As a doctoral student at Penn State who had conducted research on writing in Eastern European countries noted, international students often bring very strong views about writing from their home countries, views that support professionals here seemed to pay little if any attention to. For example, the researcher said that Serbian teachers and students described how they wrote in stark contrast with how they thought Americans did: “writing in Serbia is not organized, we don’t have topic sentences. Serbian writing is very free formed.” Many international students I interviewed created similarly stark contrasts, especially describing their backgrounds in writing as “no good,” an evidently counterproductive view. U ­ nfortunately, the deficit view of their own prior writing experiences did not make ­students look for or appreciate the support available. It often led to avoidance or anxiety and eventual delay in the learning process. Fifth, students reacted strongly to stereotypes and perceived biases from those who provided them support, often giving up on the support itself because of negative interactions. Indeed, some students in the humanities and social sciences shared experiences of being stereotyped by faculty mentors, from whom we would expect relatively nuanced views about language and writing vis-à-vis international students. One ­Japanese student who had studied in different countries before she did her master’s degree at a Michigan university and moved to the University of Maryland said that she had “mixed feelings” about how her advisors viewed her writing: I have mixed feelings and mixed reactions to those comments … because I came in feeling like a global citizen, like this is American institution, and I knew that there are certain frameworks. But I still tried to figure out how to go about it and where to draw the line, like, hey, this is the way I talk and write and this is how I am going to be working. I don’t think I can have an editor every time I write. The persisting tendency to help the student with her language caused a bigger problem than the help itself. She was, in fact, bothered by the “cushion” with which the professors started their comments, and she did not understand what the big deal was with a few “awkward phrases,” if the department wanted to include students from around the world. “So, yeah, I still try to figure out what to make out of those feedbacks,” she

70  Understanding Politics added, going on to discuss issues of power and identity. At the previous university, she had visited the English language program, where she found genre-based tutoring “degrading” because “the level of service they provided was very elementary. Maybe that was just the person I met … [but] he was kind of top-down approach, using a rigid approach, like a formula—like introduction, body 1, 2, 3, conclusion, done.” She didn’t understand why the tutor tried to teach her the metalanguage of writing, such as topic sentence, which she said she already knew and which was not why she sought help. She was “a little frustrated that he treated [her] in such a way. International students have a degree of difference.” When asked to unpack her frustration, she returned to the theme of stereotyping international students as linguistically deficient. She did qualify her criticism by adding that international students must try to explore the system if only to find out what is there, a theme common among most of the more advanced students. But her resistance and criticism, which were as common among advanced students, were strong. Finally, international students often struggled to work and engage with their domestic counterparts and with others in the campus community especially when they were new. “Nobody wanted to work with me,” said a student in a group discussion at Cornell, before his friend chimed in: “The thing that really shocked me when I first came was that nobody seemed to want to talk to me,” pausing to add, “or to talk to anybody [else].” A third student agreed: “Everybody is just using email here.” As the conversation developed, it seemed that the students’ frustrations were less related to writing support and more to culture shock. These were new students, and like most new students I interviewed, they indicated that they were frustrated and confused by many things. Most of the more advanced students had learned to make better use of available support, as well as to work with their domestic peers, having overcome language barriers and cultural differences; some continued to be often offended by how they were treated. But as some of the program directors discussed, new students in particular could only be engaged, and the support became more effective, when the support addressed cultural difference and culture shock, power dynamics, and perceived or real biases. Avoiding Ideological Traps Writing professionals certainly know best about how to support students with writing. But graduate students in general and international students in particular are not always able to adopt writing professionals’ advice, due to their own and their faculty advisors’ beliefs and demands, the specialization of their writing, and so on. In this sense, writing professionals’ knowledge/expertise and beliefs can themselves become an ideological barrier of a sort; our expertise can inadvertently aggravate differences

Understanding Politics  71 of understanding and ideology about language, writing, or the students we serve. In particular, this happens when we happen to impose our discipline’s sophisticated understanding and educational approaches on students of other disciplines in relation to their and their mentors’ beliefs and expectations. For instance, a writing program administrator at Michigan State University pointed out a common dimension of this challenge, with problematic views about writing among students’ faculty mentors: Some [international students] are sent to us by chairs in their committees … for surface level issues, but you know that’s not what we do…. There might even be a note … that says, “I’m not reading this until you get to the writing center.” The professor’s demands as described above reflect that they often view students’ challenges with writing in superficial ways, as something to be fixed at the writing center; they also seem to indicate irresponsibility as mentors who ought to help their students with discipline-specific writing support. However, when inexperienced international students, like a number of my interviewees, faced conflicting views about how to improve their writing, it didn’t matter to them who was right. For them, not being able to address their mentors’ demands had immediate adverse effects on their confidence and performance, also aggravating the dynamics of power and perceptions with the professors. A number of writing scholars have written self-critically, so to speak, about beliefs and ideologies in our own field (e.g., Prendergast, 2013), 53 and a few scholars have also put that disciplinary self-reflection in the context of supporting NNES students (e.g., Benesch, 199354; Leki, 1995, 55 200156). But practitioners generally continue to retreat into the comfort zone of their own ideologies about language and writing. As some of the experts I interviewed noted, and viewing from the perspectives of students and other interviewees, writing professionals must be strategic in order to bridge interdisciplinary ideological gaps, especially while supporting international students. In fact, writing professionals often embrace and aggravate problematic views about international students. For example, one of the most experienced scholars of Writing Studies I talked to during the study, albeit someone who said he hadn’t paid attention to international students in his scholarship, described a dissertation completion grant project that excluded international students because no one in the program had “ESL or EFL backgrounds.” The program leaders “were afraid that … [because] so many of our science and engineering students (and faculty) are NNES” the faculty would overwhelm the project with demands for “grammar and style.” They were afraid that because dissertation advisors “don’t know what else is going on … [they] were concerned [they] would be flooded by

72  Understanding Politics students who are sent by advisors simply to, basically to, rewrite their dissertations.” The challenges described by my interviewee are real, but addressing them with avoidance means agreeing with the problematic beliefs—or at least doing nothing to counter the beliefs. In an article titled “Power and agency in language policy appropriation,” Johnson and Johnson (2015)57 found that while peripheral stakeholders such as parents (in the case of secondary education) may have some influence on language policy decisions, policy arbiters such as teachers have greater impact on what is actually implemented: “language ideologies and beliefs about language education lead arbiters to utilize research in tactical ways—i.e. to support their pre-existing positions on the value of linguistic diversity” (241). Thus, tactical selection and application of scholarly knowledge (such as the idea that only ESL specialists can help international student dissertators) can stem from very good intentions; but their effects can nonetheless be problematic. In the case of the grant project for dissertators, the program decision based on a certain belief showed concerned and sympathetic views of international students, but it also prevented a writing support program (as it often does scholarship) from addressing many other challenges for which support evidently existed. 58 Ultimately, the assumption that any differentiated support needs experts in the area led to inaction and reinforcement of a problematic belief—not to mention the missed opportunity to help students in many other possible ways. Situations like this were quite common. While emphasizing higher-order concerns as traditionally understood (such as clarity, transition, and focus), some writing professionals seemed to fail to address challenges that were higher order for the students, such as when they were new and needed a broader orientation to the academic culture while also working on specific tasks. That is, what is “higher order” should depend on the need of the student, not a predetermined assumption or ideology. There should be no “higher” order outside of context, purpose, or other rhetorical factors of writing. In the case of many international students, the demand for support with language (grammatical, syntactic, or vocabulary issues) is legitimate especially when they mean what they say, for even at the graduate level, many of them do need to brush up on their language skills. Some of them—like the students in Louisiana who were “offended” by the focus on language—may or may not need it. So, assumptions about language can lead to unrealistic responses from writing support programs and professionals. In fact, writing programs can also be unhelpful if they create orthodoxy out of the positive idea that international students are “multilingual” writers with rich linguistic resource at their disposal. The programs I observed tried to prioritize issues like clarity and focus, organization and transition, audience-awareness and tone, conciseness and precision,

Understanding Politics  73 especially at the graduate level—countering the overemphasis on grammar and syntax that disciplinary faculty often want international students to focus on. Indeed, even without fully understanding the content and context of their communication, trained and experienced tutors were able to ask students from any discipline many valid questions, helping them to become aware of the generally higher-order concerns and to better articulate their ideas to better achieve their communicative goals. However, I also found a rather widespread refusal to help students with grammar and syntax, which evidently affected many international students adversely. Some faculty members in other disciplines said that they had stopped sending their students to writing centers and writing classes because they could not trust the writing center with issues of content or genre and disciplinary conventions; unfortunately, by taking their own disciplinary expertise too seriously, the writing centers often made that mistrust worse. Thus, especially with a student body whose needs are diverse, complex, and shifting, it is important to avoid reinforcing ideological gaps by updating our support policies and practices, as well as by understanding the beliefs and assumptions of other stakeholders. Another cause of difference in expectations and demands about writing pedagogy and support is what writing scholars call the “monolingualist ideology” (see Horner & Trimbur, 2002)59 that is prevalent across the disciplines. The term refers to a narrow view about what counts as academic English (this ideology denigrates different local varieties in academic contexts, as erroneous or substandard) and what counts as standard English (which also rejects World Englishes and sociocultural and contextual variations in language use). Unfortunately, while writing scholars become increasingly critical of the university as a monolingualist regime, the rest of academe seems generally aware but not very interested about this issue. So, the increasing sensitivity about language among writing professionals, somewhat like the resistance against fixing grammar, also seemed confusing to international students whenever I brought up the issue during interviews. On the one hand, if they were interested or worried about their English language proficiency, they gave high priority to learning what they believed was standard A ­ merican ­English; even though multilingualism and translingualism (concepts few of them might encounter) are a fact of their lives, they focused on what they are often told they lack. On the other hand, most of them are enrolled in the natural sciences, engineering, medicine, and business—­disciplines where “monolingual” beliefs are predominant and justified with all the myths described earlier. Therefore, rather than investing time and energy colliding head-on against deeply entrenched ideologies such as English monolingualism (which have to do with how scientists, for instance, define knowledge-­ making), writing professionals need to be diplomatic and pragmatic about the issue, countering monolingual beliefs and ideologies without

74  Understanding Politics alienating students and faculty members in the first place. I found that more successful writing program administrators worked across disciplinary and ideological divides—by providing faculty with formal training through workshops and consultation, supporting them through classroom visits and collaborative teaching, and creating new initiatives such as writing fellowships and teaching fellows—thereby gradually influencing different stakeholders’ views about language and writing services while also helping their staff become aware of their own ideologies. As a significant side benefit, when people knew one another, they didn’t try to impose their (presumably correct) views about the issues involved; instead they met each other half way and learned from one another. ­Especially in larger institutions and also where writing programs had limited resources or expertise, writing professionals who were proactive in their outreach, and strategic and diplomatic in their relationship-­ building, were most able to help international graduate students with their many and often unique challenges with writing. It must be noted, however, that tactical and diplomatic strategies often come with their own drawbacks. They can set up ideological traps as much as create pathways. So, I found educational and leadership-driven approaches to be less prone to inadvertently reinforcing ideologies about language and writing, especially in relation to international students. ­I nstead of only tapping into ideologies about these students’ writing needs, support professionals taking an educational approach tried to address larger issues of politics and policy—such as the stigma that students felt about being treated as “ESL”—by also engaging faculty mentors and institutional leaders in broader conversations about international students and writing support. In the words of an academic program director at Cornell University, one effective approach to overcoming the trap this section describes was to try to “sell the idea that writing is a complex process” by engaging faculty and students alike in that process. This program leader invested much time with faculty members because she believed that creating faculty buy-in also made programs more sustainable. This approach seemed more farsighted as well as more effective, without ignoring language politics. The visibility and profundity of language problems can work to the advantage of writing professionals insofar as they can use the problems to engage faculty members or administrators or gather support and resources. But histories of support programs that professionals shared with me clearly showed a pattern: short-term strategies backfired unless their adverse effects were offset by stronger positive forces. As Aitchison and Lee (2006)60 have argued, it is important for us to try to substantively shift the perception of academic support from a “site of deficit” designed for “clinical intervention” to fix wherever the deficit appears toward a perception that we are informed and sensitive about disciplines, cultures, and contexts beyond our own. In an article that

Understanding Politics  75 “identifies problems of policy, theory and pedagogy in relation to research writing,” Aitchison and Lee suggest that writing professionals try to reestablish the conceptual link between, on the one hand, the common understanding of the “centrality of text” (meaning that administrators do know, for instance, that graduate students must produce the thesis or dissertation and other types of texts) and, on the other hand, the idea of advanced degrees as a means of “knowledge production” (266). If students must produce text, and text embodies knowledge, the authors imply, then the “pragmatic problems of policy imperatives in the name of efficiency and capacity-building” cannot relegate the teaching of research-based writing to clinical interventions designed to ­produce correct text without regard to the larger challenges students face. ­Writing professionals should prevent their own specializations and established wisdom from aggravating those challenges.

Conclusion: “Reflective Encounters” Coding and analyzing interviews with faculty members from other disciplines (as well as with other groups) at first seemed to show clear contrasts in ideologies about language, writing, and international students in relation to ideologies in the interviews with writing and language professionals. However, closer attention and analysis indicated that writing professionals were also largely complacent or nonchalant about the nationalistic regime and capitalist market logic about international education and international students. Beyond a minority of scholars who worked closely with international graduate students, the students were described only in linguistic terms. In fact, I often heard echoes of the same ideologies expressed by the teacher of the failing Chinese students mentioned earlier in many conversations with writing support professionals. International students were often described in romanticized terms, but the same underlying ideologies seemed to ultimately shape many programs and inform their policies and practices. Some experts clearly heeded scholarship showing that international students perform better when they learned to overcome cultural barriers and if they are socially engaged (e.g., Suspitsyna, 2013),61 or because support programs were designed to that effect. A few writing centers also involved and engaged the students by working with professionals across campus who could help address issues around writing. But mainstream writing programs practically ignored consequential effects and critical issues about power and ideology and just focused on language and writing per se. So, there is clearly a need for writing professionals to both focus on political and ideological issues and to reflect on our own beliefs and practices as they affect these students. One of the ways for doing so could be to adopt Mao’s (2003)62 “reflective encounter,” which involves pausing to examine one’s own understanding of the subject matter when one encounters a different

76  Understanding Politics view of the subject or different beliefs and ideologies about it in other communities or cultures. It is not enough to criticize other stakeholders for not being sensitive to politics and ideologies, but the nature of our work makes it possible and productive for us to pay attention. Many interviews with students, their faculty advisors, and other participants surprised me, forcing me to rethink my prior beliefs and perspectives. One interview that best foregrounded the issue of ideology was with the marketing instructor in California whom I cited at the beginning of the first chapter. To elaborate on the underlying issue here, having apparently ascribed the reason of the students’ failure on a “­cultural divide,” my interviewee had made straightforward decisions about helping the Chinese students with their writing: “We’re not going to teach writing…. Chinese students are a problem!” Instead of seeking ways to mitigate the challenge of learning to write that even the academically brightest foreign students face—because at least a few dimensions of that process are unique, at least during these students’ academic transition—the instructor just demanded that the university only recruit students who could just write: This is college. You need x amount of GPA in graduate school…. Every year I have students from China and I think their idea of motivation is different. I want to take a test, I want to perform, I want to get a degree…. I think it’s just cultural, I really do. Whatever extent to which they are based in facts, the assumptions—that Chinese students have only had a test-based education, that all of them have a certain kind of motivation about education, and that everything boils down to cultural difference—put the onus of learning to speak and write entirely on the students. Such association of students’ failure to their language, motivation, and cultural difference is also increasingly shaped by the view that Chinese students who don’t catch up and perform are fuer-dais63 with a bad attitude and no interest in education. The instructor’s arguments could be seen as a candid expression of frustration about the market of international education that she believed has increased the proportion of unmotivated students from a certain country. However, the interview gave me pause because it made me ask how often her kinds of views shape or influence writing support and how we counter them. How are the politics and economics of international education accounted for in Writing Studies? What beliefs and ideologies do our research and scholarship, as well as our support programs and pedagogies, promote and resist? Broader issues about politics and policy of international education have been addressed in recent scholarship, but most writing professionals continue to embrace what Suspitsyna (2013) called a “demographic” view about international students, one which values them for numbers and

Understanding Politics  77 variety but, I argue, neglects complex sociopolitical and economic issues such as economic forces, dominant ideologies, and intolerant political climate and culture-based prejudices.64 “The paradoxical coexistence of intolerance and diversity…. operates as a strategically deployable shifter, with a spectrum of meanings ranging from demographic representation to welcoming climate to skills necessary for participation in a global economy” (9). Because “international students’ status as legal aliens places them in a marked category in comparison with the unmarked category of the American citizens” (10), academic programs and support practices cannot be effective while overlooking the basic fact that our universities are in many ways “collective enactments of organizational traditions, histories and mythologies.” Suspitsyna goes on to argue that universities “operate as colonial metropolises, fashioning themselves as multicultural centers of learning and global providers of knowledge and, at the same time, remaining negligent of their multicultural and international subjects” (11). Seen from such critical perspectives, which often greatly sharpen our understanding of pertinent issues, academic support programs can help reshape current worldviews only if their professionals envision universities as a “new imaginary of organizational citizenship, which displaces [nationalistic regime] at the core of academic and campus cultures, and accepts internationalization and diversity as organizing systemic principles” (12). Spaces like the writing center and the writing classrooms and communities like writing groups and writing fellows programs are the right places to directly address such issues, at least at the level of being aware and for creating socially engaging and educationally effective support practices. Denying or ignoring how students’ “otherness” affects them can only lead us to abstract similarities while concrete issues that ought to be addressed first are ignored. To understand the big picture of international education first, writing program administrators and instructors could look beyond their own field to scholarship in disciplines like psychology, student affairs, comparative and international education, and higher education administration. For instance, in a study of consensual and individual stereotypes about international students among domestic students, a psychology scholar, ­Spencer-Rodgers (2001),65 shows that stereotypes, bias, and prejudice— which are undeniable parts of international students’ experience in any country—can have serious effects on “psychological well-being and cultural adjustment of international sojourners” (655). Studying the differential perceptions about international students’ gender, academic level, ethnicity, and language proficiency, Kwon (2009)66 highlighted the need to understand these factors to better facilitate the students’ academic transition to U.S. higher education. There is now a plethora of articles that could help us understand the academic socialization of Chinese graduate students (e.g., Huang, 2012),67 as well as international graduate students in general (e.g., Ravichandran et al., 2017). Scholars in student affairs

78  Understanding Politics have explored the dynamics of privilege based on different national and racial identities (e.g., Huang, 2012), cultural influence on “academic voice” (e.g., Ballard & Clanchy 198468; Ramanathan & Atkinson 1999),69 and so on. Even a small selection of readings on the social, psychological, cultural, and other issues that form the periphery of writing support can help toward creating effective and sustainable writing programs. In fact, being reflexive about foreign students must also involve asking tough questions about them in relation to their domestic counterparts. I believe that there are ethical questions at this nexus that every educator must ask, which journalists have best raised so far. For example, in a thought-provoking article in The Atlantic magazine, McKenna (2015)70 discusses ethical questions raised by the concentration of international students in many large public universities whose leaders seem to skirt the question of their institutions’ responsibility toward domestic students while justifying increasing numbers of international students in various ways. On the one hand, even though the number of international students crossed a full million in the United States in 2016, their proportion remains just above 5% of total U.S. enrollments (as opposed to, for instance, over 24% in Australia the same year); the sheer capacity of U.S. higher education, which is more than double the number of institutions than any other country, may make that proportion seem insignificant. On the other hand, the concentration of international students in certain states, institutions, and disciplines is more concerning, as ­McKenna argues. Using the example of the largest recruiter, New York University, she points out that while 19% of all freshmen at NYU in 2015 were international, only 5% were African American, and the combination of many native demographics was just 1%. While university officials claimed that they have “embarked on an ambitious plan to become America’s first truly global university, creating an infrastructure that enables students to experience a global network of campuses and academic centers around the world, without ever leaving NYU,” the fact that an American university has more students from China than from the entire Midwest raises serious questions (McKenna, 2015). Furthermore, international students are also increasingly treated as what many describe as “cash cows” rather than learners with full privilege, with little regard to whether they are able to pay the “full fee” and exorbitant surcharges. McKenna explains this with the same example: “given that one year at NYU for tuition, room and board, and fees costs $66,022, it would take the average Chinese family—with a yearly income of $2,100—decades to save enough money to afford attendance there.” Academic scholars should not hesitate to ask what proportion of international students is too big. Shouldn’t our institutions instead invest more resources on domestic, especially minority, students? I would add that the focus on revenue could also be closing doors to lower-income students from other countries, further slimming the possibility of what Zakaria (2015)71

Understanding Politics  79 calls a “natural aristocracy” of talented people who acquire education and wealth by sheer commitment, rather than an “artificial aristocracy” that is inherited by a certain class. I would add that academic scholars can and must show the American university how to cultivate a vision of global social mobility as well as a national one, which it can do by providing a certain amount of opportunity for hard-working students from around the world while it recruits international students for revenue generation and tries to provide internationalized academic experience for domestic students. These three dimensions are not mutually exclusive; they can be parts of the same whole. As scholars, we cannot advocate for international students, cannot simply demand more resources for them, and cannot just ride the wave of the next appealing discourse about them, without simultaneously asking tough questions about them and about their domestic counterparts.

Notes 1 I used to have dreams where my students in a first-year writing course would ask questions involving local or technical words (such as “curving grades,” which one student used early on) that I did not understand. 2 Subverting crisis in the political economy of composition. CCC, 68, 1. 3 See Tardy (2009) for insights on language education in the context of internationalization. 4 See Simpson, next note (2016; esp. 5–7). 5 Introduction. In Simpson et al., Supporting graduate student writers. 6 Fostering international student success in higher education. 7 I had been systematically tracking interviews where students talked about writing and communication support that they had used, triangulating analysis of interviews with those who provided the same support along with my own field notes taken during research visits. 8 Very likely meant as a computer metaphor. 9 The “foreign TA problem.” In Bailey et al., Foreign teaching assistants in U.S. universities. 10 Unclear on American campus: What the foreign teacher said. The New York Times, A1, A18. 11 Communicative competence and the dilemma of international teaching assistant education. TESOL Quarterly, 26, 2. 12 Perceptions of international teaching assistants…. Communication Education, 48. 13 A review of literature on ITA training shows the focus in its scholarship shifted from accent and speech in general to “classroom culture” in the 1990s (e.g., Rubin & Smith, 1990, International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 14), but as resources on program websites indicate that practice hasn’t caught up to the balance urged by scholars. 14 Resisting monolingualism in English…. In Ellis et al., Rethinking English in the classroom. 15 English only and U.S. college composition. CCC, 53, 4. 16 Methodologically, this was a statement I marked as “language ideology” under “students,” a theme I discuss toward the end of this chapter. 17 Subverting crisis in the political economy of composition. CCC, 68, 1. 18 International graduate applications and enrollment: Fall 2015. CGC Report.

80  Understanding Politics 19 SEVIS by the numbers, June 2017. 20 Higher education: A hotbed of Corruption? …Inside HigherEd. 21 See Indelicato (2018) for a critical analysis of tropes that treat international students as “subjects of the border” in public debates in Australia, where they’ve been seen as “objects of national compassion or resentment,” as it fits political and economic climates. 22 This one addresses the unregulated price for international students. 23 International students or ‘cash cows’? The Star. 24 Equals or others? … In Sovic & Blythman, International students negotiating higher education. 25 What will happen to international students under President Trump? …. Slate. 26 The Trump effect on higher education. The Australian. 27 The politics of the UK and the U.S. will not be welcomed by international students. Times Higher Education. 28 International students in American colleges and universities. 29 Collision course: The strange convergence of affirmative action and immigration policy in America. 30 Uncontrolled experiment: America’s dependency on foreign scientists. New Republic, 67. 31 This network was called UFIIT (University of Florida Initiative for International Initiatives Team), which was later updated as UGIFT (Gator International Focus Team). 32 Equals or others? … In Sovic & Blythman, International students ­negotiating higher education. 33 Graduate pathway programs as sites for strategic language-supported internationalization…. In Simpson et al., Supporting graduate student writers. 34 From soft power to economic diplomacy? Research & Occasional Paper Series. 35 International student engagement. 36 International students: Brains without borders (2016, Jan. 30). 37 Déjà vu? The rise and fall of Iranian student enrollments in the U.S. World Education: News and Reviews. (Feb. 6). 38 Now called the Association of International Educators, while retaining the original acronym. 39 An international education policy for U.S. leadership, competitiveness, and security. Statement. 4 0 Understanding education policy: The “four education orientations” framework. 41 English only and U.S. college composition. CCC, 53, 4. 42 Writing in the academic disciplines: A curricular history. 43 “Completely different worlds…. TESOL Quarterly, 31, 1. 4 4 Recent advances in comparative rhetoric. In Eberly et al., The SAGE handbook of rhetorical studies. 45 The language of exclusion: Writing instruction at the university. College ­English, 47, 4. 46 Writing in the academic disciplines: A curricular history. 47 Attitudes about graduate L2 writing in engineering…. Across the Disciplines, 8, 4. 48 Novice and insider perspectives…. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, 51, 3. 49 “Will our stories help teachers understand?” Cox et al., Reinventing identities in second language writing. 50 Negotiating participation and identity in second language academic communities. TESOL Quarterly, 38, 4.

Understanding Politics  81 51 Writing center support for graduate students…. In Simpson et al., ­S upporting graduate student writers. 52 See, esp., chapters by Fairbanks & Dias; Fields et al.; Mallett, Haan & Habib, 2016; Phillips. 53 Writing and learning in view of the lab…. Literacy in Composition Studies, 1, 2. 54 ESL, ideology, and the politics of pragmatism. TESOL Quarterly, 27, 4. 55 Coping strategies of ESL students in writing tasks across the curriculum. TESOL Quarterly, 29, 2. 56 A narrow thinking system. TESOL Quarterly, 35, 1. 57 Power and agency in language policy appropriation. Language Policy, 14, 3. 58 Issues about such “division of labor” are substantively explored by Matsuda (1999) in CCC, 50, 4 and (2012) in Writing Program Administration, 36, 1. 59 English only and U.S. college composition. CCC, 53, 4. 60 Research writing: problems and pedagogies. Teaching in Higher Education, 11, 3. 61 Socialization as sensemaking…. Studies in Higher Education, 38, 9. 62 Reflective encounters…. Style, 37, 4. 63 Colloquial/slang term meaning “children of the nouveau riche” or “second-­ generation rich kids” in China. 64 Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside HigherEd, and other national venues have published a number of news stories in 2016 and 2017, reporting incidents of racism, prejudice, or violence. For example, see Belkin and Jordan (2016: “Heavy recruitment of Chinese students”) and Fischer (2017: “International students dodge Trump’s partly reinstated travel ban”). 65 Consensual and individual stereotypic beliefs about international students among American host nationals. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 25, 6. 66 Factors affecting international students’ transition to higher education institutions in the United States…. College Student Journal, 43, 4. 67 Transitioning challenges faced by Chinese graduate students. Adult ­L earning, 23, 3. 68 Study abroad: A manual for Asian students. 69 Individualism, academic writing, and ESL writers. Journal of Second Language Writing, 8, 1. 70 The Globalization of American Colleges. The Atlantic Magazine (2015, Mar. 18). 71 In defense of a liberal education. The two terms are borrowed from Thomas Jefferson’s letter to John Adams.

3 Shifting Focus An Ecological Approach

Actually, the first thing that I tried to learn is their approach and style and copied it. For example, I tried to use the common words and ­common structures of writing, or how to start, and then transfer the idea. If you want to be polite while you disagree, how should you do that?… I learned [such skills] from attending scientific meetings and [also] cultural events. (An Iranian doctoral student at the University of Louisville) You know what librarians have taught me is that libraries around the world have very different cultures, and there’s many libraries where you can’t just access the stacks as a patron. (An academic program director at Cornell University)

As soon as the ten or so of my fellow international graduate students at the University of Louisville settled down for a focus group at the graduate dean’s office, one of them took over the conversation. A newly arrived master’s degree student from India, the gentleman was frustrated that no one in our university’s support systems would help him find a residence. He hadn’t applied before the deadlines, which were a few months earlier, and there was no more space available on or off campus when he arrived. “How do you expect us to be successful academically,” he asked, “if we don’t have a place to sleep?” The next year, another student brought up a similarly tangential issue, preventing me from focusing on the meeting’s objective of learning what kinds of workshops we could offer for international graduate students during their academic transition. After a while, I realized that it was not just new students who derailed conversations like that. A variety of nonacademic challenges evidently came up throughout the students’ first semesters and in their subsequent years. Working as the dean’s research assistant (between 2009 and 2011), I learned how “other” challenges that my fellow students faced—such as expiring visas and discontinued or insufficient funding, homesickness and stress, and challenges related to accompanying family members—could stop even the most talented students in their tracks. I also realized that my emerging research interest in writing support for

Shifting Focus  83 these students had created blind spots in my thinking, making me rather insensitive about the intersection of academic and nonacademic challenges that international students faced during their multifaceted transition into American academe. Gathering and analyzing data for the current research was a similar experience, though on a much larger scale. The more students I talked to at more institutions across the country, the more necessary it seemed that I pay attention to the other challenges. Universities are networks of specializations in the form of professionals and institutional units. But as the professionals and programs become more sophisticated, they can also overlook seemingly tangential or obvious issues, especially failing to view challenges of students from the students’ perspectives. Misalignments between institutional support systems and student needs seem to be most significant where those needs are not yet understood, when a certain student body is new or diverse or is rapidly changing (see Johns, 2001; Ostler, 1980; p. 489)1 or if there is insufficient motivation among professionals to change programs and practices. By their design, current writing support programs are unable to assist international students with gathering the many pieces of the puzzle that is graduate-level writing. We can sense this reality from this chapter’s first quotation: the electronic engineering student could not just start with or focus on the aspects of academic writing that writing center tutors helped with for a while. He said that he had to gather many other ingredients to become able to write well for the many purposes. That process also involved going far beyond his department. He had to learn the rules of politeness, strategies for persuasion, appropriate style, and linguistic and rhetorical norms of interpersonal relationship. “First time that I came here, I figured out quickly that I am coming to a new country, new people, new culture, new everything,” he said. “People are different, the culture is different, how they think, how they judge…. So, the first thing, in general … I tried to involve myself with people who have more experience, those who were here before me, or more American people.” It took him a few years to realize that he had been right to look beyond formal support and try to cobble together support and resources to address challenges that he encountered. The ingredients of academic writing came from many not-so-academic places—not to mention many other kinds of writing that he had to do in graduate school. Many academic support professionals I talked to had started to ­address the blind spots created by disciplinary specializations by building, fostering, or contributing to the ecologies of support in their institutions. For instance, addressing the challenge of cultural difference mentioned by writing scholar cited above, a librarian at Penn State University described how she filled the gap that no one else seemed to: a research specialist in law and politics, she not only taught international students “the western view of information and the language used for organizing it” but also took

84  Shifting Focus the time to explain “how our politics and legal system work.” Even the time she spent teaching international students about different perspectives on knowledge and organization of information pushed the boundaries of her specialization and job responsibility, which she suggested she did because the students “aren’t getting [that support] in their classes because of [a] presumption that everyone knows it.” In general, the best academic support for international graduate students were ­undergirded by acts of “going beyond” by professionals and an ecology of interconnected programs and resources that students could utilize as and when needed. Many writing programs provided a range of support themselves and/or contributed to the broader ecology of support that international graduate students needed in order to become successful writers and scholars. But there were as many that seemed to adopt overly standardized or outdated approaches to supporting these students. In the latter case, students only used the support minimally or when required; faculty advisors did not trust or respect the programs; students were generally viewed as deficient in language or general writing skills rather than as diversely talented and needing support in different dimensions of writing; and support was onesize-fits-all and it didn’t consider the fluidity and rapid change in the challenges that students faced. In this chapter, I develop a few key perspectives about writing support for international graduate students, focusing on the big-picture issues in the findings of my research. Using themes generated from axial codes that compared interviews with relatively new students against those with their more experienced counterparts, I begin by exploring what “learning to write” looked like from the perspectives of international students, especially while they were adjusting to a new education system in a new society and culture. In order to address additional questions, which were prompted by analysis of preliminary data, I go on to discuss broader themes generated from the analysis of the full data set involving interviews with a variety of professionals. 2 How could writing programs and support practices be designed and situated to best facilitate international graduate students’ academic transition, that is, while the students are exploring the broader ecology of writing-related support and also learning the ropes of academic communication in their disciplines and specializations? How could writing programs and professionals contribute to and enhance that broader ecology? How could we take political and ideological forces affecting these students into account, especially considering the diversity of their identities and backgrounds and of their proficiencies and needs, in light of the decentralized nature of graduate education with dispersed support/resources? What kinds of issues regarding international graduate students demand distinct attention (in relation to their domestic counterparts) in research and training, pedagogy and policies? When, where, how, and why should we support the two groups—or, perhaps, the spectrum—together?

Shifting Focus  85

Academic Transition and Learning to “Write” I would create one support center that provides support with all kinds of support for international students—not only academic such as writing and research but also social and cultural. I would bring different people who are interested in international students to such a center … an international center that is not just a visa center… but [also] pedagogical.… A dynamic learning center where students can teach us about their experiences, their literacies, their experiences of writing…. Only when I learn from students can I teach best. (A writing scholar at California State University, Northridge) International students travel in many ways … geographically … through their own identities … familiarizing themselves with new values…. When faculty ask [them] to write … they are requiring them to undertake yet a third journey … [involving] a variety of genre conventions … in their (new) discipline. (Kam & Meinema, 2016; 1)3 With about a dozen of the interviewed professors and program administrators who were former international students, I started the interviews by asking them how they learned graduate-level academic writing when they were students. Despite all kinds of differences in their experience, a theme persisted across their reflections and it also coincided with what current students, both new and more advanced, said: it is not enough, often even counterproductive, to provide writing support for international graduate students without considering where they are in their transition process. “The old thinking is that we bring the already talented,” said a writing scholar at California State University, Northridge. But even for the most talented students, learning to “write well” once again begins to happen when they arrive here. It requires understanding of the new society and culture and disciplinary conventions. And students must continue to meet the demands of communicating in increasingly complex and varied contexts as they advance in their graduate programs. ­Similarly, remembering his experience of the support he received during the first semester, Ajit, the advanced doctoral student at Cornell mentioned earlier, critiqued current models of support as being insensitive to international students’ realities. “Don’t bombard the newcomer,” he said, “They are coming from very different backgrounds and [learning graduate-level writing] won’t happen overnight.” To avoid overwhelming students or providing support that is misplaced, writing programs could adopt elements of the suggestions made by the scholar quoted above (also a former international student). A multidimensional support center that he proposed, or a network of existing support systems, could help address the weaknesses of separate, often isolated, support programs

86  Shifting Focus that international students felt were imposed on them, didn’t benefit from them while they were new, and underutilized them when they had the choice later on. Helping to “write well”—not to mention trying to fix the language first—without concern for the context and process of academic transition can be ineffective for international graduate students. Instead, to build on the words of Kam and Meinema as cited earlier, writing support for them must facilitate the multiple journeys that they must undertake when approaching almost every writing task. When different or differentiated support is not feasible, available support can be made transition-adaptive. Doing so can not only make the support useful; it can also help address the resistance due to stigma ­related to being labeled “ESL,” resentment about being forced to take additional courses (especially when there is additional fee), and the feeling of being overwhelmed or not yet ready. And it can foster confidence in international graduate students. The traditional approach is to essentially invite students to specialized programs, sometimes requiring them to go through the programs before they’ve had the time to find their bearings on the systems of life, community, and academic culture in a new country. Many of the students I interviewed said that they needed more flexible support than they found on their campuses, as well as the freedom to choose what support to use when. The freedom, flexibility, and adaptability of writing support to the academic transition of international graduate students can be achieved if we essentially redefine graduate-­ level writing from their perspectives as international, or mainly as scholars in transition. Accordingly, I present in this section a five-­dimensional model of writing support (Figure 3.1), using five phrases, all starting with the letter C.

graduate-level writing for international students

content knowledge

Figure 3.1  A five-dimensional model of learning/teaching writing.

Shifting Focus  87 Competency in English: As mostly non-native speakers of English, many international graduate students face challenges related to competency in English language.4 Many of them do have limited choices in vocabulary and idiom, weak command of syntax, and insufficient facility with grammar. However, language is usually just the visible part of the metaphorical iceberg of multidimensional challenges posed by graduate level writing in a new academic culture, instead of being a problem in ­itself; contrary to what many faculty advisors, writing professionals, and many international students themselves believe, addressing the difficulty with language may be necessary but usually does little to improve graduate-­level writing. In fact, similar to the experience I shared in my preface, many of my student interviewees found the focus on language ultimately unhelpful. “People were like, yeah, you know, it’s your language,” said a Croatian doctoral student at New Mexico Tech, expressing her frustration. “I’m like, do you guys know that … many people coming to the U.S. especially at the graduate level, they had English for a long time? They don’t seem to get that.” Asked what was behind the appearance of language problems, she elaborated: “It’s not the English. It’s being out of my home country!… The way they teach here…. I didn’t know what was going on in class.” “When I first came,” she said, “I thought that everybody knew and I was the only person who did not know it.” Many students seemed to take some time to realize this assumptions about language, but they seemed to ultimately stop blaming their “language problems” for other challenges of writing. The issue of language proficiency, while being one of the most common topics of research and pedagogy alike, needs a thorough rethinking in the case of international students. Let me further elaborate why, using a group interview at Cornell University, a conversation that c­ overed a few key themes that kept recurring in individual and group interviews throughout my study. The group of students at Cornell seemed highly talented and motivated, but perhaps because they were mostly new, when I asked them open-ended questions about their experiences of adjusting to the American university, most of them expressed a great deal of anxiety, focusing on language and communication barriers. A Taiwanese student, for instance, said: “For me the biggest challenge is language … in class … speaking in front of other students and teacher.” Too often, writing scholars, program directors, and instructors and tutors take such anxiety somewhat at face value, using it to gauge students’ language proficiency and/or cultural difference. Or they associate it with students’ gender or culture (Adhikari, 20155; Huerta et al., 20176). But if we look closer at the context in which that anxiety manifests, it usually reflects challenges that need much more than linguistic support, such as understanding the subject matter or its social/cultural setting in order to be able to ask meaningful questions. The students may also be simply unfamiliar with basic norms of communication or may lack necessary

88  Shifting Focus knowledge about society and culture that seem necessary for engaging in a conversation. A simple experiment of, say, changing the subject of conversation from “student-teacher relationship in the United States” to “student-teacher relationship in your home town” can help a teacher observe how much of the hesitation was linguistic and how much of it was about subject knowledge. Similarly, when relatively new international students express anxiety about their linguistic and communicative competency, they may be simply feeling stressed or “out of place.” In the group interview at Cornell, a student in the third year of his time in the U.S. remembered having language challenges when he first arrived, but he added that “more importantly, I thought that I didn’t belong here.” He was shocked, for instance, when attending a guest lecture in his Sociology department where he “couldn’t understand anything” because the speaker gave examples from “daily life,” a strategy that had the opposite effect of what he knew the speaker intended. “It took the longest time for me to familiarize myself with those kinds of things,” he remembered. As the interview progressed, I tried to shift the students’ attention to their experiences of graduate-level writing, but the conversation kept drifting back to life experiences, which were overwhelming to the newer students. They focused on small issues such as the difference between British and American English spelling (which seemingly made a big difference to them). Some wanted to write in the “American way,” which they described rather narrowly as always starting with a thesis statement. With time and exposure to the academic culture here, the anxiety about language diminishes, not because the students become “native-like” speakers/writers of English but because they learn to use language more effectively—even as issues of power and identity, negotiation and agency (Zhang, 2011)7 may continue to affect their communication. Because new international graduate students tend to be hung up on the nitty-gritty of language, writing support professionals should help them develop more nuanced views about language, rather than focus on and help them fix surface-level language issues. Among other possible reasons, seemingly linguistic challenges may have to do with real or perceived bias from interlocutors and audiences. Newer students in my study felt more ignored during class discussions and collaborative activities. One student said that she didn’t participate in class conversations because “they [domestic students] really don’t want to listen to you.” Real or perceived bias can be quite complex in the case of international students,8 being shaped not only by their identity as “outsiders” but also by the intersections of their identities and experiences, as I will discuss in the next section. The additional anxiety about bias can give the vague and all-encompassing language problem new meanings and effects, which is extremely important for writing professionals to pay attention to.

Shifting Focus  89 Composition Skills: International graduate students’ learning to write involves learning composition skills, or rhetorical skills for communicating with new audiences in a new academic culture and in a new society. All graduate students must develop a facility with genres and conventions of argumentation and persuasion, interpersonal communication and negotiation. But especially if they have not had experiences in American undergraduate “general education” or sufficient experience in this society and culture (see Büker, 2003),9 international graduate students find the same demand of graduate-level writing much harder than their domestic counterparts, at least for a while. This is because they must acquire a range of new rhetorical knowledge and skills required by graduate-level writing, as well as new sociolinguistic skills. Even while learning more basic writing skills, which some of them also need to learn, they must do so within advanced disciplinary contexts. We can see how their challenges center heavily on rhetorical skills if we compare their ability and confidence to write the different parts of a research paper or article. They tend to struggle when writing the introduction, discussion, and conclusion sections; by comparison, they write the method and findings sections relatively easily. This is because the former sections demand more numerous and also more sophisticated rhetorical skills, for contextualizing the subject and argument in local sociopolitical or economic context, for arguing or discussing issues by using strategies shaped by local society and culture, for interpreting evidence and formulating theses so they are relevant or applicable to new academic or social/professional communities, and for engaging audiences (whom they may not know yet). So, writing skills for international graduate students heavily depend on knowing what the Iranian student in the epigraph at the beginning of this chapter said: “approach and style” of new people and society whose “common words and common structures of writing” they may not know very well yet. As a result, these students need greater and closer support with rhetorical skills, especially for finding and addressing gaps in current knowledge, developing arguments and propositions in ways that are valued in the new academe and culture, and engaging sources in rhetorically effective and ethically sound ways. Let me illustrate the importance of this second dimension of graduate-­ level writing for international students with an example. The group of more advanced and experienced students I interviewed in New Mexico shared strikingly similar experiences with those of the new and anxious students whom I had met at Cornell. However, having learned composition and rhetorical strategies that new audiences expected and understood, the students in New Mexico evidently approached writing very differently. Instead of focusing on grammar and accent or worrying about small details, they participated in scholarly conversations through their writing. To the new international student, class discussion looked like needless criticism of every text or a “constant deconstruction

90  Shifting Focus of everything you read,” as a first-semester French doctoral student at Stony Brook University put it. The advanced students in New Mexico had already embraced the idea of critiquing, analyzing, and responding to texts as an important mode of scholarship (such as for “finding a niche”) in the new academic culture. In fact, these students had become conscious and critical about limiting views regarding language, writing, and themselves as students and scholars—as in the case of the Croatian student I mentioned before. When asked what kinds of writing support international students need, they looked past or downplayed language support, even though they were aware that they hadn’t overcome all their challenges with English. For international students, learning graduate-level writing skills means learning about it as well, including appreciating its function and value in graduate education. Students who did not appreciate the importance of writing in graduate education also seemed to be the least successful as writers. For this reason, one of the students in New Mexico put it succinctly when I asked the group what advice they would give to new international students: “Well, it is important to convince that their writing is not perfect, that they need to learn how to write.” His colleague added: “If you don’t know that there is a problem, then you’re not going to solve it.” While such suggestions may seem just as relevant and necessary for domestic students, probing questions revealed additional reasons behind them—reasons that seem invisible to students and scholars who haven’t experienced or paid attention to the academic transition of graduate students from one country and culture to another. As one student noted, the appreciation and understanding of academic practices in a new academic system, in this case writing, shows that a student is embracing the new academic culture. Interviews with students and professionals working with them generally showed that international students typically need a significant amount of transition-related education before they can learn genre conventions on their own, use new methods and tools for writing and engaging audiences, and develop and take intellectual positions—­ regardless of their fluency in English. Content Knowledge: Graduate students must learn vast amounts of new content. But that content must also often take the form of their own intellectual position and arguments on the subject. Writing instructors and tutors typically cannot help with the subject matter of other disciplines but they can facilitate research and reading, response to and review of literature, strategies for invention and intellectual positioning, and so on. For international graduate students, the process of understanding and generating the content of their writing can be more complicated, so our support needs to be adapted accordingly. Both the content of their study and the intellectual position they must develop and present in writing tend to pose greater and additional challenges for them. They may not only find it harder to understand the scholarship that they must read and

Shifting Focus  91 respond to with their writing, but they also tend to take a lot more time to read and understand the literature than their domestic counterparts. ­Regardless of their fluency in English and even their general ability to express and organize their ideas in writing, the challenge of generating arguments and perspectives in a new society and culture can make writing more challenging for them—as indicated by the career center counselor in the epigraph at the beginning of this chapter. International graduate students’ challenges with content, as a key dimension of writing, are further exacerbated by the assumption of universality of disciplinary knowledge among their disciplinary advisors and writing instructors alike, for while concepts and theories may be universal, their teaching and learning, research and scholarship are usually highly localized. To make matters worse, as pointed out by a former international student and currently a writing program administrator at California State University, Northridge, the celebration of international graduate students as “cream of the crop” (even in terms of their disciplinary knowledge) creates and exacerbates blind spots in curriculum and writing pedagogy. The idealization strangely seeks to substitute knowledge and skills with “smartness.” In fact, students themselves exacerbate this problem when they assume that if they are accepted for graduate studies by an American university “they must be good enough to not need writing support,” to borrow the words of an international student at SUNY Albany who was researching international graduate students’ views and attitudes about writing. International students usually have the advantage of the knowledge, experience, and perspectives that they bring from different sociocultural and academic backgrounds, meaning that those assets can be a leverage in many cases. Unfortunately, their faculty advisors, departments, and peers may not value those resources—consciously or unconsciously expecting learning to be a one-way-street process of focusing on knowledge, skills, values of disciplines, and professions as situated in the new society and culture. Their leverage is also nullified by the tendency to focus on what international students don’t know, not only among instructors, administrators, academic service staff but also among students themselves (who internalize deficit views about themselves). As a German student in the group in New Mexico said, most international students take a lot of time to start focusing on how scholars present evidence and advance new ideas here. So, it is at this intersection where content as what to say overlaps with how to join complex conversations that writing programs and professionals can best address the university’s curricular and pedagogical gaps for international graduate students. Context Knowledge: If we focus on international graduate students’ complex, multidimensional process of transition, we can see that effective writing further hinges on understanding the contexts of their discipline (its discourses, conventions, and assumptions) and also the

92  Shifting Focus contexts of the broader society and culture undergirding those disciplines. To begin with, these students’ challenges with language, composition skills, and/or content knowledge may be symptoms of insufficient understanding of the professional, sociocultural, and political contexts behind the academic subject of their study and writing. Especially before they have caught up with their domestic counterparts on their knowledge of the historical backgrounds of their disciplines, current economic issues and political debates, and cultural value systems behind the topic they are studying and writing about, international graduate students struggle more to write effectively. From establishing the exigency of research to giving effective examples, and from making text-to-world connections for understanding sources to providing readers with background information, international students constantly face challenges that their domestic counterparts may do less often and less intensely. Newer students I interviewed seemed to cope with this challenge by focusing on the strictly intellectual and academic side of their writing, but more advanced students had understood the importance of (and therefore said they engaged) contextual knowledge—across the disciplines, including in the STEM fields—for developing strong research agenda and writing effectively. The challenges of understanding broader contexts become striking once again (and more intensely so) when international students start to transition from graduate school to the job market (including when they return home). If they haven’t yet developed a good grasp of the social and professional contexts behind the academic subjects they studied, especially students who opt to enter the job market here seem to face far more serious challenges than their domestic counterparts. Writing emails, cover letters, research statements, and teaching philosophy statements expose professional development gaps in international students’ education quite significantly. As most of the advanced students and career center professionals whom I interviewed highlighted, because this transition demands them to adapt the content of their research and professional experience to a context that they may have been paying little attention to, international graduate students suddenly find themselves “ignorant again” (as one student put it). From shaking hands appropriately and knowing social etiquettes (communication not requiring writing) to setting up interviews and following up on them (which requires writing), the job search shows students that a deeper knowledge of the larger context of graduate education is essential for effective professional communication. Writing professionals are especially well equipped to support international graduate students’ professional development by using writing support. They can use writing to help students understand and succeed in the broader academic, social, and professional contexts/ applications of their education, including writing as an essential part of graduate education.

Shifting Focus  93 Confidence to Write: Finally, in the context of transition into academe within a different society and culture, writing requires significant confidence, especially for international graduate students. In the current model, confidence could be seen as the outcome of the four other abilities: linguistic competence, composition skills, content knowledge, and context knowledge of undergirding discipline and society. That is, we could see confidence as what international students arrive at after developing the other abilities sufficiently. However, it is important to note here that these abilities should not be approached in that linear order for all students. In fact, it may be productive to flip the order and start by alleviating anxiety,10 helping students overcome any hesitation against expressing what they can, however they can do so. For instance, writing instructors can begin the semester by telling the class that good writing can be done in “bad” English,11 and that problems with language can be dealt with after the drafting process. A sociolinguistics scholar who directed a professional development program for multilingual students at Penn State University made confidence itself the point of departure. “Fear of not finishing,” for instance, “makes you freeze up in your writing,” she said, going on to make a powerful argument: Always putting the burden on the writer is not productive. There is a circle of trust for people to become able to express their thinking self, their feeling self…. Tutors and teachers face the question of how much emotional brokering they can do for the student…. [but] emotions are catalytic, they are important to attend to because they’re telling us that there’s some kind of break, they’re indicating a tension between potential and ideal. It’s important to build emotionality into the thinking process … [students] may feel like [they are] in a state of horrible chaos but [their] writing is about to come out of the mess…. But when you’re feeling vulnerable, you can’t see your way out of the mess…. Often, it’s the darkest when it’s almost dawn. This expert, like a few others who received new international students and situated their support to the process of academic and social adjustment, highly appreciated the important role of mentors, tutors, and instructors in helping students “figure out their emotion and help them with how to take action, or figure out a new way to think about it that allows them to have a purchase over their feelings.” In the same way, effective writing center tutors started by encouraging international students to get to the language issue after explaining what they were trying to say in the text. When they took this approach and, for instance, deliberately foregrounded content as a strength in the text, they helped the student writer feel more confident and they were also more able to address language issues along the way or afterwards.

94  Shifting Focus The theme of confidence came up especially when students discussed the challenges they faced in the beginning: they felt inadequate, lost, frustrated, and so on (see Telbis, Helgeson, & Kingsbury, 2014).12 A Macedonian student at New Mexico Tech said that she used to ask herself: “Am I in the right place?” In her home country, she was used to seeing grades posted on the professor’s door, but now she didn’t know how well she was doing in relation to her peers, assumed that she was performing badly, and lost her sleep over it. It was when she began to work with a group of domestic students and “started helping them solve their problems,” in addition to her own, that she realized, “like, okay, well, I can carry some weight here, I guess. Not that bad!” She had a moment of epiphany when she realized that she could write well in spite of lingering challenges in her English grammar and syntax. Another student in the same group added that she was relieved for the first time when her mentor said that “most scientists are bad writers…. Knowing that was, like, oh, what a relief!” Part of the anxiety that students expressed had to do about being judged, so they remembered positive incidents, people, and realizations that gave them confidence. Many of them said that more exposure to the society was helpful for gaining confidence—“the part that locals take for granted,” according to one student—as well as more experience with rhetorical skills and discourse practices within academe. As Szelényi and Rhoades (2007)13 state, “[f]eelings of being unwanted and excluded can lead to alienation” and undermine both intercultural encounters and understanding among international students (45). For this reason, gaining confidence is as important as learning the skills, as one achievement also fosters the other.14 Imagine a doctoral student visiting a conventional writing center with the draft of a grant proposal. While the tutor may see grammar issues, the writer may need to find or maintain confidence to say what she wants to say, or it may be that she needs to go talk to a content expert or someone who can help her understand the socioeconomic context before working on paragraphing and syntax. A student who can’t speak fluently doesn’t have to stop researching, reading, and writing his ideas. Nor should a student who is nervous because she doesn’t write perfect sentences have to stop writing the next email to her professor. Certain aspects of the 5Cs model that I have presented here overlap with Büker’s (2003),15 who identifies five domains in which international students might experience difficulties16 in academic writing (46–48). The model I present here shifts the focus from identifying challenges to understanding how international students go about learning graduate-level writing during their academic transition. I also consider how writing programs could help students tackle those challenges. I acknowledge the need to support international students with language proficiency, but I argue that language issues are more often symptoms of other

Shifting Focus  95 dimensions of writing vis-à-vis academic transition. Similarly, this model also shares some features with that of Zhang (2011),17 who presented a “nested” theoretical model of academic literacy development for international graduate students, building on Lea and Street (2006)18 and Rizvi (2007)19 and advocating for a reconceptualization of academic writing within the epistemology of particular academic disciplines and contexts and highlighting the need to focus on students’ identity, negotiation of power, and agency. In addition, there are many other models about learning to write, even though they do not focus on international students or graduate-level writing. For instance, Beaufort’s (2007)20 model focuses on first-year college writing and describes writing expertise as involving knowledge of five domains: writing process, subject matter, rhetorical elements of writing, genre, and discourse community. Duff and Anderson’s (2015) theoretical model situates the process of “language socialization” into discourse communities as most conducive to multidimensional development of students into their disciplines. The 5Cs model proposed here shares more with Tardy’s (2009)21 framework of genre learning by second-language graduate students, which involves knowledge about different domains of writing—form, process, rhetoric, and subject knowledge. Tardy’s model specifically describes how multilingual graduate students develop genre knowledge while drawing on prior experience and repeated practice, engaging in textual interactions and oral interactions, participating in mentoring and disciplinary socialization, shifting roles within the genre networks, and utilizing resource available in a given context. The main question that drives T ­ ardy’s model is how “multilingual writers move from relatively fragmented nascent knowledge [of genres] toward more integrated expertise” that helps them engage with genres rhetorically and at the graduate level (25). Mallett, Haan, and Habib (2016)22 have used Tardy’s model to show how language-based support can be used to support students with content knowledge, rhetorical knowledge, process knowledge, and language knowledge. In the same edited collection, Fields et al. (2016) also describe a language support program that addresses academic transition. The Graduate Cohort “aims to meet both linguistic and non-linguistic needs of students along four criteria: speaking, reading, academic/professional life, and engagement” (208). The model I propose here treats the five dimensions of learning to write as potential stages of academic and sociocultural transition, each of which can be used as an entry point based on where the student is, which allows us to rearrange the order and priority of the stages as needed. Most importantly, it views international graduate students as more than second language students and writers, distributing the focus of writing support to multiple dimensions of learning to write, especially in the context of their broader academic transition. For readers with special interest in writing support in relation to academic transition, there is some scholarship within and beyond Writing

96  Shifting Focus Studies that addresses different aspects of learning to write, occasionally with a focus on academic transition and/or on graduate international students. Belcher (1994), 23 for instance, used the notion of legitimate peripheral participation to study three dissertation writers’ relationships with their advisors; she reported that the less successful writers were not on the same page about scholarship and the meaning of research-based writing with their advisors. Tedick (1998)24 used psychological learning theories to study the writing of new international graduate students and found that students’ general writing ability went up and errors down when they knew more about the topic of their writing, suggesting the importance of using field-specific subjects for teaching graduate-level writing. Angelova and Riazantseva (1999)25 called for more research on “the process through which [international] students acquire the conventions of different disciplinary discourses necessary for the successful completion of their graduate programs” (491). Braine (2002)26 also called for more focus on the process of international graduate students learning to write. Writing from personal experience, he showed how nonacademic challenges of transition—including housing, relationship-­building, cultural differences, and the treatment of international students by institutions and individuals alike—shape academic success and failure of international students. International graduate students, Braine said, “must adapt quickly to both the academic and social culture of their host environments” (60). Morita (2009)27 studied how six Japanese graduate students at a Canadian university negotiated their participation and disciplinary membership in and beyond the classroom. Drawing on case studies of five second-language graduate students, Abasi, Akbari, and Graves (2006)28 showed that the less experienced graduate students were less likely to be aware of textual choices as rhetorical and as creating identity in writing, in contrast to the more experienced student writers. A number of authors in Casanave and Li (2008), 29 including some former international students, discussed issues about learning to write and communicate in graduate school. Cox (2010a) used situated learning theory and rhetorical genre theory to explore the relationship between identity and the learning of workplace writing in an in-depth case study of a graduate student from Korea. Using the case of a graduate student, Phillips (2014)30 showed “how incoming international multilingual graduate student students learn to write for their fields and the resources they use to support their writing development” (71). Phillips showed that even though the student didn’t always have the best ideas about writing, he was ultimately the person to tackle his challenges especially by ­figuring out unique strategies that worked for him. Many other scholars (e.g., Douglas, 2015)31 have discussed cultural differences and the development of graduate students’ identity and confidence as writers, including in their own experience, such as in the edited collection What we wish we’d known: Navigating graduate school. That is, the broader field of Writing Studies in the United States

Shifting Focus  97 has some scholarship on transition, with some works ­focusing on issues specific to international graduate students, and others addressing the interaction of different dimensions of their learning to write. In recent years, scholars in other countries have written with greater focus on the academic transition of international students, including in the context of what is called the graduate level (master’s and doctoral) in the U.S. Some of the best scholarship I came across regarding academic transition is included in an edited collection by Jindal-Snape and ­R ienteis (2016), 32 which is about transitions of international students into various  countries. Developing an “educational and life transitions” (ELT) model, the authors show how transitions can be positive and productive, but they highlight the need to address sociocultural stressors, discrimination, and practical or lifestyle challenges. ­Contributing authors develop theoretical perspectives, share cases from different contexts, and recommend intervention strategies for facilitating international students’ transition/adaptation to new education systems across the world. ­Bagnall (2015)33 also explores issues about academic adjustment of globally mobile students by focusing on their and their families’ mobility across national borders; the edited collection includes studies done in Brazil, the UK, France, Germany, the Philippines, and S­ witzerland. This scholarship on academic transition, especially research-based work focusing at the graduate level, would be useful for scholars and practitioners of graduate-level writing support in the U.S.

“Who? Me?” Diversity of International Students Perhaps the most important point to be made about our ESL students is that they are diverse…. in their proficiency levels in their first languages and in English, in their professional aims and literacy theories, and in their academic expectations. (Johns, 2001; 142)34 Prior to coming to Maryland, I did my master’s in information systems in [a Michigan university], where I studied two years. Before I entered the U.S. education system, I was in Kyoto Japan where I did an undergraduate and master’s in English. Between that, I’ve been traveling the world. I did one-year Erasmus exchange program in Finland and I also did a one-year exchange in Canada when I was in high school. So, I’ve seen different educational systems. (Naomi, a Japanese doctoral student at the University of Maryland) “How many of you are ‘international’ students?” I asked a class, the first day of semester here in New York, having just moved from Kentucky. About a third of a class of 20 students raised their hands, including some

98  Shifting Focus who half-raised theirs, so I paused to ask what the hesitation meant. One student was “born in the U.S. but grew up in South Korea.” She paused and added, “and my English is not good” (although her anxiety turned out to be unfounded). Another student had migrated with his family to the U.S. from the Caribbean while he was in middle school, and his challenges with English turned out to be related to attending an under-­ resourced high school. A few others, who said they were not international, wanted to join the conversation because I had prefaced my question by saying that I wasn’t interested in visa status but instead educational backgrounds and writing skills. Interestingly, they had still interpreted my question as one about language proficiency, the assumption being that if they were fluent in English, they could write well. When I challenged the assumptions, a few more students joined the discussion. One third-­ generation Chinese-American student said that she was bothered by how often others assumed she was international, and another wanted to be identified as international in that she was “bi-national and bi-cultural.” Behind the attempt to find out what educational backgrounds students have come from and how much academic transition support they might need, there are significant tensions. On the one hand, it is pedagogically useful to know about students’ language identities and proficiency levels, their educational backgrounds and their familiarity with American academic culture, and their knowledge of genre and rhetorical conventions in their respective disciplines. Strategically generalized views of student groups can also be useful as a tool for drawing attention, creating partnership, getting funding, establishing exigency in scholarship, and so on. On the other hand, focusing on some aspects can obscure others, especially foregrounding deficit focused issues such as what happens when we define international students as “non-native” speakers of English or even international in the sense of not domestic students. In fact, the plethora of terms that have been used and retired about international and other nonmainstream students (often in short cycles) are the byproduct of the same tension. The tension also affects programs and policies at all levels and it is worth exploring. For example, even though roughly a third of all international graduate students come from China, outdated but still prevalent views of Chinese education and culture—such as the idea that Chinese students have generally lower English language proficiency, that their culture doesn’t value originality very much, that they don’t question authority, that their education system doesn’t foster critical thinking, and so on—are harmful. They obscure the diversity and complexity of Chinese students’ identities, proficiencies, and needs. However, if writing professionals replaced stereotypes with informed understanding and perspectives, focusing on Chinese students’ academic backgrounds could help improve ­ eneralizations can stultify the support for this large group of students. G our understanding in terms of the dynamic, often rapid pace of international graduate students’ academic transition as a complex and unique

Shifting Focus  99 trajectory of changes, challenges, successes, and failures. In reality, any two graduate students from China, for instance, may differ very widely in their age and economic status, gender and sexual orientation, family and marital status, educational and socioeconomic background, or English language proficiency and familiarity with the new academic system. Still, the fact that roughly a third of all international graduate students come from China also means that focusing on them can create opportunities to identify certain patterns and themes about their academic transition, educational backgrounds, and strengths and weaknesses as writers. The recognition of diversity and attempts to identify generalizable issues about a student group, or for that matter commonalities across groups, need not be mutually exclusive. Thus, the more we can learn about students who come from the multilingual and multicultural nation, including about the vastly different economic conditions and educational backgrounds, the more we can counter stereotypes about Chinese students. The diversity among the 44 students I interviewed—in terms of their academic, sociocultural, and economic backgrounds, as well as their personalities, motivations, and approaches to education—was striking, as evident in the short description of the educational background shared by the student quoted in the epigraph previously, whom I call Naomi. Like the students in my own classroom story, Naomi was aware of lingering challenges with language and cultural differences. But as a graduate student and self-described “global citizen,” she was somewhat upset that her professors overlooked her academic caliber and instead focused on insignificant stylistic variations. Talking to her, I could sense how problematic an “eternal gaze” on students’ non-­ nativeness could be. This issue kept coming up in a number of interviews. “I’ve grown [up] in Malaysia,” Ila, a student at Michigan State University, said, introducing herself, “Then my family moved to Hong Kong when I was twelve and I stayed [there] until eighteen and I came here for undergrad.” A female Asian student, she somewhat conformed to the stereotypes and hesitated to go beyond her department, but she was very active in her networks and quietly mentored other students. Like many other students, Ila did not discover academic support beyond her department until she started working on her master’s thesis. She didn’t find open-ended opportunities such as workshops, seminars, and groups where she said she could have addressed different needs with her writing; she said ESL courses and the writing center weren’t useful to her. Most significantly, in spite of her academic talent and experiences, she expressed “fear” as a common challenge while sharing her advice for other international students: It’s easier said than done, but don’t be afraid…. don’t be afraid to utilize resources … or to go out and speak English with your domestic colleagues…. Take the risk to put yourself out there and don’t be

100  Shifting Focus afraid of any criticism—because I think it will help you with finding a voice, finding yourself, and learning to say no because as I do a lot of times we try so hard to prove ourselves that we’re worthy. You take on so many things that it eventually breaks you and you can’t handle it. While she felt overwhelmed by the amount of work required as a master’s degree student of criminal justice, her most significant challenges were about adapting to a new environment, new academic culture, and new expectations rather than “not knowing how to write.” Her challenges of academic transition were similar and somewhat generalizable with other students, but her cultural and educational backgrounds, her identity and dispositions were unique. Some of the graduate students had experience of prior education in the U.S. While their cases were somewhat atypical, they complicated the pool, expanded the spectrum, and further highlighted the diversification and global mobility of international graduate students—also countering dominant narratives about international graduate students as a group with certain needs. A third female student, who had grown up in Syria, had been in the United States for 30 years, as a trailing partner for a while before eventually pursuing a doctoral degree herself. Even though she had started her U.S. education at the undergraduate level, she had lingering challenges related to her language proficiency, her sense of belonging to the culture and profession, and her identity and status as a foreign-born student. A fourth female student was born in Philippines, moved to Cyprus, then came to the U.S. as an undergraduate student; she said that her initial challenge was being not challenged enough by the low rigor of American college education, though she later realized that other issues needed to be addressed. In short, these students’ experiences were shaped by their gender and age, experience and confidence, knowledge and skill, and the perception and treatment of them by others in the host institution and department. Some were “linguistic experts but cultural novices,” as one interviewee put it, others vice versa. Their profiles and experiences showed that while it is necessary and useful to view them as foreign students who were adapting to a new academic culture here, it is equally important to be aware of the rich diversity among them. A focus on international students as international can lead to different kinds of conversations, allowing us to consider geopolitical and economic forces, global mobility (see Gürüz, 2011), 35 and issues about capitalistic and nationalistic regime, which affect both international and domestic students as I discussed in the previous chapter. It can also help us identify generalizable issues, such as certain challenges of academic transition, while acknowledging diversity among them. Such a dual focus could help scholarship on writing support to hit the reset button, so to speak, allowing us to identify issues about international students that

Shifting Focus  101 have become too mixed up with second-language writers. As Simpson (2016a)36 writes, “within second language Writing Studies, our lens is often very focused on international student in the U.S…. [a] focus, while important, overlooks the needs of language minority students” in the U.S. (10). In the introduction to a special issue of Writing Across the Disciplines, an issue that focused on second language writing in WAC (writing across the curriculum) scholarship, Zawacki and Cox (2011)37 also caution (citing Peter Stearns) that we should balance outward- and inward-looking goals in our efforts to globalize: “When we look inward, in fact, we see that this focus on globalization may have overshadowed what we call ‘globalism at home’—the cultural and linguistic diversity long present in U.S. classrooms across the curriculum” (n.p.). That diversity at home includes multilingual U.S. residents, who are “an amorphous group” including students from different language communities within the U.S., immigrant students with some secondary school experience in the U.S., and refugee students whose education may have been interrupted. “All may struggle,” the authors add, “albeit to different degrees and in different ways, to meet their teachers’ expectations for writing in their disciplines and in college.” They urge writing instructors to be ready to help all students as needed. With these perspectives in mind, I have argued in this book that a renewed focus on international students as a group—specifically, viewing them not just from a linguistic lens but as a complex and diverse group in itself, paying attention to a variety of dimensions—could help us think more clearly about commonalities and distinctions between them and domestic second-language writers. Focused attention on international students’ challenges is necessary in order to demystify a number of issues that seem to have become rather muddled, especially for the community of writing support practitioners. Writing Studies scholarship has certainly been offering sophisticated pictures of international students, for instance, as having complex social identities and constantly negotiating “a sense of self within and across different sites at different points in time” (Pierce, 1995; 13).38 Especially scholarship published since the turn of the century has explored various social and academic issues, even with language as the framing device. A good amount of the scholarship also includes works on, or relevant for supporting, graduate-level second-language writers (e.g., Casanave & Li, 200839; Cox et al., 201040; Simpson et al., 201641; Zamel & Spack, 200442). There is theoretical consensus in a wide range of articles and monographs that international graduate students don’t just need language support out of context (Douglas, 201543; Leki & Carson, 199744) but instead support with advanced and multiple dimensions of graduate-­level writing (Phillips, 2014).45 However, in practice, many writing support programs that I observed were yet to account for international students’ social and cultural identities, educational backgrounds and experiences, and their shifting academic and professional identities. Their diversity in

102  Shifting Focus

Figure 3.2  I ntersections.

terms of gender and age, concerns about foreign status and perception by self and others, and writing habits brought from prior education were not yet paid significant attention. Many of my student interviewees’ criticism and underutilization of writing support programs was seemingly related to this lack of attention beyond language issues. Thus, I argue that there is a need to produce new scholarship based on the works of scholars, program leaders, and instructors who are working closely with, and are able to pay considerable attention to, international graduate students. The benefits of the dual focus described here can be illustrated with a Venn diagram. If we represent the three groups of students in ­Figure 3.2 as overlapping circles, then we can begin to consider how shared and different challenges of each group may be addressed. In my study, I found that writing support programs that paid attention to international students as foreign students (circle y) who typically have no prior experience of U.S. education (that is, as starting from zone A) were more likely to present or adapt their support as orientation to U.S. academic culture in one way or another. They saw and responded to how foreign students have challenges and strengths that they may not share with native ­English speaking domestic peers (circle x) or domestic non-native ­English counterparts (circle z)—at least not until they are able to navigate effectively the intersecting zone B, where all groups may share at least some challenges and also shape one another’s experiences. Programs that adopted traditional ESL46 pedagogies essentially met international students in the intersecting zone C and, if they focused predominantly on language itself, tended to blur differences between students with and without prior experiences of US-based education. Some instructors, especially in disciplines beyond writing and language studies (such as in the sciences), insisted that graduate-level writing has little to do with differences in academic culture or linguistic proficiency (Sharma, 2012)47: they focused on zone D where foreign students share content knowledge and communicative conventions with their domestic counterparts.

Shifting Focus  103 So, the different ways in which different interviewees viewed international students raised important questions. How can writing professionals account for the internal diversity and complexity of group y (international students), knowing that its challenges overlap with group z (non-native English speaking domestic students) and also recognizing the needs and benefits of integrating them with group x (native ­English-speaking domestic students)? Similarly, how can we account for the rapid changes/ transitions of group y as they move into the common ground B, also knowing that the modern “globalized” university represented by this space is also an intersection where disciplines, cultures, and beliefs are in an ongoing interaction that shapes the idea and practice of writing? The tendency to blur differences and point to complexities to justify inattention seemed more prominent in universities with more diverse student populations, especially where there was no resource or interest/­expertise. I will focus on this issue in the conclusion of this chapter. To account for the diversity of international students, writing programs could draw on the theory of intersectionality. The concept originated in the work of American civil rights and critical race theory scholar ­Crenshaw (1991),48 who described the experiences of members of the black community as intersecting social identities in relation to power, ­socioeconomic inequality and marginalization, domination and ­oppression, and ­prejudice and discrimination in society. It must be emphasized that international students do not face nearly the same kinds of challenges. But “the critical insight that race, class, gender, sexuality, ­ethnicity, ­nation, ability, and age operate not as unitary, mutually exclusive ­entities, but rather as reciprocally constructing phenomena” (Collins, 2015; 1)49 would be a useful theoretical resource toward better understanding international students toward formulating effective policies, programs, and pedagogies. All we may need to do is to listen to these students’ experiences and be more sensitive to diversity and intersectionality of their backgrounds, proficiencies, and challenges. For example, a graduate student of Writing Studies at Penn State University said: There are definitely many aspects of my identity, female, Asian, ­Chinese native speaker. I questioned if my English would ever be good enough to teach. Not only spoken accent but the accent of my way of thinking … it’s just we are different.… I’m realizing this transition from a beginner to an expert …. it’s very important for me to have a very anchored identity, not necessarily static, but some sort of relief and comfort in was who I am … I know what I can contribute to the field…. As a graduate student, she said she wanted to be seen as someone whose car was broken down, not just as a Chinese student, while adding that “being an international student here is very, this feeling of being

104  Shifting Focus displaced, off rooted. …” She further wanted to be recognized for having made “positive impacts on local students, like my classmates here.” Political theories and social perspectives could allow writing support programs to address sociocultural (culture shock), psychological (such as homesickness), linguistic (as opposed to rhetorical), and other challenges that shape international graduate students’ performance and progress as writers and scholars. In contrast to “early studies of language an identity [that] privileged a single aspect of identity” (Pavlenko & Blackridge, 2004),50 the theory of intersectionality, for instance, facilitates relatively post-structuralist inquiry which “highlights the fact that identities are constructed at the interstices of multiple axes, such as age, race, class, ethnicity, gender, generation, sexual orientation, geopolitical locale, institutional affiliation, and social status, whereby each aspect of identity redefines and modifies all others” (16). Socioeconomic progress, transnational mobility, globalization, and the internet facilitate globally mobile students’ exposure to cultures, values, and knowledge about the education system in the U.S. even before they arrive here. Writing scholars would benefit to pay attention to those influences, drawing on the notion of “superdiversity”51 among immigrants,52 which would further help to pay attention to demographic shifts, mobility, and educational motivations of students across national and cultural borders. Viewing international students as diverse, changing, and complex demographics of globally mobile students could help us generate new insights for developing and updating writing support for them.

Programs versus Ecology [When] I wrote the preliminary proposal, I asked for help myself with a senior student [who] had a kind of model that her adviser had given her…. My adviser only helped at the end when it was time for proofreading…. I cannot use the support from the writing center for this kind of writing…. I have learned from American students … how to write emails…. I have learned [other kinds of writing] from many other people. I just read a book on writing…. If I could get more support in the first year, I would use it. But when I was in the first year, I didn’t realize it. (A third-year doctoral student at Stony Brook University) One of the problems for international students when studying writing is that they don’t know what’s the unit of analysis, what is writing, what to study—because it is all over the place, it takes place in a mentoring group meeting, when they are working alone with an outline, during the lab, research, taking notes…. Writing is not bounded. (A professor of applied linguistics at Penn State University)

Shifting Focus  105 As reflected in the first quotation, few of the students I interviewed took a straightforward approach to using formal writing support on their campuses. The student quoted in the epigraph not only believed (inaccurately, as it turned out) that the writing center at her university did not have any graduate student tutors; she also needed help with her writing in more ways than most writing centers can provide. So, she sought help with different people, essentially creating a custom network of her own for the purpose of creating and presenting a thesis proposal. She said that she borrowed a sample proposal from one student, learned more about the genre from a classmate who was more willing to help, then drafted the proposal by largely imitating the sample, before asking for language support from a native English speaker. She finally proofread her writing, before submitting it to her professor, because she didn’t want to seem like a poor writer. In addition to learning how to write standard academic genres like the thesis, she had to take similar approaches to learn how to write emails, exams, presentations, and materials for the job market. The fact that she needed support with a broader range of writing needs than her domestic counterparts, the fact that power dynamics and ideologies about international students aggravated her challenges, and the fact that her university’s writing support was not sufficient all required a variety of complicated responses for her to be successful. As the applied linguistics scholar quoted above noted, international students disrupt general expectations because, for them, writing is more “all over the place” than for their domestic counterparts. On the one hand, they must address their many, often unrecognized needs by cobbling together different resources they can find—rather than being able to rely on standard support programs and professionals. On the other hand, they also bring a variety of skills and knowledge, assumptions and ideologies, which may complicate their learning process if there is no appropriate support. In this section, I illustrate and theorize the broader ecology that international graduate students explore by analyzing interviews with students at different kinds of institutions and drawing lessons toward making graduate writing support for these students more useful and responsive to the complexity of their experiences. In my study, I found that as often as utilizing the writing center, international graduate students sought help with peripheral skills that they could find at other academic support services, such as the library, graduate student life, student organizations, and various other places that either directly or incidentally helped with writing skills. This was partly due to a lack of knowledge about available writing support but more so because available support didn’t fully address their needs, the students hesitated to share their difficulties, they found what they needed elsewhere, or they felt better understood and able to build on their prior knowledge when seeking help from peers and other individuals beyond formal programs. For instance, they learned language and

106  Shifting Focus communication skills at social and cultural events, in informal and incidental ways, by spending time with people who were “more willing to help,” as one student put it, hinting at greater understanding and empathy. The most powerful illustration of this phenomenon was a graduate student residence office at the University of Florida that organized academic talks and discussions, as well as cultural events, that allowed international students to learn communication skills in low-stakes and high-motivation situations—as I elaborate in a segment titled “advocacy in the village” in the fifth chapter. In another inspiring case, a group of inexperienced international students who worked as assistants at the help desk at the University of Louisiana, Monroe pooled their expertise so that they could call the person who could best explain a problem to clients. When their director found out how the “hive mind” among that group of conationals was working, he further encouraged the students’ collaborative approach to communication and problem-solving because it helped them learn rapidly as well as serve others effectively. In a third memorable case, students at the same university in Louisiana gathered at a local church for dinner and games on Friday evenings. While they paid lip service to the religious discourse and the proselytizing interest of the missionaries who organized the events, they used the opportunity to learn about American society and culture, while also networking and learning from each other. Observing the comfort and confidence with which these students shared ideas for academic success in that context, I wished that universities could replicate that kind of environment for international students on campus. Among many such environments where international students directly or indirectly learned and enhanced communication skills, one was an initiative led by a community group at Penn State University where students read translated poetry from their home languages. There, international students taught members of the local community about their culture, while a peer mentoring group supported them with “any help new students need[ed].” While writing program administrators and staff members were aware of the broader ecology of people, resources, environment, and relationships, it was not easy for them to adapt their programs and practices to the needs and uses of these diverse students. But a consistent theme in the experiences of international students interviewed for this study—­i ncluding about a dozen who had become academic scholars, program directors, and institutional leaders—was that they learned graduate-level writing in the U.S. by utilizing support and resources from a broad, evolving, and ad hoc network of support that they explored and often created and modified as needed. Perhaps knowing this reality, the more experienced writing professionals seemed to have tried and better aligned their support with how the students foraged the broader ecology—or shared ideas about how they could better do so in response to a wish list question that I usually asked

Shifting Focus  107 at the end of the interview. They seemed aware of the ­tension between formal programs versus the larger ecology of support that goes beyond what is traditionally described as the silos of academic units and specializations. Their awareness also seemed to complement their understanding of politics and policy, ideology and power, discourse and beliefs influencing international students, as well as that of varied needs and interests among the students. They saw that, on the one hand, there is a uniquely complex ecology of support that international students find and create out of sheer necessity, and on the other, that there is a special need for structure and clarity especially for these students (about and in addition to the broader ecology). The dispersal of support and resources, with or without a core of formal writing support on campus, often seemed confusing to students, many of whom took too much time to find out what exists, while others never learned about many of the resources. However, it also seemed both unrealistic and somewhat undesirable to try to bring too much of writing support within the umbrella of formal writing programs. That is, studying how international graduate students learned to write, what places and programs they used, and what shaped their experience and understanding did not just leave me desiring that writing support for them be more formalized and limited within established writing programs run by writing professionals. So, it seems to me that writing professionals should instead try to foster the ecology while (and as part of) developing strong and sustainable writing programs—a theme I will focus on in later chapters. Viewed through the analysis of international graduate students’ perspectives, formal writing support programs are one small part of the broader ecology. Of course, in universities where support seemed s­ cattered and unorganized, resources were hidden and under-promoted, programs underdeveloped and unfinished, support temporary and ad hoc, people involved lacking professional expertise; students were confused and took too much time and effort to find support. But, intriguingly, in those places they were also most actively exploring, exploiting, and repurposing resources. Paradoxical as this may sound, the environments that did not have formalized programs were often quite rich and resourceful. Perhaps the attempts to meet unmet demands, and the lack of professionalized support, seemed to prompt a variety of responses, energizing the students and bringing together their advocates. Perhaps when the needs are better met and systems better established, the energy tends to wane. So, the complexity and appearance of chaos could be a positive feature, and not necessarily a problem, for a robust culture of writing support. In their report of an international survey of graduate writing support, Caplan and Cox (2016)53 describe the fragmentation and dispersal of writing support as reflective of increasing needs for support and an increasing number of universities responding to them in a variety of

108  Shifting Focus ways. Looking at the rather confusing arrays of support that international students used, including the many emerging and ad hoc ways in which writing programs were supporting these students, it seemed at first that writing programs should strive to create a framework within which their institutions could provide formal, systematized, and professionally grounded writing support. As with the development of writing programs in general and the specific subsystem of writing center around the 1970s, or the current development of graduate writing centers today, it seemed that a subsystem of support for international graduate students should and might develop. That could take the form of one-stop-shop that brings together all writing support for international graduate students. Doing so would help find institutional support, promote writing programs among students and other stakeholders, and integrate research and scholarship. Such a formal support system could greatly alleviate misunderstanding and frustration among international graduate students in particular and also help situate writing support in the context of their academic transition and success. So, part of the reason for the dispersal of writing support is certainly that it had not yet been developed or consolidated or brought within an institutional and professional framework. However, especially with international graduate students, it seems necessary to look at the dispersal of support as a function of the diversity of the students and their needs, of resources available, of partnership, and so on. The larger ecology of writing-related support that I discovered was evidently a function of the broader range of international graduate students’ needs, as well as the greater variations in their background knowledge and skills, motivations, and dispositions toward writing skills. One approach for addressing the diverse needs would be to view a number of essential academic writing skills as a core necessity, then add writing skills surrounding standard academic writing into a second, peripheral layer of informal, unstructured, and ad hoc process of learning about graduate-level writing. In a study involving 20 doctoral students, Gardner (2007)54 identified five major themes about the socialization process of the students, including ambiguity in guidelines and expectations of students, difficulties students face with balancing various responsibilities, intellectual independence that students needed to become successful, development of cognitive/personal and professional growth, and support by faculty and others in the institution and beyond. The fact that learning to write and communicate is shaped by such dynamics of socialization means that it is not enough to provide international graduate students with resources and opportunities. Because whether and how they use writing support is in competition with many other needs and interests and is further shaped by what they believe about writing and writing support, it is necessary to take an educational approach, helping them learn about and use the support.

Shifting Focus  109 Another reason behind the diversity in international students’ writing support needs has to do with the nature of graduate education at large, only additionally magnified by these students. Indeed, as the director of a science education graduate program at Stony Brook University argued, graduate students do writing “while getting other things done” and vice versa (see Canagarajah, 201855). Writing is very often incidental and/or instrumental, and they lack the time or interest to take graduate-level writing courses. As such, support would work best if it is embedded and subsumed within the process of learning in their own specializations. However, that is easier said than done: outsourced support is likely to remain the dominant form unless there is a transformation in graduate education. Graduate students will continue to learn writing skills from a variety of places, no matter how developed the formal program at their institution is, and international students need to do so even more. Morita (2009), 56 for instance, studied the coping strategies of a Japanese doctoral student (Kota) who felt that even though he found it useful to improve his English, that created additional work and drained the time he needed for “the real stuff” of doctoral work; language courses were also “not necessarily useful for his graduate-level courses since the kind of language, content, and academic skills promoted in the two contexts were very different” (454). So, Kota used private tutors (who provided a less “threatening” way to learn language), talked to classmates to improve his speaking skills and to learn about courses and academic culture, learned about people as a way to strengthen his membership in the discipline, and was strategic about sharing his challenges. How he went about learning language and communication skills was shaped by his status as an anxious foreign student, and he also educated others along the way as if to adapt to but also change the environment in his favor. He did not seek support that was ready-made but instead took what he wanted from different places and put the ingredients together to make the most out of them. This is not to advocate for leaving writing support dispersed. Even a deliberately distributed support can be hard to manage, assess, and promote. In fact, what collectively looked like a rich ecology of support for me as a visitor and researcher, one program administrators described as “mess.” Writing program administrators at a few different places shared stories about new initiatives that were not systematically planned and implemented that had fizzled out, students and even academic professionals who created or support ad hoc initiatives left, funding was temporary and hard to acquire without systematic approaches, and temporary support wasn’t taken very seriously. Similarly, the dean of international student center at the University of Florida expressed anxiety about available support that was not institutionalized. “The day [Dana] retires,” he said, referring to a particularly active expert and advocate of international graduate students at the International Student Center,

110  Shifting Focus “there’s no position to do the kind of job she does … You can’t just replicate it.” Dana was “like the mother tree”57 in the words of a graduate student who worked with her. Indeed, I found international student advisers (or staff or faculty members) like Dana at a number of other universities: experienced, willing to go beyond their duties, known by students and approached for all kinds of help, knowledgeable about the campus ecology of support and able to connect students to appropriate places, and so on. In short, there is no doubt that ecologies of support that do not also have strong formal structures can be vulnerable and short-lived. However, a well-organized system that may be efficient from the perspectives of academic support providers can be insufficient for the students whose needs are diverse and emerging. Accordingly, I will focus on the theme of partnership and leadership in that broader ecology in the final two chapters. Suffice it to say here that established and formal academic support systems seemed to benefit when they drew energy and ideas from the unorganized and open landscape of learning and support practices, the other programs/places, and other people/expertise that form the larger academic environment or social support system. Even the administrators who were keenly aware of the need for structure acknowledged that graduate writing support could not be limited to formal programs, especially not for international graduate students. They all saw some value in investing some additional time beyond formal programs: they were engaged in conversation and collaboration. Official structures are needed as a core element of the ecology, but as many writing program leaders said and illustrated with their practice, there are benefits of investing some time and resources to foster the broader ecology, at least in the form of some extended initiatives. The tension between structure and chaos can be productive, especially when the two elements are balanced. ESL scholars have long recognized that international graduate students have broader needs, such as the “need to be able to read academic journals and papers, give talks in class and participate in panel discussions, write critiques, research proposals and research papers, discuss issues, and ask questions in class” (Ostler, 1980; 494). 58 Writing scholars have also argued that, considering the maturity of graduate students and the many competing demands that they face, graduate students “are likely to need a variety of support at multiple stages in their trajectories, and given their other priorities and responsibilities, might need resources that are more flexible than some undergraduate services” (Simpson, 2016a; 10–11).59 Fredericksen and Mangelsdorf (2014)60 similarly highlighted the need for flexible support. Some writing programs I observed did offer a variety to support, made it open-ended and flexible, and let parts of their programs be ad hoc and evolving. At the University of Connecticut, for instance, a graduate writing support coordinator listed the following initiatives and events: writing courses of various lengths

Shifting Focus  111 and schedules, a five-week seminar, a boot camp that ran four times a year (providing space, resources, instruction, and guidelines), writing groups, and writing center tutoring (see Mastroieni & Cheung, 2011).61 The writing center director at MIT described a rich ecology of support, including multiple departments that had writing support of their own, creative writing groups, courses on writing about media and journalism and science writing that were popular among international students, a graduate program in science writing for the public, writing workshops at the writing center, writing support activities among international scholars organization, writing support at the career center, and active promotion of writing by the prestigious and decades-old writing center. Some universities promoted online and in-person tutorials on research skills, while providing well-adapted support with other aspects of writing. However, more often, I came across writing programs that paid little to no attention to the broad, increasing, and evolving needs of international graduate students. In fact, many sought to use the same support for graduate and undergraduate international students. Phillips (2014)62 found that more than half of the responses in her survey involving writing center professionals “did not provide any training for tutorials with graduate students,” perhaps because they did not “recognize meaningful differences between graduate and undergraduate writing” (5). ­Phillips (2016)63 argued that providing undergraduate writing support to graduate students was “perhaps even harmful to multilingual graduate students” (162) especially because international graduate students may need more privacy, expertise, flexibility, and support with broader aspects of writing (including research skills). Similarly, in a study involving three Chinese students’ use of external sources in their writing, Davis (2013)64 concluded that it is hard to generalize or predict how individual students, even from the same cultural and educational background, will learn a particular skill—arguing that support for complex academic skills that continue to grow in complexity and variety needs to be dispersed across the curriculum and study programs. “Students may progress differently to each other, and make use of various strategies, which emphasizes that the development of source use is an individual period of learning, dependent on many factors” (134). Certainly, all graduate students must make creative uses of available resources. Brooks-Gillies et al. (2015)65 argue that graduate students seek out support and resources from “third spaces” outside of their departments and their own informal support systems. Citing Phillips (2012),66 they acknowledge the need for “structured writing support” rather than being expected to learn through repetition and osmosis-like process. “However, the needs of graduate student writers extend beyond the scope of being explicitly taught to write” (n.p.). As the authors note, “[g]raduate education is fraught with identity struggles and self doubt…. [and therefore] support in graduate writing education needs to include identity

112  Shifting Focus and emotional support.” So, it is not just that ­universities ­currently provide graduate writing support through different disciplines, including writing/ composition programs, writing centers, TESOL, ­education, communication, linguistics, second-language ­writing, ­writing across the curriculum, writing in the disciplines, technical communication, and curriculum and instruction. For international graduate students, ­mainstream programs also generally overlook critical issues about these students and their distinct needs. For this reason, support programs that broaden the scope of academic writing by including what Gere (1994)67 called the “extra-­curriculum of writing” would be most useful. While Gere’s observations were based on how cancer ­survivors, farmers, and marginalized or oppressed communities used writing, some of the issues discussed by Gere are relevant to the case of international students as well, including the need to develop a confidence and to “think of themselves as writers” (76). The many spaces, resources, and uses of writing that these students engage in also extend beyond what writing programs and professionals focus on, reminding that “we have neglected to recount the history of composition in other contexts” (78–79) that are needed for different groups of students. “Like medical doctors who learn from nutritionists, shamans, and artists without compromising their professional status,” Gere goes on to say, “we can benefit from examining how the extracurriculum confers authority for representation and how we might extend that authority in our classes” (89). She suggests that instead of a history that is only based on our view of writing, we should include in our understanding of the broader curriculum of writing different sites, their specific circumstances, material artifacts, and cultural functions of different kinds of writing. In order to understand the broad and complex ecology in which international graduate students learn to write, writing support scholarship should broaden its scope of study. This can be done, as I have suggested before, by drawing on other disciplines, including on ecological theories of higher education. For instance, Berkes and Turner (2006)68 offer “ecological perspectives” on education that could be used for explaining international students’ transition as a major “disruption” in their academic development and their response to that disruption by developing strategies to “self-organize, learn, and adapt” to new situations (479). Similarly, reviewing Bronfenbrenner’s (1976)69 notion of the ecology of education in the context of how to make education more inclusive, ­A nderson, Boyle, and Deppeler (2014)70 foreground the role of and connections among students as important determinants of learning. ­Giving credit to Bronfenbrenner for developing “a convincing argument in his ecology of education theory for the need to shift educational research away from the traditionally adopted scientific methods towards a contextually perceptive and flexible approach” (28), they encourage scholars to ecological framing to study and develop inclusive education. Granovetter (1973)71 highlighted the importance of interpersonal ties

Shifting Focus  113 as a bridge between micro- and macro-level relations and dynamics in a system: “…the analysis of processes in interpersonal networks provides the most fruitful micro-macro bridge…. it is through these networks that small-scale interaction becomes translated into large-scale patterns, and that these, in turn, feed back into small groups” (1360). Many other theorists have used an ecological view of learning to foreground the “interaction of effectivity sets, or individual participants’ behaviors, with affordance networks, defined as the collection of facts, concepts, tools, practices, and people that are distributed across time and space and provide the context for learning” (Krasny, Tidball, & Sriskandarajah, 2009; 5).72 The institutional leaders and academic administrators I interviewed were aware that support for international graduate students on their campuses was “mostly ad hoc,” as one dean of international education put it. “There’s not one centralized structure or strategy for helping international grad students succeed, but there are a lot people worried about grad students, international students, and intersections among them.” But in that ad hoccery, to borrow a phrase from Lynch’s (2013)73 book on the importance of looking beyond planned teaching, there was potential as well as challenge—potential in the sense of diverse ideas, experiments, and opportunities and challenges in the sense of trying to make sense and add more synergy and structure to the otherwise fluid and complex ecology of support and resources. In sum, the tension between the need for formal programs and the usefulness of the broader ecology could be better addressed with greater focus and additional theoretical perspectives about international graduate students. Especially for these students, the two needs should not be seen as mutually exclusive.

Conclusion: Rethinking Universal Design Even though graduate writing can be complex and challenging for everyone, it doesn’t mean that … we’re just going to create one thing, one size fits all. That’s the danger I see in the argument about universal design, that because we know the needs of second language graduate student writers in the room that we can create a syllabus for everyone, then forget that…. That’s always my fear, that good teaching is good teaching for everyone…. [in reality, our students have] very different educational experiences…. Cultural differences are hard to decouple from education. (An academic program administrator at Cornell University) Personally, I can’t give very insightful advice because I think I myself is messed up—because even though I have spent a lot of time in the country my English is still so-so…. I would definitely go to one of,

114  Shifting Focus some of, these places, if I have a clear list of where can I go, what can I do there. It would be fantastic. But I didn’t know—even now I don’t know. (A doctoral student at the University of Maryland) Along with all non-native English speaking writers, international students go through “complex linguistic, cultural, and identity transitions […] as they write across varying social, disciplinary, and rhetorical contexts” (Cox, 2010a; 2).74 For most of them, academic writing requires a broad range of skills in terms of variety, levels of complexity, and applications. As they try to “settle” in a new society and culture and navigate a new education system, the changes and challenges they face can be many, complex, and disorienting. Among the students I interviewed, the culture shock of the first week of class became a source of self-­deprecatory jokes by the end of the semester for one student; the adventure into Writing 101 class turned out to be the “best mistake” for another. These challenges are not new in the scholarship. For a few decades now, scholars in Writing Studies and Applied ­Linguistics have discussed them, including at the graduate level (e.g., Braine, 200275; ­Canseco & Byrd, 198976; Casanave, 199277; Jenkins, Jordan, & ­Weiland, 199378; Jordan & Kedrowicz, 201179; Morita, 200480). But the context of transition has typically been dealt with tangentially, rather than a context or subject of study. Recently, however, especially in scholarship produced beyond North America, there has been an increased focus on this issue. For instance, Sovic and Blythman (2012),81 writing about how UK institutions address international students’ needs, argue that it is important to pause and listen to students’ own voices and learn from their experiences as they adapt to new education systems. An edited collection by ­Jindal-Snape and Rienteis (2016)82 exclusively and substantively explores the subject of transition of international students. Steinmetz and Mussi (2012)83 reviewed research on “adjustment” of international students in Australia and showed that despite varied opinions about the processes of “settling in” (e.g., Brown & Holloway 200884; Coles & Swami, 201285; Hanassab, 200686; Russell, Rosenthal, & Thomson, 201087), students’ experiences are often ignored by support systems. This scholarship shows that supporting international students with general adjustment can have great positive impact on their academic performance, with special benefits to their development of writing skills. In the U.S., the discourse about international students has quickly progressed. Recent scholarship has questioned older assumptions and generalizations about these students, providing sophisticated new perspectives. Unfortunately, as I found in the study done for this book, across the U.S., the majority of writing support practitioners have yet not adopted new perspectives, and they often focus just on language proficiency and cultural difference and use increasingly outdated perspectives of

Shifting Focus  115 contrastive and cross-cultural rhetoric. For instance, writing instructors frequently implied that international students lack critical thinking skills, come from “high-context” culture, are silent or shy, may plagiarize more because they don’t understand the notion of originality, work hard and have greater knowledge of disciplinary content, and so on. Such assumptions evidently shifted the attention of support away from the many-sided challenges writing during transition and adaptation, also obscuring the diversity of the students’ educational backgrounds and their strengths. Even when they were positive, generalized views often seemed to become self-fulfilling prophecies, especially because students themselves conformed to many of those beliefs. Certainly, paying attention to unique challenges of different student groups does not necessarily mean creating entirely different sets of programs and resources. But it is possible and beneficial to be sensitive to distinct and overlapping issues in both practice and scholarship. In fact, increased attention to international graduate students can also create meaningful washback effects for all students—as the scholar I quoted in the epigraph above suggested. On the one hand, as the Cornell scholar noted, international students have helped to make visible the challenges, needs, and benefits regarding graduate-level writing support: The awareness might actually be being pushed by the presence of multilingual international students, because what international [graduate] students do—as they did at the undergraduate level— is that they shake up American professors’ ideas about what can be assumed about what people think or understand or do when writing. But on the other hand, there is also a tendency to gloss over international graduate students’ distinct challenges in favor of addressing shared needs. In fact, at many institutions, international students were viewed as a justification for establishing support for all students, while their needs were gradually disregarded. This strategy seemed not only ethically problematic but also pragmatically risky, because it quickly created problems of funding and commitment, sense of ownership and advocacy for the program. Interestingly, the defenses for gradually blending all support were idealistic. But the consequences were adverse. As Simpson (2016a)88 has rightly argued, the question of whether the same support is sufficient for native and non-native speakers of English is very “complicated and warrants a more sophisticated, researched understanding of the ways in which L1 and L2 students’ needs overlap and the ways they are distinct” (10). That is particularly true when we view international students as being more than non-native English speakers, as I illustrated in the section on diversity earlier. U ­ nfortunately, not many scholars seem to be asking if and when the trade-off of seeking

116  Shifting Focus common ground may be negative, when the picture could be blurred, where ambivalence aggravated. Both shared and distinct challenges need to be understood, and the traffic of understanding and action must run both ways. As Matsuda and Jablonski (2000)89 pointed out nearly two decades ago, the argument that academic writing is a “second language” for all students obscures the fact that the term is metaphorical for native English-speaking domestic students and literal for most international students, even if we just focus on language. Services and training, specialization and collaborations that directly address international students’ needs remain necessary, especially when students from often vastly different academic, sociocultural, and political backgrounds enter ­A merican higher education directly at the highest level. Further, as Grav and Cayley (2015)90 found, even when second-language and first-­language writers have similar needs, they face different obstacles and benefit differently from the same support: second-language writers “must learn to identify themselves as needing writing support that transcends linguistic matters, while [first language] students must learn to identify themselves as needing writing support despite their linguistic competence” (69). As the authors suggested, “[p]roviding the same mode of instruction can benefit both populations as long as educators are sensitive to the specific challenges each population presents in the classroom.” The data I collected and analyzed for this study has convinced me that while there is much scholarship focusing on or relevant for designing writing support for international graduate students, there is also a need for radical rethinking of much of the established wisdom. I have so far discussed the need for writing instructors and program administrators to be sensitive about political and policy issues; disciplinary ideologies about language, writing, and international students; the diversity and intersectionality of the students’ identities, proficiencies, and experiences; the entanglement of writing challenges with those of academic ­transition; the complex ecology of support and resources across institutions; and the needs for differentiated support. With those issues in perspective, let me wrap up the chapter with a focus on universal design. I will discuss two general solutions to these challenges—fostering students’ agency and adopting an advocacy-driven approach—in the next chapter. As indicated earlier, there are certainly justifiable, pragmatic needs for finding common challenges among students of all backgrounds and different levels, as well as the need to facilitate the socialization of all students by using the same resources and approaches. For instance, budgetary constraints, available expertise and resources, efficiency of programming, benefits of mainstreaming, rhetorical foregrounding of certain issues against others, and the need to tap into common understanding/­ assumptions may require that we focus on one or a few shared aspects of all international graduate students’ identities. But scholarly conversations and conversations among academic support professionals need not ignore

Shifting Focus  117 the many variations and complexities among these students in terms of who they are, what support they need, and most importantly, what educational experiences and strengths they bring with them. Furthermore, limitation of space or resource, or even benefits of mainstreaming, should not stop us or make us look away from consequential differences in favor of abstract commonalities with non-native English-speaking students who were primarily educated in the U.S. and do not face many of the issues faced by international students—or, for that matter, by undocumented students who encounter yet another set of challenges. Here are some of the reasons, based on coding of data, against differentiated support shared by my interviewees who discussed this subject: ignorance or nonchalance (not knowing or caring that students’ experiences and needs are different), limitation (not having the resource), incentive (not finding professional benefit), political correctness (worried that it would seem discriminatory or biased), fashion (following whatever is most common), and defensiveness (in the case of students, since differentiated support seemed stigmatizing). Let me explain some of them. It is often necessary (such as due to lack of resources) and beneficial (such as to help students learn from one another) to address international and second-language graduate students’ writing needs alongside their native English-speaking (and) domestic counterparts. Curry (2016),91 for instance, argues that “the practice of differentiating graduate students according to linguistic and cultural backgrounds,” as well as international versus domestic students, “distracts us from considering deeper and more important issues of disciplinary enculturation and academic identity formation that graduate students undergo, and the role of writing in this trajectory” (78). However, while the simplistic distinction-­ making that Curry critiques can certainly lead to blind spots in both scholarship and practice, it is as often necessary and beneficial to target distinct needs of different student groups—especially when the students request or appreciate such support—as it is to try to mainstream them. Ultimately, the two strategies are useful options rather than mutually exclusive, as Simpson indicated. Curry shifts the notion of language as grammar to “a broader discussion of graduate students gaining control over the range of genres specific to their disciplinary context, whether these are in class or out of class, assessed or unassessed, students or professional” (91). But that still leaves out a range of basic to complicated challenges that only international graduate students face as they learn to write and communicate effectively. Whether it is countering problematic discourses about graduate-level writing, seeking funding by establishing needs, finding collaborators or advocates, or influencing institutional policy, writing program administrators need information and arguments that are specific, differentiated by specific issues among different bodies, and even built on the stories and experiences of students. Program leaders need deductive, inductive, and mixed approaches for

118  Shifting Focus finding support, creating programs, and ensuring sustainability. In the case of international graduate students, differentiated support is necessary not only for practical, educational reasons but also to counter the ambivalence created by politics and ideology, to advocate for a better academic environment for them, and to understand and improve the experiences that are unique to them as noncitizens and as social and cultural outsiders. The opposition or disinterest among practitioners regarding differentiated support for international students was not always or necessarily negative. It did seem to be driven, in some cases, by the belief that, as a professor at the University of Louisville put it, “foreign students are not owed extra support.” More often, it simply seemed to be a function of experience: those who have no experience of being a foreign student often empathized wherever they too had experienced the same difficulties but couldn’t relate to challenges they had never personally experienced or observed with interest. For example, during a group interview, one domestic student and tutor at a graduate writing center at Penn State University described her experience of “feeling completely novice again” as a writer when she started graduate school; she was suggesting that graduate-level writing was no less challenging for her. “The thing that most resonates for me is hearing you all talk about the differences between really specific types of writing instruction,” she said, as she chimed in toward the end of the hour, “like somebody giving you feedback on this kind of writing and best practices for all kinds of academic writing.” Her difficulty seemed tangential to the conversation about academic transition that international students in the group had had; but she expressed her empathy by picking up an issue that she could best relate to. There was humility in the way she identified with her international peers; respect and empathy seemed to similarly prompt the director of her program to argue quite strongly against differentiated support. In contrast, tutors in the group who were international students approached the question quite differently, pointing out reasons for and against differentiation while generally supporting it. In short, substance and sophistication of support did not necessarily come from scholarly expertise; it instead seemed to come more often from dedication and empathy, without which, in fact, even those who were exclusively designated to support international students used outdated views and denigrating practices. Beyond formal programs that required budget, space during regular hours, and expertise that they may not have, those who were driven by interest and empathy added workshops and discussions after regular hours, invited professors who could volunteer their time and share expertise, facilitated discussions and mentoring among students, and advertised relevant programs elsewhere on campus. Those who were open to the idea of differentiated support took “personal interest in who [international students] are, what their goals are, what they are getting

Shifting Focus  119 out of the program, and why there are here in the first place,” in the ­ ouisville. The words of an Italian doctoral student at the University of L special interest almost always translated into professional incentives and respect, as well as being one powerful element to boost the growth of formal programs. As indicated in the quotation from Johns (2001) in the epigraph of this section, writing scholars have acknowledged the diversity of multilingual and multicultural students as a whole for a while.92 Since Johns wrote, international students have doubled in numbers and further diversified.93 More recently, Tierney (2016)94 mentioned that the “advanced multilinguals” served by the Yale University English Language Program where he is Director are “similar to graduate students at other research institutions, who, while a category unto themselves, are as remarkable for their diversity as for their similarities” (275; emphasis added). However, the confusing metaphorical expression, articulately critiqued by Matsuda and Jablonski, that academic writing is a “second language” for any student continues to persist especially at the graduate level. In fact, it frequently shows up in recent scholarship.95 The conflation may be caused more by a celebratory view of international students than by disregard of their needs; for instance, when Hall (2009)96 urged writing scholars to prepare for a “new America” that has become extremely diverse, the focus was on linguistic and cultural diversity without much focus on foreign students’ academic backgrounds or their past and future mobility. But those who seek to study and help develop support for international students should also keep in mind that idealized views about certain student groups can inadvertently reinforce and perpetuate underlying politics, ideology, and ambivalence about them. As ­Matsuda and Jablonski (2000)97 argued, the metaphorical use of the phrase second language to highlight shared challenges of academic writing “renders ESL writers invisible”; it also obscures additional challenges faced by international graduate students. The latter are not only (usually) second-language writers and novices in their academic disciplines but also academic sojourners in a new country and culture. More nuanced conversations about issues that are distinct for international students can be found in the scholarship of other disciplines, such as international education, student affairs, and other academic ­service areas. For instance, Glass, Wongtrirat, and Buus (2015)98 in their book argue that “[j]ust as the move from elite to mass higher education transformed the American higher education system after World War II, the rise of global student mobility has the potential to significantly reshape American higher education in the coming decades” (1). Citing Choudaha, Orsosz, and Chang, whose research focuses on global trends and mobility99 of international students, the authors go on to discuss how some institutions have created more inclusive environments and updated pedagogical and service programs to

120  Shifting Focus internationalize education for both international and domestic students. Other scholars provide perspectives on international student diversity, including with the focus on mobility (Bagnall, 2015),100 intersectionality of identity and backgrounds that may further shape motivations and disposition toward education (Berg & Morley, 2014), the perception and disposition of those who interact with diverse students (Costino & Hyon, 2007),101 race (Chow, 2016),102 citizenship and its complexity (Szelényi & Rhoades, 2007),103 and so on. Asking new and more critical questions can also help us improve support and provide institutional leadership. Do international graduate students need to take writing courses, and if so, what should those courses look like? How can academic departments and advisors create curricular space for writing courses and how can they incentivize students’ participation in noncredit learning opportunities? Who should fund new initiatives and which units should address which of the overlapping needs such as language, writing, communication, and career skills? ­Programs seeking to develop additional academic support for international students also find it harder to justify funding for such programs, even within existing frameworks. They must actively explore support and resources from a variety of sources, using advocacy for these students as a group needing distinct support for their distinctive challenges. They must develop effective ways to address the lack of institutional clarity about who is responsible for doing so (see Ku, Lahman, Yeh, & Cheng, 2008104; Shapiro, Farrelly, & Tomaš, 2014105; Simpson, 2012,106 2016107). They must mainstream international students only after substantial orientation and in addition to specialized support where needed; in fact, there are unique needs of these students until the end of graduate programs (for instance, visa issues faced by students when going into the job market) that they must address. They must educate other stakeholders against carelessly lumping together international students with their domestic non-native English-speaking counterparts. Analysis of data from my study clearly showed a need to foreground international graduate students’ experiences, in support programs and pedagogy as well as in scholarship. Here is a summary of lessons drawn from the study that advocates of international students may find useful: (1) For international graduate students, learning to write cannot be separated from a multifaceted and complex process of sociocultural and academic transition (it is instead entangled in the process of learning or adapting prior knowledge and skills with language, writing, disciplinary content, context knowledge, and confidence). (2) These students are extremely diverse and yet writing support providers can neither always account for the diversity of their backgrounds, needs, dispositions, and strengths nor ignore the diversity and still provide effective support. (3) Further considering the decentralized nature of U.S. graduate education and the students’ need for much more support than formal

Shifting Focus  121 writing programs normally provide, writing support initiatives must be part of a broader, interconnected network/landscape of resources that the students learn to explore/exploit from across and often beyond campus. And, (4) the question of whether international graduate students need any separate or adapted support cannot be answered without considering particular issues in context, especially without considering students’ academic transition and without asking whether the need or issue at hand is distinct for them. While the question of whether and how much academic advisors, writing instructors, and other support providers can help address these students’ nonacademic challenges may remain open (see Casanave, 2016),108 there is a need to reboot conversations on student identity and diversity, experiences and needs, especially where established wisdom has become unproductive or stifling of new ideas.

Notes 1 Johns: ESL students and WAC programs…. In McLeod et al. WAC for the new millennium. Ostler: A Survey of Academic Needs for Advanced ESL. TESOL Quarterly, 14(4). 2 This includes writing scholars, instructors/tutors, and program administrators; graduate faculty advisors and program administrators in different disciplines; university officials and leaders; academic service professionals across campuses such as at the library, international center, and faculty ­centers; and in some cases, members of the community who provided related to writing skills to international graduate students. 3 Teaching academic writing to international students in an interdisciplinary writing context…. Across the Disciplines, 2. 4 In fact, even native speakers of other World languages face a certain amount of challenge with local idioms and other aspects of communication in the beginning. 5 Writing at the intersection: Understanding international student writers. Master’s thesis. 6 Graduate students as academic writers…. Higher Education Research and Development, 36(4). 7 A nested model of academic writing approaches…. Language and Literacy 31(1). 8 See Thomson and Esses (2016) in Journal of International Students, 6(4) for research done in Canada. 9 Teaching academic writing to international students…. In Rijlaarsdam & Bjark, Studies in Writing: Teaching Academic Writing in European Higher Education, 12. 10 For the role or stress during international students’ academic transition, see Sullivan and Kashubeck-West (2015) in Journal of International Students, 5(1). A study of academic socialization by Ku et al. (2008), Educational Technology Research and Development, 56, 3, also showed the importance of “time to relax and create meaningful relationships” (375) for international students. 11 This, to me, is a basic reality about language, but when a teacher states and repeats it, nonnative English speaking students are inspired tremendously. 12 International students’ confidence and academic success. Journal of International Students, 4(4).

122  Shifting Focus 13 Citizenship in a global context…. Comparative Education Review, 51(1). 14 See Sherry, Thomas, and Chui (2009) Higher Education, 60, 1 for a review on literature on vulnerability of international students to challenges during transition. 15 Teaching academic writing to international students…. In Rijlaarsdam et al., Teaching Academic…. Studies in Writing, vol 12. 16 Cultural (challenges due to differences in academic writing practices between origin and host countries), domain-specific (challenges related to processes and products of writing), content-specific (challenges of content knowledge in the discipline), foreign language (challenges of writing in second or third language), and general-linguistic (challenges related to general linguistic knowledge or competency and not just second language challenges). 17 A nested model of academic writing approaches…. Language and Literacy 31(1). 18 The “academic literacies” model: Theory and applications. Theory into Practice, 45(4). 19 Internationalization of curriculum…. In Heyden et al., The Sage handbook of research in international education. 20 College writing and beyond: A new framework for university writing instruction. 21 Building genre knowledge. 22 Graduate pathway programs as sites for strategic language-supported internationalization…. In Simpson et al., Supporting graduate student writers. 23 The apprenticeship approach to advanced academic literacy…. English for Specific Purposes, 13(1). 24 The effects of topic familiarity on the writing performance of non-­native writers of English at the graduate level. Dissertation. The Ohio State University. 25 “If you don’t tell me, how can I know…. Written Communication, 16(4). 26 Academic literacy and the nonnative speaker graduate student. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 1. 27 Language, culture, gender, and academic socialization. Language and Education, 23(5). 28 Discourse appropriation, construction of identities, and the complex issue of plagiarism…. Journal of Second Language Writing, 15(2). 29 Learning the literacy practices of graduate school: Insiders’ reflections on academic enculturation. 30 Developing resources for success…. In Cox & Zawacki, WAC and second language writers. 31 Developing an English for academic purposes course for L2 graduate students in the sciences. Across the Disciplines, 12(3). 32 Multi-dimensional transitions of international students to higher education. 33 Global identity in multicultural and international educational contexts. 34 ESL students and WAC programs…. In McLeod et al., WAC for the new millennium. 35 Higher education and international student mobility in the global knowledge economy. 36 Introduction. In Simpson et al., Supporting graduate student writers. 37 Introduction to WAC and second language writing. Across the Disciplines, 8(4). 38 Social identity, investment, and language learning. TESOL Quarterly, 29(1). 39 Learning the literacy practices of graduate school. 40 Reinventing identities in second language writing. 41 Simpson et al., Supporting graduate student writers.

Shifting Focus  123 42 Crossing the curriculum. 43 Developing an English for academic purposes course for L2 graduate students in the sciences. Across the Disciplines, 12(3). 44 “Completely different worlds…. TESOL Quarterly, 31(1). 45 Developing resources for success…. In Cox & Zawacki, WAC and second language writers. 46 Zawacki and Habib (2010), in Reinventing identities in second language writing, among other scholars, have discussed the risks of using “reductive terms” like ESL and EFL to describe diverse students from around the world. 47 I have explored this issue in my dissertation, “Ideological tensions, pedagogical gaps.” U. of Louisville. 48 Mapping the margins…. Stanford Law Review, 43. 49 Intersectionality’s definitional dilemmas. Annual Review of Sociology, 41. 50 Second language activity theory…. In Breen, Learner contributions to language learning. 51 Vertovec (2007), in Ethnic and Racial Studies, 29, 6, uses it to refer to a diversity that is “distinguished by a dynamic interplay of variables” (1024) in terms of culture, class, national origin, and so on. 52 Also see Berg and Morley (2014), in Race Gender and Class, 21, for a study of this issue in the case of immigrants. 53 The state of graduate communication support…. In Simpson et al., S­ upporting graduate student writers. 54 “I heard it through the grapevine.” Higher Education, 54. 55 Materializing “Competence”… The Modern Language Journal, 102(2). 56 Language, culture, gender, and academic socialization. Language and Education, 23(5). 57 A powerful ecological metaphor referring to the largest tree in an area that scientists recently found to be mutually dependent with smaller plants around it but critical to the survival and success of other species because of its greater resilience and abilities, such as drawing water from dozens of feet below ground to hydrate shallower surface or aerating the soil. 58 A Survey of Academic Needs for Advanced ESL. TESOL Quarterly, 14(4). 59 Introduction. In Simpson et al., Supporting graduate student writers. 60 Graduate writing workshops…. In Zawacki & Cox, WAC and second language writers. 61 The few, the proud, the finished…. NASPA: Excellence in Practice, 4–6. 62 Developing resources for success…. In Zawacki & Cox, WAC and second language writers. 63 Writing center support for graduate students…. In Simpson et al., S­ upporting graduate student writers. 64 The development of source use by international postgraduate students. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 12, 2. 65 Graduate writing across the disciplines. Introduction. Across the Disciplines, 12(3). 66 Graduate writing groups…. Praxis: A Writing Center Journal, 10(1). 67 Kitchen tables and rented rooms…. CCC, 45(1). 68 Knowledge, learning and the evolution of conservation practice …. Human Ecology: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 34(4). 69 The experimental ecology of education, Educational Researcher, 5(5). 70 The ecology of inclusive education… In Zhang et al., Equality in Education. 71 The strength of weak ties…. The American Journal of Sociology, 78(6). 72 Also see Greeno (1998); Barab and Roth (2006); and Chawla (2008). 73 After pedagogy: The experience of teaching.

124  Shifting Focus 74 Identity, second language writers, and the learning of workplace writing. In Cox et al., Reinventing identities in second language writing. 75 Academic literacy and the nonnative speaker graduate student. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 1. 76 Writing required in graduate courses in business administration. TESOL Quarterly, 23. 77 Cultural diversity and socialization…. In Murray, Diversity as resource. 78 The role of writing in graduate engineering education…. English for ­Specific Purposes, 12. 79 Attitudes about graduate L2 writing in engineering…. Across the Disciplines, 8(4). 80 Negotiating Participation and Identity…. TESOL Quarterly, 38(4). 81 International students negotiating higher education. 82 Multi-dimensional transitions of international students to higher education. 83 “Settling in”: Postgraduate research student experiences, an international perspective. Paper. 84 The initial stage of the international sojourn…. British Journal of G ­ uidance and Counselling, 36(1). 85 The sociocultural adjustment trajectory of international university students…. Journal of Research in International Education, 11(1). 86 Diversity, international students, and perceived discrimination…. Journal of Studies in International Education, 22(1). 87 Biographical research. In Seale et al., Qualitative research practice. 88 Introduction…. In Simpson et al., Supporting graduate student writers. 89 Beyond the L2 metaphor…. Academic Writing, 1. 90 Graduate student writers….Writing & Pedagogy, 7(1). 91 More than language…. In Simpson et al., Supporting graduate student writers. 92 In the chapter cited, Johns saw a “lesser” role of international students in diversifying college demographic. 93 See Matsuda (2006) for more on student diversity. 94 Supporting graduate and professional communications…. In Simpson et al., Supporting graduate student writers. 95 See, for instance, Casanave (2014) in College English, 68, 6 and Curry (2016) in Simpson et al.’s Supporting graduate student writers. 96 WAC/WID in the next America…. The WAC Journal, 20. 97 Beyond the L2 metaphor…. Academic Writing, 1. 98 International student engagement…. 99 For more on global mobility, see Open Doors report (2016). 100 Global identity in multicultural and international educational contexts. 101 “A class for students like me”…. Journal of Second Language Writing, 16(2). 102 Race, racism, and international students in the United States. Academic Advising Today (October 11). 103 Citizenship in a global context…. Comparative Education Review, 51(1). 104 Into the academy…. Educational Technology Research and Development, 56(3). 105 Fostering international student success in higher education. 106 The problem of graduate-level writing support…. WPA, 36(1). 107 Introduction…. In Simpson et al., Supporting graduate student writers. 108 What advisors need to know…. In S. Simpson et al., Supporting graduate student writers.

4 Fostering Agency through Effective Support Practices

I was so determined that no matter what happens I’m not going to give up…. As international students, we have to take it genuinely and we have to have passion…. It’s going to take time. Patience, commitment, and dedication are necessary. (Vijay, a doctoral student of pharmacology University of Louisiana, Monroe) [I]t is at the level of voice that we gain agency to negotiate … the self, [to] adopt a reflexive awareness…. Related to this exercise of agency is the … voice [that] manifests itself in microsocial contexts of personal communication. (Canagarajah, 2004; 268)1

Even while responding to the most focused questions about learning to write, student interviewees in my study usually told a story, brought up emotional and psychological issues such as resilience and motivation, or quickly shifted focus from the specific topic of writing to broader experiences that they had had as foreign students. The student I quoted above saw writing—which he defined as “communication skills”—as being at the center of his success (after many misfortunes); his most significant experience with writing was not overcoming his “ESL challenges” or even developing genre knowledge and skills but developing his agency and voice as a member of his discipline. He found motivation and confidence in the face of struggles, including discontinued funding and closure of his mentor’s lab, whenever he discovered the opportunity to advance his research agenda, opportunity that he capitalized on “by communicating my ideas,” as he put it. He needed to get his funding renewed and his visa maintained, to find a lab and ensure mentor support, and to conduct his experiments in order to develop those ideas in the first place. As theorized in the other quotation from Canagarajah’s (2004) chapter titled “Multilingual writers and the struggle for voice in academic discourse,” Vijay’s view of learning to write, like that of most students I interviewed, subsumed the notion of finding and expressing one’s agency and voice. The students described writing as a means for navigating the

126  Fostering Agency through Effective Support Practices academic community in a new society and culture, of developing an identity in one’s discipline, of negotiating a position within a specialization, and of pursuing professional goals. Learning to write as a goal did not in itself seem very useful or urgent to many of the students. Even the most basic of writing challenges, for international students, involved a ­ vercoming web of factors, such as social, emotional, and educational. O them required gaining knowledge, perspective, and confidence about and around the writing skills they needed to learn. So, I begin this chapter by drawing on theories of agency to discuss how international graduate students go about learning to write. Then, also building on the last two chapters, I illustrate the kinds of writing support practices that I found to be effective in fostering these students’ agency as writers and scholars, focusing on the context of their academic transition, considering their diversity, acknowledging the broad ecology of support and resources used, and paying attention to their distinct challenges. Agency, theoretically, lies in the individual, in his or her action and will, intention and choice, freedom and ownership. An agent can act, decide, choose, explore, learn, and change. An agent knows, connects, ­collaborates, negotiates, and expresses. An agent tends to be responsible and driven by purpose. The stories about learning to write that my student interviewees shared reflected these elements of agency. They became confident in what they wanted to say and how they wanted to say it when they started responding to texts and people in their own voice. To develop that voice and confidence, they had to overcome various forces undermining their agency: feelings of deficiency, bias and prejudice, determinism, and sense of inevitability. Students also had to regain confidence in their past knowledge and recognize the relevance and value of their experiences in order to start transferring or translating those resources. They similarly became more capable and confident writers when they learned to take initiative and even “hack” resources, developing a sense of direction and greater awareness of the broader context of academic and professional growth. The concept of agency has been discussed in a variety of contexts in the disciplines of Rhetoric and Writing Studies. I build on the theorization of agency by scholars like Canagarajah (2004, 2013c2), Miller (2007), 3 Cooper (2011),4 and Lu and Horner (2013). 5 Miller (2007) found an “anxious attention” to agency in the field of rhetoric in particular, an attention that is related to three concerns: theoretical, ideological, and practical (including rhetorical and pedagogical). If “theoretical concerns arise from the struggle of rhetoric to come to terms with the postmodern condition…. ideological concerns arise from the conflict between realities of political and economic power and ideals of civic participation and social justice” (143). In the practical domain, Miller argues that “[r]hetorical agency is important because it [gives] voice to the voiceless…. [and] pedagogical concerns about agency arise from the efforts of teachers to make rhetoric matter…. [as they are] tied to the ideological

Fostering Agency through Effective Support Practices  127 concerns” in turn (144). The concerns are directly relevant to the issues of politics and ideology that I discussed in the last two chapters, the issues of voice in this one, and the interest of writing professionals to “make rhetoric matter” in the next two. I have found it meaningful, even necessary, to describe how international graduate students learn to write effectively in relation to factors that foster their agency because these students are particularly vulnerable to forces that undermine it, as discussed in previous chapters. As Kockelman (2007)6 stated, “the locus of agency may often rest not in the individuals, but rather in their ongoing interactions and the institutions that enable these” (382). Similarly, as Werder (2000)7 argued in the context of discussing the identity and ethos of writing program administrators, “[b]ecause rhetorical agency is situated in a particular context, it is a potential that resides in the dialectic interplay between actors, not in any one actor” (12). Blanton (1992)8 has further pointed out that “the posture of authority can serve to define the relationship of readers and writers to texts as we find ways to help [second language students] perform as readers and writers” (18). Certainly, the effectiveness of support was contingent on a variety of factors within specific institutional contexts. But approaches taken by any support providers, practices, and pedagogies that fostered student agency were generally more effective. Relative to their domestic counterparts, international graduate students face more challenges and have to overcome more confusions, tackle more conflicts, reinvent themselves more thoroughly, and benefit from the support of those who pay a little more attention to their challenges as writers and scholars than those of their domestic counterparts. Additionally, what writing support programs typically provide is just one part of a broader set of support that they need. So, the more we try to facilitate their ability to explore and exploit support and resources, the better our support can be. A doctoral student of applied linguistics at a Penn State University, for example, said that it took him a few years to start accepting criticism “because I would automatically turn off…. there might be a language aspect but I think more, for me, was my anxiety about being treated as a second class citizen, which I wasn’t very comfortable with.” While this kind of dynamic applies to other groups of students and for a variety of reasons, international students experience particularly complex intersections of perception and treatment in terms of their language proficiency, their racial and national identity, their cultural and religious views and values, and so on. Thus, writing support programs can best serve international graduate students as writers and scholars by providing them information, opportunity, and skills for finding and using support and resources. Like Morita (2004,9 200910), I found that international students can exercise their personal agency when they can actively negotiate their positions in particular contexts. Noting that “pedagogies focused primarily on

128  Fostering Agency through Effective Support Practices language development run the risk of perpetuating a deficit orientation toward multilingual writers, causing those students to be seen only in terms of gaps in their English knowledge” (32), Shapiro, Cox, Shuck, & Simnitt (2016)11 have similarly suggested that we promote agency among multilingual students by using authentic writing tasks, providing options, and engaging them in scholarly conversation. They have urged instructors to focus on knowledge, passion, inclusion, engagement, freedom, and choice. As Chawla (2008)12 has further noted, learners’ sense of agency is best fostered when self-produced action is reciprocated by environmental events. And, as Tran (2013) has also argued, given that academic writing is a “central practice in most English-medium higher education institutions,” it is an assessment tool, a practice that is defined differently across the disciplines, and a skill that involves a hidden curriculum. A focus on agency helps us to understand that international students’ process of learning to write is “dynamic, multi-dimensional, wide-ranging and ­subtle”; it helps us see that writing well depends “on a host of aspects such as the students’ personal preferences and identity, cultural values and approaches to knowledge, lecturers’ beliefs, power relationship and the ­disciplinary assumptions of what counts as knowledge and good writing” (3–4). Themes emerging from data analysis strongly confirm the importance of fostering agency, as I illustrate with practical support strategies in the rest of this chapter, showing how writing support can and should facilitate international students’ process of learning to exercise their personal and epistemological agency through writing. In previous chapters, I pointed out gaps and challenges in mainstream support programs and practices. In this one, I focus on effective practices that writing professionals shared with me, drawing broader insights from them.

Exploring New Communities The thing that’s been most meaningful to me is to try to portray international students’ experiences broadly, not just to focus on what’s happening in the classroom but to help other people see the whole range of factors that come into play [for them] in personal, familial, social [ways]—to help those of us who see students in these very limiting contexts … [with] a better sense of what else is going on and how all these factors influence each other. (A writing program director at Ohio University) It’s like going to a doctor where you’re sent to all kinds of specialists while you don’t know what’s happened to you. Instead of giving the patient the run around, why not devise a system that is more focused on the patient? (A writing instructor and former international graduate student California State University, Northridge)

Fostering Agency through Effective Support Practices  129 One of the recurring themes about lacking or inadequate support for international graduate students, drawn from codes about “complaints” and “criticisms” of writing support by international students (including former students), was that their needs were not understood. The complaints and critiques, the students indicated, were caused mainly by isolating their academic difficulties from the personal, familial, and social underpinnings of those difficulties, especially during their transition, or by the failure to see them “in their full complexity as people,” as one interviewee put it (as does the scholar quoted above). Interestingly, specialists who were sensitive to that complexity indicated that they didn’t have to design the support in radically different ways. Instead, as one language and writing instructor at Cornell University stated, with sufficient understanding of the students’ needs, even small tweaks could change an entire program/system. “People flourish in a nice, warm class environment because that’s a part of writing … [for] when questions can be asked, it is helpful at many levels.” A little rapport-building can go a long way in elevating students’ confidence. Approaches like the above addressed a particular paradox about writing support for international graduate students: they are overwhelmed by other demands while they are new and can’t find the time to use the support later on. To address this paradox, the director of a unique research and support center focusing on language and culture at a Penn State University identified urgent needs (such as responding to student emails) and high-stakes genres (scholarly review) of writing as ways of attracting students to the center; these strongly appealing “charisma species” of writing support also helped students understand the sociocultural and professional contexts of writing. Another instructor, who wished that there was a “university 101” course for international graduate students, taught students how to explore resources and find support. Along these lines, the most significant contribution to the social adjustment was made by an assortment of professionals beyond writing programs, such as a graduate student life coordinator, an academic liaison at the international student office, a graduate specialist at the graduate center, a coordinator of a professional development initiative, and a staff member at a graduate student housing unit. Often, their support seemed to have little to do with the academic and especially learning-to-write aspect of international graduate students’ adjustment. But they laid the foundation for accelerated learning by familiarizing students with the new academic environment and culture. They showed the importance of taking an “educational” approach to teaching writing skills, including teaching about writing. Because they paid attention to the full person and building rapport mentioned earlier, such broadened scope made writing support most useful for international students. “Once life begins to function, then academic studies [sic] begin to function,” as an international student advisor put it.

130  Fostering Agency through Effective Support Practices Writing support for international graduate students was also most useful when it was flexible. For instance, writing centers that stretched available hours, as suggested by Phillips (2014),13 or provided peer support and added online options served these students best. Experienced writing center professionals said that it was important not to always force international students to identify a specific “session agenda” but instead, when useful, address general concerns about their writing, help them with multiple issues, or simply alleviate their anxiety about writing. Open discussions may or may not achieve specific objectives, but the student will build rapport and find a patient audience at the writing center (or the writing instructor’s office). Other support programs and initiatives are needed to facilitate the learning of not just writing but a whole host of academic skills that involve writing as a vehicle. Here are some of the challenges that mainstream writing support programs tend to overlook: annotating and writing responses to reading in their advanced, graduate-level forms; carrying out informal communication such as day-to-day emails; preparing presentations and slides; professionally responding to critique and rejection of one’s writing; managing challenges of writing related to stress and time; and adapting interpersonal communication skills to the new society and culture. For international students, “writing” challenges have to do with distinct or more intense issues of social and cultural difference, power dynamics and anxiety, and issues of emotion and habit formation. So, writing support should try to directly encounter the entanglement of writing needs with as many other factors as possible. The most impactful approaches to helping international students adjust to the new academic environment were adopted by programs that involved mentoring, either as a primary focus or a strategy to enhance other strategies. At Portland State University, for example, an international student mentorship program was housed in the international student life office. According to the office’s director, during fall semesters, 40 or 50 more experienced students mentored 250–300 new students, in person, on social media, and by connecting them to available programs and resources “until the new students develop[ed] a level of comfort…. until they find other ways to get involved…. The mentors are a conduit to other resources on campus.” Another 80–90 new arrivals were assigned in spring. The director shared a number of benefits, including retention, success, and engagement. What was striking about the undergirding philosophy that she discussed was that the program did not grow because what she was doing as a student advisor was underutilized; as a “visa person,” she was very busy, even overwhelmed, by students’ demands. Instead of only referring students to other places, she wanted to take on the challenge of filling in the gaps between ­existing programs. I asked why she decided to start a new program when her existing program was at full capacity. “It is when you reach full capacity that you realize that you have to reach out across campus for

Fostering Agency through Effective Support Practices  131 more partnership, you realize then that you can’t do it all yourself,” she said, somewhat paradoxically, “because there are other wonderful people across campus who want to help and collaborate.” Listening to her further, I realized that the perspective she was sharing could only be understood in terms of deep generosity undergirding her professionalism. This generosity made a tremendous difference for international students, as the students I interviewed highlighted. I also interviewed a senior student mentor at Portland State who was supporting eight students in spring 2016. After he described the program, I asked Sabin what his incentive or reward was for giving a lot of time, as he said, to new students. He said that he did it to pay it forward: “the reason I am successful is because these people, they were there for me.” He also wanted international students’ talent to be used for the benefit of his university: “these students who come to United States, they are already capable of doing amazing things.” Knowing how useful his support could be was the greatest driver for him to invest his time in the program. In fact, he teasingly told me that “fortunately” he didn’t have to use writing support, except during the semester when I interviewed him, while he was on the job market and found the writing center support useful with his job application materials. Sabin was somewhat critical of the approach taken by conventional academic support programs. We should be able to pick our own times, use resources on websites, and there should be other mechanisms that are flexible instead of saying, “Hey, you should take this writing course for three months, and you have these time slots, final exams, and so on.” I don’t want to go through that kind of formalized process. Rather I would use resources as I go…. We need to make support more scientific. It’s not a deterministic problem. It’s a probabilistic problem … like rolling the dice…. [We must] build a system with the capacity of serving a hundred students and it’s a problem if only three students show up. But in a big institution and for graduate students, you cannot use a simple approach. He argued that, by contrast, his fellow student mentees tapped into the network of people who could answer questions, point to the right resource, provide a friendly environment, and not judge new students for their weaknesses or ignorance. He remembered how empowering it was to be welcome when he arrived. He had had rigorous training during the summer before his first mentoring semester, then many follow-up sessions in subsequent semesters. He was active in ongoing conversations among fellow mentors. And, most importantly, he continued to learn a range of useful skills while being a mentor. As further attested to by an ESL instructor at the same university, the mentoring program was especially useful for international students

132  Fostering Agency through Effective Support Practices because it connected them to more experienced students from whom they could learn not just academic skills such as writing but gain knowledge around those skills (or what Lozanov [1978]14 called “peripheral learning”). It is when someone is willing to go beyond their official and specified roles, as mentors do by definition, that international students can build relationships, develop the confidence to ask questions and comfort to challenge assumptions, get involved and start contributing and learning in the process. By emulating programs like this, variations of which I observed at a few other universities as well, writing programs could create communities of writers, perhaps organized by trained tutors or instructors, but led by experienced students who have gone through the process of transition and achieved success. Adding such a component to writing support programs can help enhance the retention and success of students and, as the director of the above mentoring project said, the educational objectives that are of institutional significance. It could make writing support a means with a larger institutional goal rather than an end in itself. By allowing students to “pay it forward,” the approach could not only tap into the talent pool of international graduate students but also help program leaders and instructors understand the diversity of these students and the complexity of their needs and strengths, motivations and experiences about writing. To situate writing support within the broader ecology in which international graduate students learn to write and communicate, writing programs should adopt components of community, mentoring, and mutual support among the students. These elements could help turn writing support into an environment and network of the supporters and supported, a network that is better capable of addressing the complexities, ­diversity, and variations discussed in the previous chapter. Most significantly, while helping international graduate students explore the ­community in ways that aid their development as writers, such ecological framing of writing support would help situate it in the critical context of these students’ academic and social/cultural transition. It would best help them learn writing as a means to explore and navigate the new academic system and not only an educational goal in itself.

Finding a Voice Our really successful doctoral students that I’ve met here have learned to use their own identities and experiences in their writing…. One way they can do that is if they frame the topic in this broad theoretical concept … as opposed to starting from “I’m really interested in the problem of X that my country is going through right now.” (Amir, a graduate writing center administrator at Penn State University)

Fostering Agency through Effective Support Practices  133 They also have a legal listening program … speakers who visit class…. videos to listen to legal matters and take notes … They’re with the teachers reviewing the notes to see if they got the crux of the issue. And then there’s brown bag lunch that they can take part in…. There is also an interactive speaking class that they take part in, to learn how to discuss, take turns, jump in and offer your opinion—­all of those pieces. (An instructor in a language support center at the University of Michigan) International students’ process of learning graduate-level writing skills is entangled with many other academic and nonacademic challenges. In most universities, the writing support they receive is yet to develop enough to address discipline-specific writing needs. Not many writing instructors and tutors are able and willing to wade into the genres and conventions of writing in different disciplines, and most writing programs don’t look beyond language difficulties and cultural differences. Being unable to read and write confidently, these students take longer to develop their own voices as members of their disciplines. But as Amir says in the first quotation above, once they learn how to assert their identities, they are increasingly able to take intellectual positions in complex disciplinary discourses and debates, starting to write with a voice of their own. In this section, I discuss strategies shared by writing support professionals, such as the use of a variety of discipline-specific learning opportunities described by the second interviewee quoted in the epigraph. Based on themes from data analysis in this area, I argue that writing support for international graduate students should focus on helping them develop research agenda and specialization in the disciplines, rather than just teach writing skills out of context. Writing tutors and instructors can and should help international graduate students flesh out, situate, organize, and fine-tune their ideas. One of the signs that Amir had observed about his fellow students starting to write successfully was their ability to negotiate the research agenda and topic with their advisors, especially picking topics that gave them leverage based on knowledge, experience, or identity. He had seen many students who did not know, for a while, how to transfer and translate the knowledge and interest they brought from many years of education and social life in their home countries, alongside new knowledge that they were acquiring here. Then they began to figure out the system here “well enough to realize that if they start from [their foreign] premises, they are going to get rejected. They have to rather start [for instance] from the broader ‘concept’ of violence and education.” Unfortunately, when they went to the writing center, they didn’t know how to share that challenge or how to get support with it. Many tutors and instructors were “distracted” by the students’ “language problems”

134  Fostering Agency through Effective Support Practices and the students themselves tended to go with the flow—even after the initial period when they too focused on anxiety about language. As a graduate writing tutor, Amir had found that when international students eventually realized that they could write about “something they really care about,” they started to “keep going, wake up the next day, write eight pages of the dissertation.” In fact, once international students were able to negotiate a topic on which they could write with some authority, they also realized that it wasn’t sentence and grammar that truly discouraged them. It was their lack of voice and power and motivation. When tutors and instructors found ways to foster the students’ disciplinary identity and voice, they did not have to understand the content and context of the students’ research, nor even had to know how to teach all kinds of discipline-specific genres and conventions of writing. ­Fostering the students’ agency by helping them find their voice and leverage their own knowledge and experiences helped students handle the process and tools, negotiate with their advisors, write with greater confidence, and even take some risks. It is for this reason that some scholars of writing support have been warning against the excessive focus on language or writing per se (e.g., Morita, 200915). By focusing on content and intellectual positioning, writing tutors and instructors can help international students in particular find a voice and create a space in their disciplines. As Amir argued, students “who have a good sense of identity are able to leverage that differently without giving it away, as opposed to people who are going through identity crises.” The lesson Amir’s observation provides for writing tutors and instructors is that they can and should facilitate negotiation and leveraging, helping students embrace the identity that best allows them to harness their knowledge and experience. As Pavlenko and Blackridge (2004)16 have argued, individuals find agency when they can “resist, negotiate, change, and transform themselves and others” (20). On the one hand, insofar as language identity influences the process, “language choice and attitudes are inseparable from political arrangements, relations of power, language ideologies, and interlocutors’ views of their own and others’ identities” (1). Language, by nature, is a “symbolic resource which may be tied to the ability to gain access to, and exercise, power” (12). On the other, subject knowledge, cultural experience, and other aspects of identity also function as sources of power. Because international students can only use English, a language that is not native to most of them, they learn to find leverage in content and perspective as ways to “legitimize, challenge, and negotiate particular identities and to open new identity options … [for themselves as] subjugated individuals” (13). As Pavlenko and Blackridge added, the negotiation of identities constitutes an “interplay between reflective positioning, i.e., self-representation, and interactive positioning, whereby others attempt to position or reposition particular individuals

Fostering Agency through Effective Support Practices  135 or groups” (20). Lantolf and Pavlenko (2001)17 further wrote that “agency is never a ‘property’ of a particular individual” but rather “a relationship that is constantly co-constructed and renegotiated with those around the individual and with the society at large” (148). As Canagarajah (1999)18 has argued, individuals who are positioned in the margins also seek to find an agency through resistance and rebuilding of their own voice against the grain of dominant ideologies and discourses. In the context of writing support and instruction, scholars have discussed the need to shift focus from language and writing skills to disciplinary content where non-native English-speaking students can find more leverage and may also need support expressing their ideas and taking positions. Leki and Carson (1997),19 for instance, have argued that courses in English for academic purposes tend to “limit students to writing without source texts or to writing without responsibility for the content of source texts” and therefore “miss the opportunity to engage [the] students in the kinds of interactions with text that promote linguistic and intellectual growth” (39). A focus on disciplinary content “freed them from the need to come up with ideas on their own as they often had to do in their ESL writing classes, which they experienced as an additional burden” (56). Leki has shown the weaknesses of traditional writing support along this line in a number of her other works (e.g., 1995, 20 200121). Let me illustrate some of the suggestions made so far in this section by using a practical strategy shared by an experienced writing scholar at Cornell University. “Every experience they had writing may have been a test of their knowledge of English,” said the scholar, explaining why international graduate students tend to focus on their language, reinforcing their writing tutors’ and instructors’ tendency to focus on it as well. So, it is not easy for students “to move from that conception … to using English … to build knowledge. It’s a very difficult leap to make.” As a result, when international students start writing, “their mind is switching from the creative idea-building to fixing and correcting … the structure of the sentence, which interrupts the complex thinking that they were doing at the idea level…. Their mind is constantly getting interrupted.” To help students get out of that vicious cycle, the instructor said that she highlights “the most syntactically entangled sentences.” Then, instead of “veering off into what they want me to do,” or challenging the writers about their concern, she asks the student: “What do you want to say here?” As the student tries to explain what he or she wants to say with the sentence, the instructor takes notes. Then she reads the notes back to the student, to which the student often responds by saying, “No.” But the process continues until the student “finally says, ‘Yes.’ I say, ‘You’re so brilliant. I just took notes on what you’re saying.’ So, now we’ve moved from sentence-level to expression.” The instructor went on to point out to me that it is not because students “don’t know how to structure the sentence but because the idea was difficult to express…. that’s kind of the first

136  Fostering Agency through Effective Support Practices transition that we make.” Indeed, students’ challenges with sentences and paragraphs are “actually deeper, rhetorical” and they need help figuring out the ideas, understanding the context, and following or negotiating with disciplinary conventions. Instead of teaching the rules, as she said, we must teach how to think about the rhetorical situation. We must teach “how can we give shape” to texts and ideas, how to ­interact with people, and how to intellectually position oneself in complex disciplinary and social and professional contexts. Let me conclude this section by illustrating the theme of learning to write as a means of finding and expressing an intellectual voice and disciplinary identity with the story of a student I have called Vijay. Vijay had arrived at the University Louisiana, Monroe about five years earlier. When asked to share any early experiences of learning to write papers for graduate school, he put his response in the context of a broader story. First of all, he had to understand people in the university as individuals and professionals shaped by a different culture and society in order to be able to communicate with them. He remembered a professor who “assumed that because we are in graduate school, we all just understand everything,” but the professor, Vijay added, had a strange teaching style of “giving a bunch of different examples and expecting students to understand his point.” The examples that the professore used for illustrating complex ideas only became additional barriers for Vijay. He later realized that he had found the lecture far more disorganized and unclear than it actually was because he was new; other students seemed to follow it. Being afraid that he would fail the course, Vijay came up with a solution: he started asking a more experienced fellow international student in that class what the teacher was saying. But when he overcame one challenge, it seemed that another would crop up: “at every step, there was something more difficult waiting for me.” Vijay soon found out that the lab where he was supposed to conduct his pharmaceutical experiments, from which he would write articles and conference papers, had been closed for three years; his advisor had recruited him in the hope that he would win a lawsuit and regain funding for the lab. In this situation, learning writing skills, or even completing coursework, was not the most urgent aspect of advancing his graduate studies. When he solved the new problem by finding another lab to conduct some of his experiments, he was able to start writing and publishing his research, going on to win scholarships and using them to create new opportunities. By continuing to work in various labs, networking with faculty members and other students, and building on his success to take small steps, he was about to complete his doctoral degree. When Vijay finally focused on writing, he very articulately described the role it played in his growth as a scholar and the advice he would give to other international students regarding learning to write. He said, “Writing is the most important thing, along with research—Well, if you don’t write, if you don’t present

Fostering Agency through Effective Support Practices  137 or communicate your ideas, if you don’t go to conference and network with others … then it’s a waste.” He defined writing in very broad terms, as a vehicle of success in graduate school. His mentor had taught him “how to communicate,” and he learned to write “very good, strong, convincing applications” for his scholarships and awards. He used a variety of self-discovered strategies, including asking for samples from senior colleagues on campus, using templates or guidelines for writing in new genres, and even conducting research online to locate samples and people he could contact for help. Overall, his approach was to learn specific writing skills as and when he needed to, focus on the clarity of content, and write to persuade the audience. He discussed how he analyzed the audience and context for making his communication effective, highlighting the role of his doing so toward receiving 15 or more awards during graduate school. A few months later, Vijay emailed to let me know that he had just accepted a fellowship position at Harvard University. Vijay’s story highlights that ultimately, learning to write involves finding an agency in the broader context in which he wrote as an emerging scholar, developing a voice and taking a position in relation to existing knowledge in his discipline. Especially for international graduate students, this requires making greater leaps because the process usually starts with worrying about and dealing with grammatical and syntactic errors and extends into exploring and exploiting the right resources at the right time as they navigate unfamiliar territories, meeting the many and complex demands of graduate school in a new culture and country. For this reason, writing programs are most useful when writing professionals seek to foster the students’ agency and independence by providing them resources, creating networks of support, and advocating for the students. Vijay’s story offered a powerful lesson to me as a writing ­instructor: I must design writing courses, assignments, and teaching and mentoring practices to help students study the discipline. Such a strategy was also shared by a language specialist at Penn State University: she assigned international students to “identify five articles from their fields that are well written—through recommendations from their advisors or peers—and then have them analyze and write about writing in their fields.” While analyzing writing in the disciplines is a common assignment, this expert further designed her assignment as an opportunity to help international students to also study the underlying social and political contexts and the traditions and changes occurring with the genres as part of understanding the text, genre, discipline, and society as increasingly larger areas of knowledge where the larger circles become the context of the previous ones. Vijay’s story also tells us that writing skills were not only central to his success as a scientist; he also had to learn them within the context of his research and publication, during the process of his development as a scientist and scholar. Even as he told a painful story, Vijay consistently highlighted the importance of those who supported

138  Fostering Agency through Effective Support Practices him, those who recognized his challenges, those who cared. In fact, an important theme undergirding support strategies I have discussed in this chapter is what one instructor called “an ethos of care” in them. Generally put, I found that writing support programs (as well as institutional policies and environments) that were most positively impactful on international graduate students were not necessarily the most well-­ resourced or developed and systematic. They were instead driven by an interest in understanding and supporting these students especially by fostering their awareness and agency, voice and confidence. A former international graduate student who ran a writing program at Yale ­University said that such ethos of care “correlates to … deeper understanding of what these people experience” as foreign students. “It is characteristic for people working in this environment … in English language programs and writing centers.” Her observation may not be highly generalizable; but it is nonetheless an important ingredient of support needed for fostering student agency and helping them be themselves and express themselves the best they can. When that ethos of care was lacking, students seemed to find it hard to fit in, focused on their weaknesses, and lost motivation in the process. Helping international graduate students to write well was helping them to find a social and intellectual space of their own, as scholars and members of their own disciplines.

Writing Support and Professional Development I’ve been here for almost six years…. The concept of academia and work, and opportunities … is very different in Europe … [so] I attend a lot of these events…. [acquiring] a lot of informal knowledge…. to learn the process of writing, publication and how to present yourself, conduct research…. to think of myself as a professional…. It’s difficult for international students to learn this dynamic which is very different from another culture…. Especially coming up in job market, it’s been very helpful to understand how to really learn how to enter academia. (An Italian doctoral student at the University of Louisville) [Take, for instance, a] student from Applied Math Statistics who by academic achievement is the person you want in your classroom but if you ask her to apply [her mathematical knowledge] … she is going draw a blank…. International students struggle with understanding cultural nuances … in their job searches … to network, to talk to strangers … to practice interviewing and building rapport…. to make small talk … know what’s culturally appropriate … [write] cover letters. (A career center adviser at Stony Brook University)

Fostering Agency through Effective Support Practices  139 Among the students who said that they never or rarely used the writing center, all those who were on the job market told me that they were using it for help with job application materials—even though they were aware that their need may not be fully addressed there. That included even the student I mentioned earlier who said that he “fortunately” didn’t have to use academic writing support. Academic support professionals ranging from writing tutors to the career center and international student advisors highlighted that international graduate students found the job search much more challenging than their domestic counterparts in terms of communication and writing skills. These students now encountered new genres of writing, which the curriculum or mentoring hadn’t addressed, and their difficulties were compounded by other challenges such as visa status and financial restrictions, biases and ideologies, political climate and travel related issues. The process of looking for work brought back to the surface a variety of challenges that had gone underground after the initial transition, even adding new layers related to political, social, and cultural dimensions of writing and communication. Especially when immigration regulations were made stricter or the political climate was less welcoming of foreign students, their challenges with writing were significantly magnified. Fortunately, at most of the universities I visited, writing support related to the job search, though not very organized or developed, was available in various forms and from various places, including the career center, the writing center, individual faculty mentors, and events organized by students. By the time they were about to graduate, many international graduate students knew what their needs and challenges were, where to find support and resources, and often how to create the opportunity themselves. They demanded such support and their demands often led to new initiatives. And instead of focusing on the most visible or superficial issues about writing, they knew how to use support to tackle different kinds of concerns in relation to rhetorical purposes of communication, cultural and professional expectations, professional networking, and the use of new media. For all these reasons, professional writing support toward the end of graduate degrees was also recognized and valued by institutions from the highest levels. It is relatively easy to demonstrate the results of professional writing support because it is linked to retention, engagement, socialization, graduation, and placement. A number of writing programs used this ­focus for getting buy-in from faculty, as well as financial and institutional support from administrators. They offered support with genres involved in the job search—such as cover letter, teaching (philosophy) statement, research statement, and inquiry and follow-up emails— for promoting the rest of their services. This support was also useful for countering unproductive assumptions about writing in general and writing support for international students in particular, shifting

140  Fostering Agency through Effective Support Practices the focus away from so-called lower-order concerns about writing and deficit-driven views about students. It also created space and respect for writing professionals’ disciplinary expertise. As Starke-Meyerring (2011) highlights, dominant views about graduate-level writing divorce the most serious issues about graduate student writing from the technical issues that faculty advisors believe can be fixed by writing tutors outside of the context of the students’ research and scholarship. “[A]s writing sinks beneath a cloak of normalcy and universality, what disappears is … the situated nature of writing as a knowledge-making practice shaped in unique ways to meet the unique knowledge-making needs of a particular research culture” (77). Professional writing support could help to “uncover writing as a socioculturally situated epistemic practice,” to apply Starke-Meyerring’s words in this new context. In place of what Starke-Meyerring critiques as “generic non- research-based workshops dispensing ill-theorized advice on presumably universal principles of ‘effective writing’, while students and professors are left struggling with complex questions of knowledge and identity production in the discourse of their research fields” (93), using writing to assist professional development of graduate students could help writing programs apply their support for a more transformative purpose in that it would help students to form new identities as capable members of their disciplines and professions, linking academic success with professional development. Academic professionalization requires educating graduate students about the dynamics of academe and its place in society, subjects that international students in particular can’t learn through mere exposure. I came across a few kinds of support in my research that more explicitly helped international students understand broader issues of academe and society. One was a writing course developed by a scholar currently working at the CUNY Graduate Center while she was a doctoral student at Syracuse University. As described by this scholar, the course (which was discontinued when she left) directly focused on social and political issues surrounding graduate education, the academic disciplines, and academic careers. She had designed the course to help students explore politics and power dynamics, especially exploring thorny issues such as deficit views about international students, the political nature of academic research, and the myth of meritocracy in academic publication. “Most of these students had been in learning environments where writing was all about rules—so we talked about practices but also politics,” she said, explaining how the understanding greatly empowered students as future scholars. Attempts like these seemed to indicate not only an increasing awareness about the need to help international students better understand academe and society but also to use writing support as a platform to do so. Writing programs have the expertise to address all graduate students’ needs for professional writing, broadly defined, and to further support

Fostering Agency through Effective Support Practices  141 international students with their additional challenges. From what I observed, writing professionals are also best equipped to help their institutions create some structure and provide leadership in this area. In doing so, they could broaden the scope and impact of their pedagogy, service, and scholarship. This area of support does overlap with other academic services such as support provided by the career center, but writing programs can add new dimensions to, or supplement, the support by helping students with the analytical, rhetorical, and linguistic/stylistic aspect of professional writing—dimensions where international graduate students need most help. These students used any available support for a wide variety of needs ranging from writing effective emails to communicating with stakeholders of research projects, responding to editors, preparing presentations, and, of course, writing for the job search. International teaching assistants (ITAs), whom writing programs seem to largely ignore, constituted a distinct group by their needs; writing programs could provide highly impactful support to their institutions by paying attention to these students’ challenges, especially on campuses where there are no ITA training programs. In contrast to (or in addition to) the traditional ITA support that focuses on pronunciation and accent training and uses assimilatory approaches to helping ITAs with teaching skills, writing programs could provide the ITAs with more pedagogically sound support, starting with how to integrate writing and reading skills into teaching, how to respond to student writing, and so on. One of the best support programs for ITAs that I came across was at Penn State University, a unit whose director had transformed what could have been a traditional ESL program into a culturally, rhetorically, and linguistically sophisticated support system and research center that was truly inspiring. This passionate scholar-researcher argued that it is necessary to leave behind the traditional idea of “second language” students and focus on their academic success and professional growth: “In fact, we could help ITAs in any language…. It’s important to provide remedial support without infantilizing students.” As this scholar suggested, and as the case of ITAs illustrates, in order to accelerate international students’ socialization process, language- or writing-focused support for them needs to shift from language, writing, and communication skills being seen as an educational end to being treated as a means for socialization and professional development. Writing support can enhance students’ professional development in a variety of ways. In the case of international graduate students, it provides occasion for understanding how the broader society and culture as well as specific professions get things done with language. In a powerful example of this affordance of writing support, a writing scholar at MIT described the case of an Israeli graduate student who sought his help with her resume, which “was not really saying anything”

142  Fostering Agency through Effective Support Practices because the student said she “didn’t want to brag about herself.” Instead of simply showing the student how to fix the language of the resume, he explained the culture of “bragging” that the resume had to embrace, a game that is played with different rules in different countries and contexts. Another writing program administrator at the University of California, Los Angeles made professional development a key aspect of writing support by taking it a step further: she recruited and supported writing tutors and program assistants, drawn from across the disciplines, viewed their work in the writing center as a professional development opportunity, “helping [them] with publication, public speaking, learning to mentor [other] graduate students…. Professional development has been a theme from the beginning.” That is, because writing professionals can bring sophisticated views about language, culture, and writing/communication to their interactions with international students, when provided thoughtfully, international graduate students uniquely benefited from using writing support for learning professional communication skills. From a professional development perspective, international graduate students must acquire knowledge and skills about writing in a much larger social context than they may first realize. We must teach all students that academe is a profession by definition and that writing skills in it are ultimately professional skills (in contrast to our popular view that “professional” means outside the university). But especially for international students, whose exposure to the society and professions outside can be short and limited, it is insufficient to teach writing within the narrow limits of “academic communication,” just focusing on rhetorical and linguistic and genre skills out of context or even disciplinary contexts alone. Graduate students need writing skills for doing academic presentation, pursuing their thesis and dissertation process, negotiating (frequently in writing) their research agenda, responding to editors, and navigating the academic job search. As we can see from what the career advisor whom I quoted in the epigraph earlier said, at the graduate level and with foreign students, it makes little sense to isolate writing support from the “struggle with understanding cultural nuances … to know what’s culturally appropriate”— as is also reflected in the quotation from the student. International students going into any profession upon graduation need a lot of what the student quoted in the epigraph called “informal knowledge” about society, culture, profession, interpersonal skills, body language, and so on. We may not, for instance, be able to prepare Chinese and Brazilian students as they return to their professional worlds back home, but we can expand and adapt academic writing and communication support to significantly affect professional development, within the local and national contexts.

Fostering Agency through Effective Support Practices  143

Hacking Support and Resources I don’t know whether it helped me but I’m trying to watch some TV shows, or I’m learning from experience just by doing it, or [from] my experience with native speakers…. [I wanted to learn] how to write my CV to get my job…. [I needed skills for] making presentations and also demo teaching…. [I learned such skills from] our own students organization … and some senior students give us workshops. (A Chinese doctoral student at Michigan State University) At the end of a fall semester a few years ago, I noticed that one particular student in my undergraduate first-year writing course had made about 20 appointments to meet with me during the semester. My course policy required students to have at least six one-on-one conferences with me over their writing, but it didn’t specify the upper limit; so, this particularly ambitious Chinese student had been using my office hours to get help with his graduate school application materials. Incidentally, his “personal statement” started with a story about how he answered a math problem in fifth grade that asked how much time it would take for a certain amount of water supplied to a swimming pool to fill it, while another amount of water was leaking: “Best idea is to stop the leak.” He was applying to MBA programs at multiple Ivy League institutions and a few others. And I didn’t realize how often I had been reading and commenting on his writing because it was inspiring to observe the student’s extreme commitment to his writing and the dramatic improvement in it. While interviewing international graduate students across the country, I often remembered the above case from my own class. As implied by the student quoted in the epigraph, because there was usually a mismatch between the needs of international graduate students and the support available (or the approach taken by writing programs), these students had to make the best use of whatever support they found, bringing together resources from elsewhere and repurposing what they could find in order to meet challenges that may not be visible to support providers. This theme was common in many of the stories shared by my student interviewees, as well as in the experiences of many writing instructors and other academic support professionals across institutions. That underlying theme, which is the focus of the current section, has to do with what I call “hacking,” a term that collectively describes ingenuity and creativity, appropriation and improvisation that students adopted in order to overcome challenges or solve problems. In fact, creative maneuvering, tweaking, and repurposing of existing support and resources was also used by those who supported them.

144  Fostering Agency through Effective Support Practices Evolved from Old English “haccian” and Middle English “hacken,” the modern English word “hack” refers to chopping or cutting something with blunt force, the process or result being rough. And in colloquial use, “hack” also means “to withstand or put up with a difficult situation,” as well as (in computing) “to devise a quick fix” or tweak, or “to accomplish a difficult task” (and not just “to gain unauthorized access to a system”). Then, there is the bad versus good (“white hat”) hacking of computers and networks, the latter being the connotation in my use of the term. For a variety of reasons, but especially because of lack of support or understanding of their needs, the international students I interviewed resorted to applying tricks and shortcuts in order to improve their writing. I described in Chapter 3 the case of a graduate student who devised her own network of support in order to write and present her master’s thesis proposal. Another memorable case involved a student who said that she kept “sneakily” using the writing center for graduate school applications, until she was refused the assistance. Studies and conversations about writing support for international graduate students should further explore the theme of hacking as both what students do and what writing programs may need to do in order to respond adequately to their many, complex, and changing needs and abilities. This may be a provisional strategy that both students and writing professionals use until more systematic and sufficient supports are developed. But it is also likely that “ad hoccery” (Lynch, 2013)22 is essential to graduate writing support not only because of the place of writing in the current structure of graduate education but also as inherent in the very nature of writing. As new international students explore the community and culture within and beyond the academic institution, as they go on to develop their disciplinary identity and find a voice, and as they build on their academic success to learn and use professional writing skills, writing programs and instructors/tutors may also need to be creative and flexible for supporting these students. The creativity and flexibility, or the patience and understanding toward international graduate students, has to come especially from interest in and empathy for them. “There’s something about having students come to my office, sitting down with them and [listening to] their stories and feeling like there’s no way out of a situation,” said an international student advisor in Oregon, “…whether it’s a student from Yemen who can’t go back home or a student who has no money to continue their study…. There’s something about my own learning…. new ways to grow… which keeps me going.” Beyond professional skills and experience, and beyond formal programs and established methods, many professionals who had started new initiatives, who were respected on campus for their success or service, and who changed conventions and improved established support programs or practices, showed a willingness to break away from conventions.

Fostering Agency through Effective Support Practices  145 As I have indicated in a number of stories so far, the same lack or insufficiency of support prompted the support providers to use creative hacks as well. Many writing centers quietly used resources meant for undergraduate students in order to create programming for international graduate students because the graduate students “kept coming to us,” as a program administrator in Texas put it. Another example was a housing program at the University of Florida that provided space and resources that international graduate students needed to organize academic presentations (as well as social and cultural events). Prompted by empathy or experience, some programs and professionals even took risks in the way they reallocated resources or pushed the boundaries of what was within their professional expertise and job responsibility. It is possible that the frequency of experimentation and unconventional approaches in graduate writing support may be due to the fact this is an emerging field where not many conventions have become established yet. But it is also possible that the creativity results from the current structure of graduate education, which is further intensified by the nature and dynamic of international students’ academic transition and the ideological and political issues affecting these students. Among writing and language support professionals, the tendency to hack existing programs or support practices often involved challenging common assumptions about international students and embracing views about these students from emerging scholarship on multilingualism and translingualism. An instructor in a support program for international teaching assistants at Penn State University best exemplified how simple changes in approach can make great differences. Describing how she helped international TAs to prepare for their first classes, she said: There are easy ways to open the door for yourself and for your students if you can meet them halfway. You can start class … by telling students a little about yourself, showing where you are from (like on a map) … By humanizing yourself and by foregrounding your own foreignness, you can create a positive dialog where you can show that you are new here and there are a lot of stuff you don’t know yet—like football, or the Amish people—by letting students know that you come from somewhere else, by showing that you’re an interesting person, you can relate better to your students. Beyond just using limited resources and opportunities to try to achieve numerous and larger goals, the “tweaking” of pedagogy in the description here involves a disruption of traditional thinking that fundamentally redefines international students. The instructor viewed them as scholars who have something new to offer and who should not have to completely reinvent themselves while trying to erase who they have been in the first place. In that sense, hacking is not just a survival skill

146  Fostering Agency through Effective Support Practices but also a means of thriving in spite of constraints, of resilience, and of building upon the aspects of one’s identity that one values. The idea of hacking also reinforces the need to foster agency, the overarching theme of this chapter. In “Teaching for Agency: From Appreciating Linguistic Diversity to Empowering Student Writers,” Shapiro et al. (2016) argue that “pedagogies focused primarily on language development run the risk of perpetuating a deficit orientation toward multilingual writers, causing those students to be seen only in terms of gaps in their English knowledge” (32). The same is true with focusing on any kind of deficit, not just language. As the authors further suggest, agency requires knowledge, passion, inclusion, engagement, freedom, and choice. I argue that promoting what I describe here as hacking fosters student agency, helping them explore resources and develop confidence toward finding a voice of their own. While skills for creative exploitation of academic support are relevant for domestic students as well, they are much more often necessary for international graduate students because the latter have to cross more boundaries, be more inventive, find more varied support, and face and overcome more complex challenges. In my study, while newly arrived students tended to view themselves through the lens of the dominant profile, to start making progress, they evidently had to develop strategies for navigating a new culture of higher education and locating and adapting resources as and when they needed them. Their growth as writers didn’t happen in a linear fashion; similar to how Canagarajah (2018)23 showed in a study of how scientists write, they didn’t first finish learning academic language and then go for graduate-level writing skills. They had to fix even the most basic problems of writing within highly complex rhetorical and professional contexts. Given how quickly they had to catch up and start playing many academic and social games that were shaped by American culture and society, graduate education, specific disciplines, and their institutions and departments, existing support systems were been sufficient. So, instead of going to conventional places and experts, they took shortcuts. A few students googled for answers and writing samples; others relied on Grammarly (an unfortunate case requiring students to purchase a monthly-service application that aggressively sells itself as a panacea for all writing problems but provides limited help). Many “broke the rules” about formal academic support; one student, for instance, sought editing support with her father back in France, and a prospective student used her spouse’s access to writing center support for revising a graduate school application. Those who paid attention to the breadth and complexity of international students’ needs understood and bent the rules themselves. ­Considering that the nature and scope of international students’ writing needs are frequently larger and more complex than those that established support programs can address, they made support more useful

Fostering Agency through Effective Support Practices  147 for international students by educating them about the support system instead of just providing their support as it was. More importantly, they fostered the students’ agency to explore and identify the resources they needed, to exploit and to adapt the support to their needs. As a writing scholar in California State University, Northridge put it, this kind of empowering can make a huge difference for international students if done in the first and second semesters after their arrival. “They need oneon-one guidance in the beginning,” he said, comparing current models with patients being given the runaround by doctors with different specializations, with no one learning about the “overall” health of the patient. He suggested more “purpose-driven” support where the purpose is determined by the individual students based on gradual understanding of their own needs and available support. For instance, if a student doesn’t yet understand the assignment, or know how to use academic journal databases, or how to generate her own arguments, then she may be neither ready nor able to focus on more specific issues in her writing. Indeed, as another writing scholar argued, even seemingly mundane acts like learning how to check out a book from the library can stump an international student, and when that is the case, it becomes a “writing problem” that a tutor may need to help with. Programs could magnify the impact of their support, as well as leveraging their own position and impact, by promoting and embracing a culture of creative hacking. In that sense, hacking is a useful strategy for those who support international graduate students as it is for the students themselves, albeit in different ways.

Conclusion: Pedagogical Applications and Implications I listen to what it is going on with [students]. We talk about things … like the first day of class or the strangest thing or the weirdest thing you’ve seen … So people like to talk about different things and why is this and that [the way it is]…. Underneath [simple questions] there’s something serious…. I feel like I really look at them as people, individuals, and they are so fascinating to me…. When you have the good rapport … I feel like they have this sense of community and they feel safe. (A language and writing instructor at Cornell University) What the instructor says in this quotation may sound like pedagogical platitude: all students learn better when they feel welcome or if they are comfortable asking questions. However, if we view the simple practices that she described especially from the perspectives of new international graduate students, those practices acquire special meaning and value. Writing instructors, tutors, and program administrators alike can uniquely foster international students’ agency if they promote

148  Fostering Agency through Effective Support Practices participation and confidence among these students. This is so because writing education—whether through courses, workshops, writing center sessions, writing groups, or dissertation boot camps—offers particularly effective opportunities for uncovering the hidden curriculum of a new system of education for foreign students. As Choi (2015) argued in a blog post published by the Brooklyn Quarterly, when policy makers and educators try to unveil the hidden curriculum, they are “afforded a clear vantage point for effective higher education reforms and an ­opportunity to interrogate the ideologies at the heart of university education.” ­Writing teachers are able to unpack ideologies and assumptions, if they so desire, because they teach foundational knowledge and skills of the new academe, which give them the opportunity to do so. Let me conclude the chapter by describing exemplary pedagogical practices and insights that I learned about, along the lines of the four major findings, related to the theme of agency in this chapter. One of the most prominent codes emerging from the analysis of interviews with language and writing instructors was that a respect for students’ linguistic and cultural diversity and differences motivates students. It seemed that more positive terms and discourses have not only permeated the profession but also prompted pedagogical updates (including name changes of support programs in some cases). As Leki (1992)24 noted, that change requires ESL and writing teachers to accept that “beyond a certain level of proficiency in English writing, it is not the students’ texts that need to change,” especially within academia: “rather it is the native-speaking readers and evaluators,” the author adds, “that need to learn to read more broadly, with a more cosmopolitan, less parochial eye” (132–133). Leki suggested that there is broad educational value in taking that perspective about students’ linguistic identities and proficiencies into account: “[t]he infusion of life brought by these ESL students’ different perspectives on the world can only benefit a pluralistic ­society which is courageous enough truly to embrace its definition of itself” (133). Citing their earlier research, Zawacki and Habib (2014)25 emphasized the importance of letting students speak and write in their own accents—broadly defined—by using the words of a Bulgarian student: “When you ultimately succeed in writing is when you have your own accent” (186). Some of the writing instructors I interviewed had translated such ideals into concrete practices. That translation seemed possible when instructors were sensitive to usually unexpressed confusions and unspoken struggles of international graduate students. It was possible when they didn’t just focus on “tolerating” different accents but on shifting the focus to the broader issue of what Leki’s student calls “who I am and where I come from” when designing their pedagogy, thereby valuing international students’ knowledge and skills and experiences. Paying attention to challenges faced by international graduate students— from academic terminology to culturally situated concepts, genres, and

Fostering Agency through Effective Support Practices  149 practices to conventions and expectations within their disciplines—­ evidently enhanced any support for them. Doing so prompted the instructors to define terms in class, provide glossaries of terms on course sites, specify educational goals and suggested processes in assignment prompts, and take time to teach key skills required for success by the course. Some of the teachers I interviewed provided or discussed writing samples as part of assignment prompts. They broke larger tasks into smaller components, as well as making schedules flexible and granting extensions for new students. When assessing international students’ writing, experienced writing tutors and instructors treated language errors as potential symptoms of various challenges, rather than just focusing on language learning. But even when a student’s language seemed to need urgent attention, they refused to only focus on that language and instead focused on the strength of the students’ ideas. By simply encouraging students to “not worry” about the weakest aspect of their writing, they put confidence and interest back into the writing process. In terms of curricular strategies, instead of one-size-fits-all threecredit writing courses for all graduate students, a variety of one-credit modules or workshops seemed to be more useful to international graduate students. With greater choice, students could address the broader spectrum of their needs; they could also spread out the modules and take them in different orders. Where no additional courses or services could be added for international students, instructors tweaked courses and assignments in ways that could help familiarize students with the conventions of writing in North American higher education. Swales and Lindemann (2002)26 have written about the variety of writing skills that international graduate students need to learn. They recommended teaching different “semihidden genres … like fellowship applications, curricula vitae, responses to reviewers’ comments, meetings with advisors, discussions with visitors, and the like” (106; emphasis in original) as a way to help international graduate students (and scholars) develop genre knowledge toward the more complex writing they need to do in order to become successful scholars in their disciplines. The authors also described a course focusing on the subgenre of literature review, using a genre-based pedagogy, as ways of helping students become more observant readers and deepening their rhetorical perspectives in their own disciplines. Noting that prior research had “shown that the process of putting together a plausible PhD student persona is much more complicated than might be supposed,” they highlighted the need to help students learn genres involving complex two-way interactions of students and faculty and in the context of up and down progress toward goals. I found that writing instructors who were both mindful and experienced working with international students further designed courses and adopted teaching strategies that could help students explore writing

150  Fostering Agency through Effective Support Practices practices in their own fields. Called the “writing about writing” (WAW) approach, such assignments included studying conventions and analyzing genres of writing in one’s own disciplines, often involving interviews with advisors or other experienced writers in the specialty. This approach essentially turned the students into disciplinary ­ethnographers and helped them with the layers of texts (see Thomson & Kamler, 2013), 27 reading texts to recognize their genres and discourse practices, as well as the disciplinary and sociocultural contexts and dynamics b ­ ehind the texts. Instructors who paid attention to the challenges of international students also learned not to assume too much about what the students may know. Here are some of the assumptions instructors said we must not make: that all students will most likely understand seemingly common references (touchdown, electoral college, ­fundamentalism), cultural experiences (Thanksgiving dinner, movie nights), political beliefs (conservatism, libertarian), or value systems (respect, critical thinking, p ­ ersuasion); that students from certain race or class backgrounds, nations, or cultures have similar experiences or take certain identity positions; that students don’t participate in a certain way or may not perform as expected because of language, culture, or social backgrounds; that students fail, succeed, cheat, or confuse us for generalizable reasons. ­Questioning assumptions like these while designing activities and assignments and also while interacting with students can significantly improve student performance. Doing so can help unpack hidden curriculum, make us aware as to what assumptions are being made, whose voices are represented, whose knowledge is counted, and who is favored or privileged by certain policies and practices. It can help us understand that even when disciplinary content and professional standards are universal and objective, their learning is shaped by power dynamics, cultural assumptions, and contextual factors that vary significantly: affective factors and prior learning experience, background knowledge and motivation, emotional engagement and face-saving. Outside the classroom, writing groups were an increasingly popular tool for teaching writing to international graduate students (who participated in larger numbers and proportions at all the places that had such service). As Simpson (2013)28 noted, a significant body of research exists on writing groups, especially for graduate students (Simpson mentions the works of scholars like Aitchison, Gere, and Phillips). Writing programs at most of the universities I visited also supported graduate students with dissertation and thesis writing boot camps (referred to differently, including “writing sessions” for avoiding the militaristic connotation), writing retreats (similar to boot camps but indicating more relaxed environment for writing and networking), writing groups (facilitated by writing tutors or simply spaces provided where students coordinated and collaborated on their own), peer mentoring within departments (which often provided guidelines and resources for writing

Fostering Agency through Effective Support Practices  151 support), special writing sessions for job market materials (where faculty members offered feedback), and writing workshops (or incidental learning of writing) at social or cultural events on or beyond campus. ­Variations of the “boot camp” were seemingly the most common support initiatives. Some of the common practices within this initiative were to provide student writers access to a quiet, comfortable working environment, some tutoring support, lunch and snacks, guidelines for holding one another accountable to time and quantity of writing, and opportunities for personal reflection. There is actually some scholarship on this subject. Building on Lee and Golde’s distinction of types of writing boot camps, Simpson (2013) discussed “inward-focused” boot camps, or “boot camps that function as the place to go for writing support on campus” and “outward-focused” boot camps, or “those that work toward better writing support across the university” (web). The themes of ecology and agency that I have discussed in this book would align best with the outward-focused boot camps or other writing support beyond the classroom. Whether in or outside the classroom, one of the pedagogical strategies that I have found most useful in fostering international students’ sense of agency and ownership in their own writing was shifting the terms of engagement from assimilationist to cross-cultural/transnational-exchange. For instance, instead of giving a lecture on “American academic culture,” if a writing instructor asks students what they have found “most confusing, different, or funny” in graduate school (as suggested in the activity shared by the instructor quoted at the beginning of this section), then students can share their educational experiences while also learning about a new academic culture. Similarly, while instructors may use local references deliberately (for the sake of teaching subjects like local sports, popular culture, national history or politics, or current news), it is counterproductive to use local references while teaching language or writing (expecting everyone to understand them), or even to assign writing tasks requiring a knowledge of such subjects. Instead, writing instructors should try to find subjects that allow both international and domestic students to write from their experiences and prior knowledge, shifting the terms of engagement toward the international if that will help to balance the dynamic of power and confidence (without overdoing it) and to foster student engagement and exchange of ideas. Similarly, writing instructors should provide guidelines and rubrics to help students focus on desirable concerns during peer review, in writing groups, or for mentoring support. One instructor rightly pointed out that writing instructors should never test what they do not teach; for instance, they must not dock grades for grammatical errors if the course didn’t teach grammar. In fact, when it comes to non-native English-speaking writers, many instructors who tend to habitually spot and correct or critique every instance of language problems should use just marginal comments

152  Fostering Agency through Effective Support Practices (rather than track changes) if the student has not yet had a chance to edit his/her own writing—especially when editing is not a significant learning objective of communication. The focus of writing support must be writing and communication skills, not language proficiency; but even when writing teachers need to focus on language per se, it is important to remember that some language issues will linger for some time, while the student needs to keep learning and writing and sharing new ideas. In fact, some students may not want or need to learn linguistic and rhetorical rules or terminology; they may be here temporarily, and we would do best to help them do their best where they can, while they may or may not grow their interest in other areas. Writing instruction and support certainly need to involve educating students about the subject matter and skills and knowledge beyond what they may be focused on at the moment, but with a very complex student body with highly varied motivations, it is necessary to be flexible and open-minded. The issue of language has become mainstream in Writing Studies in the past decade, giving rise to rich bodies of scholarship on multilingualism, translingualism, and even transnational writing. Discussing the tension between the need to let students use all their linguistic resources and the demand that nonnative English speakers or their mentors make for English language support in graduate writing centers, Summers (2014)29 writes in her dissertation, “…these idealistic attitudes toward language and linguistic difference may be difficult to achieve in practice” (54). Summers cites scholars who have taken pragmatic approaches of honoring ESL students’ request for help to overcome their non-native, awkward use of language, including Denny and Severino, who argued that while writing professionals should counter the hegemony of monolingual standards, they should also provide language-focused support “until teachers and other gatekeepers are sufficiently educated and become more tolerant of accents and nonnative features in writing” (54). This pragmatic approach to language support by writing professionals ironically waits for others to become tolerant while practically enforcing gatekeeping and intolerance; it also reinforces many of the myths about language and writing among non-native English-speaking students. Citing Erichsen and Bolliger’s work, Summers has noted that the awareness of challenges with language in high-stakes situations can induce stress, anxiety, and loss of confidence.30 So, instead of feeling a “moral obligation” toward students who demand grammar support, instructors should ask whether doing so is necessary with a given writing task and whether it will empower the student or not. I found that writing support that was linguistically informed recognized that there are genres, contexts, and reasons that justify the prioritization of what are traditionally called lower-order concerns of writing as higher-order need. For instance, when a graduate student seeks help with editing a job application, her request for help with syntax and

Fostering Agency through Effective Support Practices  153 wording may be the most important writing support she needs. But if the student has turned in a dissertation draft, the instructor should read without a red pen in hand. While helping international graduate students to develop their scholarly agenda and confidence in them may sometimes involve helping them whittle their sentences, a general approach of focusing on language can be a poor justification for not shifting focus from it to many other dimensions. So, writing professionals who paid attention to language issues did not just see emerging discourse on multilingualism and translingualism as an idealism that cannot be translated into practice; nor did they turn it into a dogma that obscures complex realities of students’ needs and interests. They were aware that meaning is negotiated differently in different contexts, and they helped international students pay more attention to the big picture of their writing and less on just the linguistic dimension of it. For instance, as Lu and Horner (2013)31 argue, teaching minority students can “produce standardized forms of English not in terms of their need to submit to dominant expectations, but instead in terms of the fertile mimesis and critical agency these students’ (re) production and recontextualization of that English might constitute” (598). The authors further note that agency does not only manifest in deviations from the norm but rather in all language acts that the user makes deliberately; they also point out that the production of conventional language does not mean a lack of agency or the subordination of the individual will to institutional demands or to mechanical reproduction of language norms without agency. But if focusing on her grammar mistakes may undermine a student’s motivation behind her research agenda, focusing instead on other goals of writing education can help to foster her intellectual agency. In established writing center practice, the understanding of power dynamics in tutor-tutee roles and relations is usually addressed well. For instance, writing center tutors let the writer/visitor set the agenda for the tutoring session, ask questions instead before offering suggestions, sit on the side of the writer and let the latter hold (and read) the draft, try to provide suggestions in the presence of the writer, and so on. Writing instructors who were influenced by emerging d ­ iscourses about translingual pedagogy seemed sensitive to power dynamics with international students and its adverse effects on the students’ learning. Some of the writing instructors I interviewed encouraged international students to research and read relevant sources in their home language, such as when they wrote on issues from their home countries. This involved translating sources into English, a process that gave students a special opportunity to showcase an additional skill, fostering their confidence and agency. They encouraged students to brainstorm ideas or engage complex topics in the languages of their choice. Students could generate stronger ideas and arguments when they were encouraged to use (rather than hide) their home languages.

154  Fostering Agency through Effective Support Practices There are significant educational implications of embracing and exploring translingualism in graduate-level writing support for international students. If we look at the bigger picture, most international students not only need to develop their knowledge of English and skills in writing in this language; they must also enhance their social and career opportunities through other languages and cultures and contexts. In an increasingly globalized world, in fact, even our domestic students need skills for translingual, cross-cultural, and transnational communication and understanding. Fostering student agency also means teaching or promoting what students can do on their own, especially when their needs are broader than existing writing programs can cover. Some students said they watched television and listened to news on the radio in order to learn about important social issues in the country. Others went to all the events they could at the international center, cultural center, departments, or student groups. There they could “learn about the larger context in which graduate-level writing happens,” as one student stated. One of the students even suggested dating and making friends as a “fast way of feeling comfortable with people and society.” It seemed to take some time for students to realize (if they did at all) that success with graduate-­level writing requires multiple layers of socialization and that many kinds of input can facilitate that process. Writing support professionals should pay attention to this nexus in order to promote students’ understanding of the social and political contexts behind their research and s­ cholarship; they should provide the environment and translate the idea of socialization into support practices. Writing programs that were most useful for international graduate students tended to cover a broad range of needs and took flexible approaches with their support initiatives and courses. In a December 2017 response to a question about available support on the ­Consortium of Graduate Communication mailing list, Lisa Russell-Pinson of the ­University of North Carolina Charlotte listed the following “language-focused options for matriculated graduate students”: credit-­bearing courses on academic writing (ESL graduate students only); academic writing for all graduate students (which ESL students can take); presentations and workshops for all graduate students on topics related to academic writing (some with an ESL focus) and academic speaking (none specifically ESL focused); presentations in disciplinary courses for all graduate students on writing resources available on campus and online and writing about research (one with a social science focus and the other a STEM focus); support with dissertation and dissertation proposal writing, including dissertation boot camps for all doctoral students (including time for individual writing consultations) and dissertation support groups for all doctoral students; and individualized writing support  for all doctoral students. The flexible approach implied in the support options

Fostering Agency through Effective Support Practices  155 above was similarly well implemented at the University of Toronto. In spite of a small staff of instructors, at the time of my research, the program offered 18 four- to six-week courses, which were not credit-­ bearing, with some being specifically designed for non-­native English speakers and some for students in specific disciplines. The program offered such courses during five sessions each year, including the following courses specifically for NNES students: academic conversation skills, academic writing essentials, academic writing grammar, editing, oral presentation, prewriting and organization strategies, understanding research article. Similar, though not as extensive, programs existed at several of the universities I visited; a sampling of the types of courses I learned about are also listed on the site of the Consortium on ­Graduate ­Communication. The courses listed range from foundational to advanced, focus on writing or oral communication or both, are for ESL students only or are for any students interested, are discipline-­ specific or general, cover grammar and editing or more skills, teach skills required for academic publication or professional development skills more broadly, use ­framings around reading or genre analysis or communication more generally, enroll students before or after matriculation into graduate programs, and so on. Writing support programs were also highly effective when they made outreach an integral part of their support. A program administrator at MIT, for instance, described a range of approaches that he had used over the years, until it seemed that students knew about the service. Some of the events included lectures about writing in the evening, a space “where people can meet and talk or work on their own writing,” support groups facilitated by writing tutors, and outreach with department and faculty advisors. In addition, I found outreach and engagement strategies used for providing writing support by other kinds of programs, such as professional development initiatives, information literacy programs, graduate schools, student organizations, and so on. Writing support programs could emulate the outreach strategies used by other academic services. The program manager of a graduate student professional development initiative at the University of Louisville, for example, worked with an active network of international graduate students who served as ambassadors for the program, contributed through focus groups discussions, presented workshops, and were regular participants in events. And she had also identified a network of faculty and staff members who were “interested in helping international students so they find us as a place and partner to provide or seek the support the students need.” The program—which was for all graduate students—pooled resources by bringing together the efforts of academic service units across campus, by allowing them to advance their own specialized support through the platform created by the graduate school, by creating new programs and resources, and by advancing the understanding of graduate students’

156  Fostering Agency through Effective Support Practices through research integrated with the support program. Together, those approaches greatly enhanced networking and outreach in favor of graduate students, especially benefiting international ones. As a professor of psychology and leading advocate of international graduate students at the University of Florida put it, this kind of multidimensional, outreach-­ driven approach helped to create a better support culture. “I found out if I keep cleaning dirty stuff downstream, people will keep throwing things upstream,” said the professor, highlighting the need to create awareness across campus. Writing support programs should use outreach and engagement of both students and others who support or work with them if they want to “address the main source of problems which is the system,” to use the professor’s words. Not all writing programs can offer a wide variety of support, or reach all students; but any program can start paying attention to shifting student demographics and can start conversations with faculty and staff. They can shift the focus of writing support for international students from remediation to professional development and to educating the students about academe and society through the means of teaching writing. With whatever support and resources they have at their disposal, they can help international graduate students use writing to develop their own voice as members of their own disciplines and in the social and professional contexts of their work. As an instructor at the ­University of Michigan phrased it, writing professionals can help them join “the larger dialogs” of their disciplines. “Say if students are working mechanical and automotive issues, they don’t get the context for what Detroit is, for what it has become.” To help students understand the local context, she worked with an academic support unit that helped her take graduate students to the community garden in the city. Students chose different gardens, and while some worked with troubled teens, others focused on composting, and yet others joined faith-based groups. Some departments also brought international students in summer, so they even better understood the social context of the disciplinary issues that they studied in their courses. Variations of the community engagement strategy that I learned about at different universities were based on the simple understanding that when a person goes to study in a new country, it is extremely important that he or she learns about the local social and cultural context of education in the first place—­however “irrelevant” that knowledge may for disciplinary specializations. There is nothing new about community-based learning, but its use with international students is not very common and very helpful. I found that when academic support programs thought outside the box like that, especially helping international students explore all kinds of communities (from academic and disciplinary to social/ cultural and professional), they were best able to foster international graduate students’ agency and voice.

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Notes 1 Multilingual writers and the struggle for voice in academic discourse. In Pavlenko & Blackledge, Negotiation of identities in multilingual contexts. 2 Agency and power in intercultural communication…. Language and Intercultural Communication, 13(2). 3 What can automation tell us about agency? Rhetoric Society Quarterly 37. 4 Rhetorical agency as emergent and enacted. CCC, 62(3). 5 Translingual literacy, language difference, and matters of agency. College English, 75(6). 6 Agency: The relation between meaning, power, and knowledge. Current ­Anthropology, 48(3). 7 Rhetorical agency: Seeing the ethics of it all. 8 Reading, writing, and authority: Issues in developmental ESL. College ESL, 2(1). 9 Negotiating participation and identity in second language academic communities. TESOL Quarterly, 38(4). 10 Language, culture, gender, and academic socialization. Language and Education, 23(5). 11 Fostering international student success in higher education. 12 Participation and the ecology of environmental awareness. In Reid et al., Participation and learning. 13 Developing resources for success…. In Cox & Zawacki, WAC and second language writers. 14 Suggestology and suggetopedy. Web. 15 Language, culture, gender, and academic socialization. Language and Education, 23(5). 16 Negotiation of identities in multilingual contexts. 17 Second language activity theory…. In Breen, Learner contributions to language learning. 18 Resisting linguistic imperialism in English teaching. 19 “Completely different worlds”…. TESOL Quarterly, 31(1). 20 A narrow thinking system. TESOL Quarterly, 35(1). 21 Coping strategies of ESL students in writing tasks across the curriculum. TESOL Quarterly, 29(2). 22 After pedagogy: The experience of teaching. 23 Materializing “Competence”… The Modern Language Journal, 102(2). 24 Understanding ESL writers: A guide for teachers. 25 “Will our stories help teachers understand?”…. In Cox et al., Reinventing identities in second language writing. 26 Teaching the literature review to international graduate students. In Johns, Genre in the classroom: Multiple perspectives. 27 Writing for peer reviewed journals: Strategies for getting published. 28 Building for sustainability…. Praxis: A Writing Center Journal, 10(2). 29 Graduate writing centers: Programs, practices, possibilities. Dissertation. Penn State University. 30 Also see Sullivan Kashubeck-West (2015) in Journal of International S­ tudents, 5(1). 31 Translingual literacy, language difference, and matters of agency. College English, 75(6).

5 Advancing Advocacy through Programs and Leadership

We’ve spent our whole careers trying to [convince people] that we’re not [just] remedial. We work with high level stuff. We help you find new ideas, to develop ideas…. My idea was to use mini lectures and workshops on [various] topics to draw people in … [for educating them about] what the Writing Center does. (A writing program director at MIT) I’ve been involved the past year in the international students concerns [at the graduate student organization]. And we are trying to advocate … for university to provide more services for international students. (A graduate student at Ohio State University) Rather than serving the academy, accommodating it, and being appropriated by it, we ought to work with others to engage in an enterprise that is far more dynamic, complex, collaborative … whereby we and our students … transform the academy. (Zamel, 1998; 196)1

In the few weeks before the beginning of semesters when I teach a graduate-­level writing course at my university, I receive quite a few emails from students (almost all international) and a few more from faculty ­advisors who want to know if the course teaches “remedial” writing skills. Other than a few exercises on linguistic/stylistic and composition topics, largely to increase the course’s appeal for those who demand ­remediation, I teach the course with a focus on advanced writing skills, including genre analysis, writing about writing, revision strategies, writing effective emails, writing for academic publication, and professional communication skills. The class also reads and discusses a number of texts on writing in the disciplines. Except in rare cases, graduate students who begin with anxiety about their language proficiency and demand for “basic” writing skills gradually learn that excessive emphasis on basic aspects of writing isn’t very productive at that level. But I have had harder times explaining the course to their faculty advisors. ­Fellow writing instructors at other institutions shared similar challenges about informing or educating different groups across campus about the

Advancing Advocacy through Programs and Leadership  159 writing education they provided. As reflected in the experience shared by the writing center director in the epigraph above, analysis and theming of the data from my study also showed that promotion of support and advocacy for students are essential for developing new initiatives and for sustaining established programs. In fact, advocacy seems required by the very nature of writing education, at least as it is situated in the current structure of graduate education. The term “writing” itself is too slippery to define easily, to begin with: it has many forms and functions, especially at the graduate level. ­I nternational students further magnify that slipperiness and complexity. In addition, some of the established wisdom and practices about supporting international students in our own discipline widen instead of narrowing the gaps of understanding about writing in relation to the interests and demands in other disciplines. At the end of a recent edited collection on graduate-level writing support for all students, Simpson (2016b)2 cautions writing scholars against viewing graduate students’ needs as writers only from our own perspective: “It is incredibly easy in the modern university to lose sight of the big picture…. and it is worth taking the time to network with others … to design … holistic response” to the students’ needs (296). Whether we consider the need to inform and educate the larger community a burden or an opportunity, there is no doubt that writing professionals must make educational, advocacy-­ driven approaches a core component in the design and implementation of writing curricula and support initiatives. In general, we cannot afford to stay in our own echo chamber of terms and practices. In addition, educational and advocacy approaches are particularly useful, even necessary, in the case of international graduate students because they often have more to learn about writing and how it fits graduate education than about writing skills per se. Given the ambivalence and lack of knowledge about their needs, they may be the first to lose support during economic crises or policy changes. An ESL instructor who had worked in an engineering school at Purdue University made this case when describing how her program lost support: “The administration … decided that they were going to redefine [the position of graduate writing instructor] as an undergraduate position.” While the university had seen an enormous increase of international students over the years, instead of increasing and improving support, it solved some other problem by increasing TOEFL score. Institutional leaders and department administrators need to use both information/insight and some pressure/advocacy for promoting writing support. Advocacy is indeed necessary to ensure the effectiveness of support programs. When initial data analysis showed significant correlations between advocacy and successful/effective writing support for international graduate students, I added new interviewees to the “advocates” subset of my theoretical sampling. Analyzing the data set midway and at the end clearly

160  Advancing Advocacy through Programs and Leadership showed that program leaders and practitioners who were the strongest forces behind the creation and sustainability of academic support for international graduate students exhibited many traits of advocacy. I coded “advocacy” when interviewees used words like “supportive,” “defend,” “ally,” and “leader” to describe their approach. Advocates could be anyone who use their professional expertise and experience especially to go beyond their official/assigned capacities and actively campaign for addressing students’ needs, especially if the needs were as yet unaddressed by formal support systems. In fact, advocacy seemed to be a natural response to the lack of support for students. And, it is important to note that it was also an important tool for program building and sustainability. Within and beyond writing programs, the professionals who promoted writing and advocated support for international graduate students not only referred these students to one another and directed them to available resources. They were also driven by students’ needs and challenges, and they challenged conventions when the needs could not be addressed effectively within conventional frameworks. The advocates recognized gaps in the system, such as those between traditional silos of departments/­ units and specializations. For international students, advocates were also necessary to address blind spots in the understanding about their needs, resource allocation, personnel deficits, and sustainability of support. ­Advocates did not view students in terms of challenges and deficits alone: they recognized, promoted, and helped foster the strengths and resources that the students brought and could share with others. Even when ­perspectives, priorities, and incentives were different, advocates advanced nuanced understanding of students, better teaching, and robust services. They countered understanding that was superficial and support systems that were outdated and ineffective. Usually, they found other advocates and created networks and back-channel conversations. They lobbied for support with the administration and brought their collective knowledge and pressure to bear on institutional policies and decisions. At many of the institutions I visited, they regularly met with one another (often including students in the network) to discuss new ideas, demand or find resources, and develop new initiatives. They were often not visible or recognized and sometimes worked alone. Most importantly, instead of focusing on their own perspectives, challenges, and interests, they created new opportunities to engage students toward fostering their agency. In contrast, at universities where services and professionals didn’t include the advocacy approach in their work, the support was less connected, accessible, and student-centered; the students were less able to find support beyond their departments and embraced limiting views about writing in their interviews. Thus, the theme of advocacy emerged from the quality, expression, or action of professionals working in a wide variety of positions; in fact, the advocates prompted me to expand the scope and quality of the data, helping to meaningfully “saturate” it.

Advancing Advocacy through Programs and Leadership  161 As the student I quoted above told me, students were often involved in advocating for themselves, such as through student organizations and by collaborating with academic service providers. So, advocacy was a quality, a tendency that anyone could embrace to enhance or expand the effect of their professional role, as well as to fill gaps in the support system and generally foster the ecology of support. As Zamel (1998) suggested when she wrote concerning increasingly diversifying student bodies in U.S. academe, the analysis of the theme of advocacy showed how any members of the academe can “contribute to, complicate, and transform” it. After all, as Zamel adds, that is “the way all cultures, including academic ones, come to be, continually re-created by those who enter and the languages they bring with them” (196). For a variety of reasons, advocacy for international students was distributed. The advocates were widely dispersed because of the lack of centralized, organized, or formalized support systems; advocacy was also distributed because of the diversity of students and their needs, as well as the ways in which they used and repurposed support. The advocates also seemed to reinforce dispersal. In addition to contributing their distinct sets of expertise to helping international students succeed, their concerns were broader than their designated roles, and that created overlaps of support and interest with other professionals. For instance, some of the strongest advocates I interviewed helped to socialize international students, to foster professional development, and so on. Interestingly, advocacy was more prominent in areas where there was no designated person or program yet. Writing program administrators and instructors who took an advocacy approach were highly conscious of the importance of situating their work in the big picture of higher education, as its demographics diversify and its missions evolve. Mainstream writing support still showed a tendency to create and stay within a disciplinary territory of shared terminology and understanding, stability, and simplicity—a tendency that aligned with assimilationist and monocultural views about higher education. In contrast, writing professionals who seemed to pay closer attention to the experiences of international graduate students took a different approach, especially making their support more broadly educational, teaching students the metalanguage of academe and its different disciplines, and syncing their support with the broader ecology of academic support. Advocacy-driven support for international students helped to recognize that they need a variety of extra support, at least as they transition into the new academe, encouraging writing professionals to teach the students literacy and rhetorical skills as shaped by local society and culture and influenced by national and global socioeconomic forces/changes. This approach helped international graduate students learn to express themselves more successfully and to best advance their intellectual and professional pursuits while studying abroad.

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Writing Support and/as Advocacy The biggest hurdle was simply making the students realize that they needed the help. (A tutor at a student success center at New Mexico Tech) I did a three-year study of how students used our service that helped them with academic transition. And [showing a folder] I have the data with me. (An ESL program administrator at California State University, Northridge) A week later, [the graduate program director] emails me and says, “Thank you, but my students are not interested in it.” (A writing program administrator at Yale University) As each of the above quotations imply, supporting international graduate students with their writing skills often becomes one with promoting that support, especially with educating them about writing. When asked how academic writing support could better prepare graduate students for careers beyond like his, an editor of science journals in Boston said: “It would be useful [for writing support programs] to promote the idea that [for instance] if scientists don’t learn to write well, it’s like they’re not learning to use the microscope.” His argument was that because ­graduate-level writing support is not integrated within disciplinary curricula, it is often ignored until there is a crisis (see Starke-Meyerring, 2011).3 If being able to write well was taken as seriously as being able to use the microscope, he added, “we would stop everything else and address that. We would say, ‘Alright, you’re struggling with your microscope, you can’t do your e­ xperiment without it.’… We would schedule some time.” He added that especially with international graduate students, the widespread belief that they generally need “remediation” sends the wrong message, that “when someone comes from another country, it says … ‘Oh, you’re brown, so you should take this writing course.’” As someone who worked with a team of scientists who were mostly non-­native users of English, he knew the importance of focusing on different aspects of writing in different contexts. A socially better approach, he said, would be to tell graduate students: “Welcome, everybody, to our graduate program. Writing is important. Everyone’s going to take this class.” This doesn’t mean that everyone then can be assumed to have the same level of skills, have similar educational and writing backgrounds, and need help with the same areas of writing. In fact, if we also consider problematic beliefs about certain students vis-à-vis language and writing and how much educational investment they are owed, more layers of complexity appear—all of which require an educational framing for creating and delivering support for all students. In this sense, education about writing

Advancing Advocacy through Programs and Leadership  163 and advocacy become essential elements of writing support, especially for international graduate students. I found that many writing programs and initiatives incorporated education and advocacy as an essential part of their support. In general, this approach is related to what Phelps (1991)4 considered the special nature of writing programs. In a chapter titled “The institutional logic of the writing program,” she noted that writing programs are anomalous compared to most other academic units because of their unique functions and programmatic structures. Writing programs break down conventional boundaries among teaching, research, and service. They make unconventional use of space and resources. Their support addresses a long-range curricular approach to developing writing skills. They need unusual environment and equipment. They require instructional budgeting arrangements that transcend those of other academic units. In the particular case of providing writing support to international g­ raduate students, this anomaly seems further magnified. At many universities, funding was provided by a variety of places, including by the graduate dean, the provost, the international student office, the college u ­ nder which a certain writing program or initiative was located, or even departments outside the program’s college that had high demand for the support. They exemplified and fostered community, helping to shift the focus of higher education from the “heritage model emphasizing transmission of cultural knowledge for general application by a citizen elite” to the modern university that is accessible to all and increasingly globalized, while helping to reinterpret “research as learning, learning as ­research, and teaching as practicing and mediating both” (167). ­Continual promotion and advocacy seemed more necessary at the graduate level than in general because of the lack of curricular and institutional foundations for writing support. The unique nature of writing programs has been brought up in recent literature. Noting that “WPAs have a long history of activism dedicated to … their roles as change agents, politicians, and leaders,” Starke-­ Meyerring (2015)5 suggested that graduate writing support is more of an “educational mission” that is often “highly political—that it involves daily struggle and activism to bring about the institutional change that allows for new learning environments to emerge and take hold” (307). Citing the works of three of the most well-known scholars who have urged advocacy and activism (Adler-Kassner, Hesse, and McLeod), Starke-Meyerring went on to add that “it is these traditions … that position WPAs particularly well for re-envisioning learning environments in globalizing higher education, both within rhetoric and writing and Writing Studies programs and, importantly, across the university” (308). WPA work, she added, is “about how, in Dewey’s [perhaps referring to Dewey’s ideals of democracy, political activism, and advocacy] and Bruffee’s sense [‘not managerial but directly educational’], learning

164  Advancing Advocacy through Programs and Leadership environments will be designed, what kind of learning they will facilitate, who gets to participate, who is learning with/from whom, and whose knowledge counts” (308). Especially in the face of “the neoliberal redirection of public funds away from public institutions, such as higher education,” institutions and programs must “position themselves in global markets with expansionist initiatives for the purpose of revenue generation from international tuition dollars” (308). That positioning is risky and certainly must be taken with due caution: “Writing programs often hold the key to success for such expansionist projects, specifically for the participation of international students enrolled in them. After all, those students are largely evaluated on their writing” (309). Because writing and language support programs are often on the frontlines in such contexts, writing scholars should be cautious about what Starke-Meyerring called the “processes of assimilation within global expansionist projects” (309). That is, writing programs and scholars must take their seat at the table precisely because the current regime of international education offers them an opportunity to shape graduate writing support and higher education at large in better, more meaningful ways. As Starke-­ Meyerring suggested, we must approach the educational intervention by asking, “How might we understand the situatedness of writing programs in the struggle over the neoliberal globalization project?…. What new questions do [that situatedness and emerging conditions] raise for the study and teaching of writing, as well as for WPA work?” (309). And as Adler-Kassner (2008)6 urged writing scholars and program administrators at the end of her book Activist WPA, “Our challenge is to blend ideals and strategies, so that we can shape the stories that are told about our programs, our work, and students every day” (185). In the case of international students, stories and ideals are yet to emerge strongly enough to meet the challenges of today’s political climate and economic conditions both locally and globally. To the general picture of writing programs, when more texture is added by looking closer at how they have started informing, supporting, and engaging international graduate students, what stands out most of all is the image of writing professionals as advocates and mentors, informants and facilitators. The theme of “educating” and “engaging” international students was prominent in many interviews with writing support professionals. It was uniquely foregrounded in one particular interview, with the program manager of a professional development initiative (a higher education specialist) who worked for the graduate dean, a writing professor, at the University of Louisville. Among the few dozen professional development workshops that she organized for all graduate students, she included several that were writing-­intensive, including some that directly addressed challenges faced by international graduate students. She not only reached out to, and involved, this student body deliberately, pitching specialized events and soliciting support as student

Advancing Advocacy through Programs and Leadership  165 ambassadors, she also “updated and beefed up some of the workshops by better understanding issues like reading, writing, and research/­ publication for these [international] students.” She said she also made conscious efforts to keep learning about their needs: “Because we see a lot of international students come to these workshops, we’ve become more conscious of their needs.” She had been “purposefully updating [the program] website so that international graduate students have more information before they get here.” And she helped all presenters, regardless of the topic, to be “aware about the challenges of international graduate students” so the students would find all workshops useful. She promoted available writing courses when students came to writing-­ related workshops at the graduate school, and she collaborated with the writing center, which had struggled to change graduate students’ beliefs that it was designed only for undergraduate students, to provide a number of workshops designed for and adapted well for international graduate students. And, finally, through any and all workshops possible, she tried to fill gaps in the skills and support that students needed to be successful, such as how to navigate the dissertation writing process, tackle authorship issues, and avoid plagiarism. She was sensitive about how international graduate students could be more vulnerable to power dynamics, as well as how they might face greater challenges due to difference in cultural and educational backgrounds. Educational and advocacy-driven approaches to supporting international students are also useful more broadly for creating a welcoming and supporting environment. For instance, if new students in particular couldn’t make informed decisions about which courses to take, how to approach research and writing, and where to seek support, this support also helped the students avoid failure. In a memorable example, an international student advisor the University of Louisiana, Monroe told me that whenever she had small talks with international students who met her for visa-related advice, she frequently found that they were making impossibly difficult course-registration or research-related decisions. “I’m looking at her schedule—and she needed me to assist her with some of the financial stuff.… and I’m like you can’t take this course now,” she said, pausing to tell me the purpose of the meeting. “I don’t care what your academic advisor told you.” She went on to share her concern for students who made decisions with limited understanding. She drew on her personal, rather than professional, knowledge to offer advice: “I know what’s expected of them and I know when they are setting themselves up to fail.” This kind of ad hoc support—with seemingly anything that an academic support professional can either help with or find help for—is often necessary for international students because if a student makes “poor decisions” at a broader level, then all the designated support that the professional can provide in their particular domain may make no difference.

166  Advancing Advocacy through Programs and Leadership Awareness about additional challenges that international graduate students faced led to impactful adjustments to support programs. In fact, the most effective writing professionals whom I met in the course of my research were not necessarily the most knowledgeable and experienced in helping international graduate students; instead, they most strongly and relentlessly advocated for these students, addressing challenges that others tended to overlook or not understand. Like other advocates across campus—ranging from the lone staff member at the international center who went above and beyond her duty to help with course registration to the thoughtful faculty advisor who helped with writing, and from the dean who promoted support to the more advanced students who gave back to their community—these writing professionals recognized the diverse but often unique needs of international graduate students. They made the students’ challenges more visible to others and they fostered connections and found or created new resources. One language and writing expert at University of North Carolina, C ­ harlotte captured extremely well some of the essence of what I describe as advocacy-­driven approach to writing support. When asked what kinds of support were most effective, the instructor emphasized four key strategies: provide support over the course of the entire degree, use support to demystify conventions of writing in the discipline and in a new culture, simulate real-world communication where possible, and work with other support professionals including students’ faculty mentors. These strategies work well, the instructor said, when writing professionals get to know students, follow up as they make progress, use their success to leverage and promote the support, and strive to balance individualized support with systematic and sustainable efforts. “I often email students two years later,” she told me, “‘Hey, you’re coming into comprehensive time. How are you doing? What kind of support do you need?’ You know, just circle back.” The challenges that international students faced did not disappear; they just changed, even until they prepared for the job interview. But they best used the support that they needed and were educated about. As emerging scholarship on graduate writing support has shown, “the complexity of [all] graduate students’ writing necessitates fluid partnerships” among writing programs and other units on campus (Simpson, 2013)7. Flexible approaches best align with the structure of graduate ­education for all students. Supporting international students seems to take additional negotiation and partnership because their challenges are more complex and multidimensional, requiring more coordination among support providers. An ESL instructor who worked with pre-­matriculated international graduate students at Portland State University described what goes on behind the scene of writing and language support: I’m trying to get into the back door [where policy decisions are made] in different ways. I’m on the writing council and I make suggestions

Advancing Advocacy through Programs and Leadership  167 in that area. I build relationship…. by stepping into these cross-­ disciplinary areas and institutional systems. Eventually, part of it is building trust with the people…. [even though sometimes] it’s finding the right person at the right time…. When you’re dispersing your resources and trying to give them to as many people as possible, people really catch on. While discussing that advocacy work, the instructor highlighted the difference between supporting domestic graduate students and their international counterparts. Whereas domestic students tend to say, “I am a bad writer,” implying a static view of writing ability, international students were more likely to say, “I don’t know how to do this yet.” The fact that international students realized that they are in a new place so there is a lot for them to learn made it easier to engage them. But the instructor also noticed that even after international students completed their pre-matriculation program, their transition into regular graduate-level writing was a significant hurdle, which required understanding and a willingness to guide and advocate for them. The most visible impact of advocacy was on these students’ confidence and engagement on campus. In writing, it boosted their confidence, as well as their exposure to people and places. It created opportunities for them to practice their writing skills, or “non-threatening” settings as another interviewee put it. It enhanced their ability to use writing for expressing themselves, communicating with diverse audiences, and situating their academic writing in the broader social/cultural and professional contexts. When writing support was delivered as writing education and when its promotion was part of that education, the support programs were able to create buy-in and work with other advocates for international students. Let me conclude this section by mentioning two of the most powerful examples that illustrate this theme. One was the use of assessment of support programs (quantitative data, student feedback, success stories) to inform university administration about the value and effect of the support. Describing how a graduate writing support initiative had grown out of a few initial missteps, a program administrator at the ­University of Connecticut said: “I was evaluating every single component through the processes…. I paid a lot of attention to international students … we were addressing their needs carefully.” The attention paid to students’ needs not only improved the support, but it also helped tell success stories. Another expert of graduate writing support went further and used findings of her needs assessment to convey to faculty advisors how important their contribution to their students’ writing was: “I thought that was a critical message to communicate back to the advisor,” she said about the response from students, adding what she told their mentors: “You are so important.” The strategy could be used in a variety of ways and contexts, as many other interviewees discussed this issue in a variety of contexts.

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Distributed Advocacy Being so huge and so decentralized is a hurdle … it’s hard to get everyone on the same page … people don’t know about services … everyone says that we need more, often not knowing what is already there … We discover gaps in the knowledge of faculty. (Cathy, a researcher and administrator at the Office of International Affairs at Ohio State University) People think that we do potluck dinners… but the community of international student spouses consists of lawyers and doctors and dentists and professionals in many areas…. We put [these spouses] in a position of leadership, helping the community by using their skills…. And this directly impacts the university experience and atmosphere for everyone. (Tim, an assistant director of graduate student housing program the University of Florida) In some ways, [the collaboration for supporting international students] was beginning to happen, and all we had to do is to get out of the way. (Dennis, a writing program administrator at the Ohio State University) In this section, I describe in some detail three different kinds of programs that, from international students’ perspectives, form what I have described as the ecology of support that these students need in order to learn writing and associated communication skills, especially if they first enter the American academe at the graduate level. In doing so, I illustrate how these students’ advocates, all working to ensure their academic success, more or less directly, are dispersed or distributed across the institution. This distribution, I seek to illustrate, is necessary, perhaps unavoidable, and worth understanding and taking advantage of, even as writing professionals are and should seek to be the central node when it comes to providing writing and communication support to international graduate students. Advocacy at the Center When I talked to a writing program administrator at Ohio State ­ niversity, whom I call Dennis here, at a conference in Florida, he ofU fered to connect me with a few people on campus who had been collaboratively working to improve support for international students. Two months later, as I talked to a variety of professionals across his university, I was surprised by how robust, deliberate, and forward-­looking the support systems were across the university. The interview with

Advancing Advocacy through Programs and Leadership  169 Dennis offered an important theme that persisted in the analysis of data throughout the study: any academic professional with some expertise and interest in supporting a student body can connect and inspire a community, helping to create a support culture that magnifies the effects of formal programs. As I learned from seven other participants within and outside writing programs, Dennis was among a number of professionals across the large public university. The advocates had come together to inform the community, fill gaps between formal programs, and create a university-wide initiative to improve academic support. When Dennis took on leadership of the writing program a few years earlier, there was no coordination between his unit and the ESL service, whose instructors often told international students not to use writing support because that would be a form of “cheating.” Given the size of the university, Dennis said, new initiatives seemed “always ad hoc … most people don’t know what’s happening next door” (note the same message in the quotation from my interview with Cathy). But when a particularly active advocate for the student body was also a writing program director, that advocacy evidently created a ripple effect, helping to change the discourse and perspectives about those students across campus. When students’ needs were understood, “word quickly gets out,” especially within tight-knit communities of international students. Other advocates also approached such a person at the center of an important support program, trying to enhance the effects of their own initiatives. In some cases, Dennis noted, “all we had to do is to get out of the way,” referring to the need to let others do what they can do better. For his writing support program, he had been recruiting international students as writing consultants and program assistants; this move was supported by institutional research which had recommended the strategy for better engaging the student body. Emphasizing how recruiting international tutors and program coordinators added valuable knowledge and perspectives to writing support, he said: “this actually is the thing that changed us.” In short, Dennis not only turned his advocacy for international students into various forms of practice in writing support; he also sought partnership in his advocacy across campus. I call this approach of finding and working with a variety of professionals who understand the student body and complement and supplement each other’s support for the students “distributed advocacy.” At Dennis’s university, I also interviewed program leaders and staff members at the ESL center and the international student center, as well as a number of writing professionals, including tutors, program coordinators, and graduate students. One of the most prominent themes emerging from the analysis of interviews at this university is that professionals in different programs frequently refer to the work of other advocates, including a few people my interviewees introduced me to and a number of others they mentioned but I couldn’t interview. Looking

170  Advancing Advocacy through Programs and Leadership closer to the act of “acknowledging others” in other sets of interviews, I found strong correlations between it and the richness of the general environment of support for international students. One interview that stood out in this regard at Dennis’s university was with an administrator and a staff member at the international student office, whom I call Cathy and Celia here. Cathy was a program administrator and also a research scholar who studied issues of higher education such as assessment and program design for international students. Celia worked in the same office as an academic liaison, connecting students to the many, scattered, and often invisible support systems and resources across campus. She also promoted and sometimes organized academic opportunities such as workshops; she put together two workshops for me to present at a short notice after Dennis connected me for an interview with her. From my conversation with Cathy and Celia, I learned much more about campus-­ wide collaborations and initiatives than Dennis had discussed, initiatives involving the vice provost for international affairs, the dean of the graduate school, and some of the people I interviewed. When asked what prompted university administrators and academic service professionals to network and contribute so actively, Cathy and Celia said that there was a collaborative spirit among professionals across campus which had prompted, as well as were now prompted by, a restructuring of international student services a few years earlier. The international center’s own support had adopted a student affairs approach (rather than just providing visa support), allowing it to play an active role in the creation and promotion of academic and social support for international students. Their work and advocacy had resulted in an increased budget, including a permanent source of money in the form of a certain percentage from the additional fees paid by international students toward academic services supporting them. In fact, this renewed focus on international students was also a part of an internationalization initiative whereby domestic students’ education was also being discussed in the broader context of globalization and global geopolitical changes. The initiative brought together all relevant professionals, including librarians, student peer mentors, leaders of student organizations, graduate deans, coordinators of graduate student programs, writing program leaders, and coordinators of academic support in individual departments and schools. And among the advocates, who were distributed across campus, Dennis was apparently one of the most visible and respected. The writing center directors at various types of institutions whom I asked what percentage of international graduate students used their service estimated that five to fifteen percent did so (except at one institution, MIT, which had higher numbers). This low number is one of the reasons why writing programs should collaborate with other academic support professionals. But even if all the students who would benefit from writing support could find and use writing support, it would neither be possible

Advancing Advocacy through Programs and Leadership  171 nor desirable to try to provide all the support they need at the writing center or even within a broader writing support program. International students must learn and use writing skills in a variety of contexts. From their perspective, the more places they go to and the more resources they utilize, the more successful they could be as academic writers and communicators. The students whom I found to be most informed and competent as writers said that they had not only used the writing center and other writing support programs, but they had also attended many academic and extracurricular events on campus, participated in student organization and leadership activities, involved themselves in social and cultural engagements in communities off campus, presented at professional conferences, and taken advantages of virtual communication and social/­professional networking. Exposure to diverse audiences in different contexts and for many communicative purposes is, in fact, not just beneficial but also necessary for these students. Narrow views about and limited practice with writing—such as trying to just fix it at the writing center—coincided with continued struggle and frustration among international students I interviewed. By contrast, writing professionals who recognized and valued the big picture not only tried to diversify their own support initiatives and continually experimented with new modes and mediums of support; they also tried to make the broader ecology of support richer, more accessible, and more useful for the students. Doing so helped to foster students’ understanding of a new society and culture as well as their intellectual agency and professional development. Certainly, students need to know where to go for what kind of help. Specialization is necessary at this advanced level, and some competition among the different specializations can also be beneficial. But especially when it comes to international students, the “distributed advocacy” approach seemed not only necessary but also tremendously beneficial because these students have a much broader set of needs for developing fruitful writing skills. Writing professionals like Dennis, who embraced the advocacy approach, recognized the necessity and benefits of the distribution of advocacy and support for international graduate students, while providing leadership to the network in their area of expertise. Advocacy at the Gate When it comes to international graduate students, potentially the most significant collaborators were at the most expected place: the international student center (ISC). What I did not expect going into my research was that ISC’s played such critical roles in helping international students develop communication skills—a finding that explained why some of the best advocates in writing programs had strong working relationship with those at ISC’s. As with the case of Ohio State University, where

172  Advancing Advocacy through Programs and Leadership ISC staff collaborated with the writing program administrator, at most universities I visited, the international student advisors at the ISC did not just do their job of supporting the students with their foreign student visa statuses. They were also the informal go-to persons for students to learn about the American academic culture and system, rules and policies, people and places. Many of the ISC’s also organized academic workshops, including writing workshops, for which they invited writing experts to present. Their advocacy “at the gate” was often invisible to writing professionals, but it was the first step in international students’ orientation to the American university, a place that set the tone for the students’ overall academic experience. For this reason, writing professionals who partnered with the ISC on campus were able to open an ­important pathway into a specific and critical support system, writing support, for international students. Among my many encounters with international student service administrators and advisors, the most striking was one at Michigan State University. When I met with Carmen, an administrator, and Harish, a student advisor, at the university’s ISC office, I was only expecting to gather general information about the institutional context of academic services used by international students (as I had been doing at previous universities). So, I was surprised by the uniquely broad and thought-­ provoking approaches to supporting international students from ­Carmen and Harish. My interviewees started by acknowledging that they didn’t always “know what happens to students in the academic domain … we only see students’ academic progress when we update their [academic degree or] levels and in some cases adjust them to a lower level.” But they worked with a keen awareness that theirs was a fairly established, resourceful, and connected system that could spot problems early, connect students to appropriate services, and partner with other units to help improve the services. And while their office did not offer or even systematically coordinate with academic support services (as many others I visited did), the staff at this center went out of its way to help students when their challenges were not addressed within departments and service units. The conversation covered a range of issues about the transition process: the need for an information hub and advice about where to go for academic support (such as writing) and support with psychological well-being that can be affected by issues like arriving right before winter begins in the second cloudiest state in the U.S. Based partly on his own experience, Harish said that many international students faced the challenge of “shifting the mode of thinking from mastery of knowledge to creation of new knowledge,” and they also lacked time and appreciation of opportunities beyond their department. At the undergraduate level, one of the ways that Michigan State ­University was facilitating international students’ transition and adaptation was to add options of food, language, and cultural experience—as

Advancing Advocacy through Programs and Leadership  173 well as formal academic advising—based on their different national/ cultural backgrounds. The university had adopted the “neighborhood” model for updating its on-campus residence, sent chefs at the residence-­ hall cafeteria to China and elsewhere in order to add international items to the menu, and had a 50-year-old international faculty and student club. Carmen and Harish were aware of the lack of academic advising and guidance at the graduate level, but they tried to address the gap with their support and by connecting students to the right places and people so that they didn’t get the “runaround” when they needed any help. They actively promoted existing services such as the writing center (“until they go there”) and had initiated programs for wellness of graduate students (and for their family and children). When asked what motivated them to go beyond their official duties to help international students, they both said that they were inspired by students’ stories: “When we see thousands of these students from around the world, we’re truly inspired… these students are just wonderful.” Harish agreed with C ­ armen: “—­especially graduate students are very sharp … oh, my god, the research stuff that they do.” The two colleagues at the international center went on to give me examples of how they had helped students “recognize their rights, take things up the chain of command, and help them overcome the challenges,” whether the challenges were legal hurdles, problems with their faculty, or academic transition issues. The term they used to define their approach was “humanizing education.” This “humanizing” approach involved hiring academic advisors who could speak different world languages and connecting students to “a lot of support” with life and society, community and culture while they are here. Knowing that international students can be exhausted and confused, they tried to aggregate existing resources and directed students to them. Among the ISC’s I visited, the one directed by Carmen and supported by Harish didn’t have the most established connections or collaborations with writing support system. But their commitment to the academic success of international students, which I found in varying degrees at every ISC I visited, represented possibilities for extremely productive collaborations with academic support programs. That is, given that the ISC’s are a virtual gateway into the American university for international students, and given that they seem to be increasingly offering or connecting to academic support, writing program leaders at any university can find or foster potentially powerful allies at their respective centers. It Takes a Village On a sunny late afternoon in November 2014, I was about to complete a two-day research visit at the University of Florida. I had visited the writing center; had broader conversations with a dean, associate dean, faculty members, and the director of the International Student Services;

174  Advancing Advocacy through Programs and Leadership interviewed several students about their experiences; and joined a lunch meeting with a unique advocacy group for international students (called the UFIIT). I had also been asked to present two workshops for international graduate students, sponsored by half a dozen organizations and departments and perhaps therefore extremely well attended. It was then, at the end of a second, long day, that I noticed a nameless interviewee on my schedule, added to the Google Document by the Chair of international affairs at the GSO and my contact person. The schedule said “housing representative.” I wasn’t sure how a conversation with someone from the housing department might be relevant for research focusing on academic writing. Then the person had to miss the meeting due to a traffic jam. Luckily, however, it turned out that the same person had also been requested by GSO to drop me off at the airport the following hour, so I still could continue the conversation in the car. When that person arrived to pick me up, I realized that he was Tim, who had said a few intriguing things during the lunch meeting earlier in the day. As I wrapped up the visit, I was starting to think about what I got out of the two days, taking notes about the many experiences I had had. But it wasn’t until Tim went into a long and passionate exposition about what he was doing to support international graduate students academically and why he believed he could make a difference that I began to think about how nonacademic professionals can make tremendous impacts on the academic success of these students. During the trip to the airport, Tim spoke about international students with a guardian-like attitude towards them. His thoughts reflected a deep understanding of their needs, challenges, talents, and aspirations. He saw entangled connections among academic, social, cultural, and psychological dimensions of their academic transition and success. I occasionally interrupted to ask him to connect social support with academic needs in general and, if possible, to academic writing support in particular; he willingly and quite capably did that for me. When I came home, I listened to the recording of the previous discussion with the advocacy group, and I realized that he had made similar arguments then as well. I had been unable to make sense of his perspectives and arguments at the time. Now I began to. Officially, Tim was in charge of all five “villages” of graduate family housing in the university, but unofficially, he did much more. He was one of the professionals who promoted the idea that with international students, “it takes a village.” Like other members of the group, he gave special meaning to the name of the off-campus community where he worked as associate director. He was eager to intervene where he could, often showing up with food that his office had the budget to purchase but more specially armed with experiences as a former international student and ideas that he seemed to be continually refining. Among the many and often unusual examples of support that he described, Tim told me about

Advancing Advocacy through Programs and Leadership  175 a survey that he had conducted to find out how supporting the spouses of international graduate students affected the students’ academic performance. Reminding me that he was no academic researcher and that his research was informal, he told me that he used the survey not only to understand but to inform university leadership about some direct (as well as indirect) benefits of helping international students’ partners. As Tim said in the quotation in the epigraph above, since most of the spouses were highly educated, often with professional expertise, creating opportunities for them to share their knowledge and skills helped to solve many of the nonacademic challenges that took valuable time away from international graduate students’ studies. It also mitigated the “guilt” that the students had about bringing along their spouses and not being able to help them pursue academic or professional careers, often for years, mainly due to visa regulations that created many kinds of restrictions for the families. The family housing program even tried to create a positive environment for children, which further saved the time and boosted the morale of their parents, the graduate students, as well as engaging their spouses. So, to put it mildly, Tim’s stories served as a catalyst for me to think further about the context of my research in significant ways. In a two-part follow-up interview that I conducted some time later, Tim shared additional perspectives that writing professionals would benefit from adopting in order to better understand and support international graduate students. He argued that for international graduate students to succeed academically, formal program structures, especially if compartmentalized and isolated, are not enough, regardless of how good they may be in themselves. As Tim said he did in the student housing community, support programs must train their staff to create a positive environment and create opportunities to engage students—rather than just help them. In fact, Tim also went on to create opportunities for socialization, academic development, cultural exchange, and promotion of leadership skills among the students themselves. In one of the examples, Tim described how he brought together appropriate experts to offer workshops to help students respond to law enforcement issues on campus (see Anderson, 2016)8 and to cases of abuse by landlords off campus. Another program involved student residents presenting/­practicing their academic papers and receiving feedback from their peers and spouses. “In the community, where there is a more relaxed environment, they are more confident. In the community, there are no rules. The mask is down … When they start [expressing themselves confidently], they can move that confidence into the academic [sphere].” He noted that unlike within academic departments and professional contexts, students in the community outside could also communicate with diverse groups of people from around the U.S. and around the world. His office facilitated networking and community building through social media: students connected to their families back home and built new networks of

176  Advancing Advocacy through Programs and Leadership friends and peer mentors here. From all the programs like these, students developed oral communication skills, learned to interpret legal text, and learned about writing/communication in more situated ways than writing instructors can help them in the classroom. The initiatives may be more in the domain of student affairs programming, but the ways in which they not only built an environment for academic success but also created academic development opportunities provided opportunities for me as a writing professional to reflect on how we could identify themes and implement ideas for supporting international graduate students. I wondered how writing programs could similarly use writing skills as a means of advancing academic and professional development goals, as well helping students address day-to-day challenges. Among the themes that Tim discussed during the interviews, what he called the “organic” nature of support stood out to me. The advocacy group that he was part of had been running a back-channel conversation among a variety of advocates (including some international graduate students), and at the time of my visit, it was seeking institutional recognition, if not formal institutionalization. But its ongoing work of raising awareness and pursuing advocacy for the students worked best by being organic, meaning ad hoc and constantly evolving. The organic approach to building support for international graduate students as Tim described (a theme that ran across a number of similar interviews) could be particularly useful for enhancing writing programs, if not running them. If, for instance, writing professionals organize informal discussions once a semester or year among relevant stakeholders—such as the director of ISC, the graduate dean, interested faculty mentors, directors of graduate programs with larger numbers of international s­ tudents, student leaders, representatives of nonacademic support systems, and so on—the conversation can serve as a platform for generating and sharing ideas, thereby magnifying everyone’s efforts. Doing so could help to make writing programs the central hub, or at least a respected node, in the support network for international graduate students, especially in institutions where this student body is not yet well supported for their academic success and professional growth.

Students as Advocates When I first landed in America, I felt like I had left all of my talents, personal qualities, and professional experiences, behind. I had to rediscover and reinvent myself in time. (A doctoral student of higher education administration at the University of Florida) A very generous contact person for my first site visit to the University of Florida, the graduate student quoted above had been a highly successful

Advancing Advocacy through Programs and Leadership  177 scholar and teacher in his home country in South Asia, after his first career in public service. But when he arrived at Pittsburgh University as a Fulbright scholar to pursue his master’s degree in higher education, he said that it took him quite some time to start “translating” his academic abilities, not to mention “reinventing” his leadership skills. When I met him, he was an advanced doctoral student, served as a member of the university-wide advocacy network I mentioned in the previous section, and he was a student leader and mentor. His story stood out through multiple rounds of subsequent data collection and analysis because a number of advanced student interviewees shared stories of ultimately becoming their own advocates. Coding interviews among instructors and administrators further showed a strong recurrence of this theme: advanced international graduate students played very important roles as collaborators, ambassadors (promoters), mentors, experts, and champions for the student body. In this section, I discuss and illustrate how writing programs could tap into the potentials of this student body for developing as well as enhancing and promoting writing support for them and for all graduate students. The sheer amount of struggle they have to overcome seems to make these students particularly effective advocates for writing programs, if they are engaged, become educated, and feel a sense of belongingness it the programs. All of the relatively advanced students mentioned being involved in formal support programs or informal groups, and some of them played leading roles in some kind of initiative. Beyond those were teaching or research assistants—in which case they also used official platforms to promote support for fellow graduate students—others volunteered as mentors or attended events regularly. While my participant pool may not be highly representative, the common assumption that international students are isolated from the university community outside their departments didn’t apply with almost any of the more advanced students I interviewed. Some students were actively advocating “for more international student involvement and also for university to provide more services” for them, as an international graduate student and Writing Groups Coordinator at Ohio State University put it. Others organized events that involved interaction with domestic students. And yet others deliberately adopted the strategy of “learning by teaching.” Ajit, the Cornell University student, had been organizing email workshops for his peers for some time. He said: “emails can make or mar our relationships.” In fact, email workshops were quite popular, by demand and involvement, among international students: I came across email writing events in several universities, student-led or otherwise. Generally, the desire to come together and share experience and expertise seemed natural for international students, as indicated in historical accounts of academic support. For example, one of the earliest international students from India, Rathischandra Tagore,9 the son of

178  Advancing Advocacy through Programs and Leadership the Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore, is known to have started a Cosmopolitan Club, an idea that spread to campuses across the country throughout the twentieth century (Bera, 2006).10 Tagore had a rocky start to his education, having arrived at Berkeley on the day of the great San Francisco Fire, then traveling to Illinois where a telegraph about “students arriving from India” led to a painful experience (it was misread as “students arriving from Indiana”), before he became a successful student. The spirit behind the fascinating story of Rathis Tagore was reflected in the many stories that my student interviewees shared about many forms of advocacy they pursued for themselves and for contributing what they believed they could to the American university. But how could writing programs tap into the potential of international graduate students as advocates and allies? What could they do to support these students as potential advocates and partners, as well as a source of information? I came across a few writing programs that deliberately involved these students in administrative and support positions, as in the case of Ohio State University discussed in the previous section. The students I interviewed included tutors and writing group coordinators at the writing center, student assistants in deans’ offices, teaching assistants and instructors of writing courses, and coordinators and facilitators of writing-related initiatives across campus. Those students seemed to not only understand their peers’ needs and challenges well, but they also inspired the students they served. Some universities also added international scholars to their faculty and staff ranks in order to better represent their diversity, while others facilitated international travel and transnational scholarly collaboration. Some writing programs used surveys, focus groups, socialization initiatives, cultural exchange programs, and so on in order to foster engagement that helped to engage students as advocates and promoters for the programs. One of the program directors who discussed this idea felt passionately about it: “I feel like this issue of really including international student voices at every level of the university hasn’t happened yet, and I want that to happen.” Another program director organized game nights and coffee hours where students learned language and communication skills in informal environments. Graduate schools and departments that offered additional writing-related support also took a social approach where students gradually took on roles for supporting others, such as by leading workshops or mentoring new students. All such initiatives helped to address some of the reasons that made international graduate students take time before getting involved. First, they brought new international students into contact with support programs and providers due to their social appeal while they were still overwhelmed by the need to pay attention to anything beyond basic requirements. Second, they helped students realize the importance of “soft skills” in graduate education. Third, they exposed students to larger communities, involving people

Advancing Advocacy through Programs and Leadership  179 from different disciplines and often from outside the campus. Fourth, they brought domestic and international students together, aligning support for these students with the internationalization of education for all students instead of viewing support for international students as a drain on resources. In fact, the involvement of international graduate students served as a catalyst for developing support that was useful for all students. Describing a number of initiatives that were started at Penn State University, a domestic graduate student and teaching assistant said: “Most successfully, and visually, we’ve done a series of workshop with our institute for teaching excellence, on teaching multilingual students across the curriculum.” The workshops covered issues such as inclusive assignments, responding to students writing, and multilingual students and academic honesty. Finally, the involvement of international graduate students as partners and promoters of support programs helped counter the deficit theory about them. Institutions and academic programs that took the advocacy approach sought to involve and empower international students, including by involving them in positions from where they could affect change or at least contribute to better understanding of them. At Stony Brook University, for instance, the graduate school funded a graduate student ­advocate position, and, Sarah, the advocate at the time of my study was an international student. Sarah said that beyond informing students about services and policies, she dealt with a variety of issues involving confidentiality and confidence. “The most difficult role is to help students who are having issues with their advisors or their departments,” she said, adding that with international students, “there is much greater imbalance of power.” Unlike domestic students, who often used her support just to get an “outside view,” international students didn’t come to her before their challenge was dire, as they were nervous to share information (including their names in some cases) and face more consequential challenges. They seemed to go to their peers from the same country before they saw Sarah. The challenges they faced were not only related to academic integrity and plagiarism but also ownership of their work and conflicts with faculty mentors. Writing was often part of the challenge, but it was more often the need to debug the system around it so that students could focus on writing and publication. The student advocate service was unique and evidently powerful; but the fact that it was not situated in an ecology of support made it invisible and, according to Sarah, not utilized to its full capacity. And yet, the involvement of this international student in an official position very likely gave the university a unique opportunity to connect and learn from international graduate students, as well as their domestic peers. Involving international graduate students in positions of support or leadership was a striking shift from the persisting tendency to view them in deficit terms. While every institution has a different structure,

180  Advancing Advocacy through Programs and Leadership culture, resources, and obstacles to change, writing programs seem eager to involve and when they did so, students were able to greatly enhance support for their peers, while also benefiting themselves. In some cases, even when appropriate policies, programs, and pedagogies had not yet developed for supporting graduate-level international students, some writing professionals found ways to creatively hack existing resources meant for their undergraduate counterparts. Overcoming hurdles due to visa status required staggering persistence in some cases, but those who were committed found solutions. Their programs offered orientation workshops for students and consultation for faculty and departments; they used emerging technologies to further help them disseminate, curate, and promote resources among students and faculty across the board; and they promoted explicit teaching and learning of writing and other communication skills among and for international graduate students across campus. They prompted policy changes, as well as inspiring other advocates within the system and the community. Generally, the emerging understanding about supporting international students especially at the graduate level seems to be that it is not enough to just orient them to American academic culture; orientation must be designed for or extended into socialization into campus and disciplinary communities and engagement with domestic peers within and beyond departments. Traditionally, by focusing especially on orientation (while letting engagement happen as if by osmosis and not taking deliberate approaches to engaging international students with their domestic counterparts), universities exhibited a number of confusions about how to foster communicative competence among these ­students. For instance, they confused communication as means versus end. ­I magine a brand-new car whose driver doesn’t know where to go. Then they confused purpose with motivation; even when institutions viewed linguistic/­communicative skills as a means of education and personal growth, they did little to help  the latter learn and use language with motivation. S­ tudents may know that a higher communicative competence is necessary for success, but they may not enjoy the process of acquiring it. To continue the analogy, imagine that the driver knows where to go but lacks fuel in the tank. Furthermore, universities took a linear and culturally problematic view about academic transition and socialization support, considering socialization a one-way street where the outsider learns to adapt to the new culture; even when the new idea of global engagement was added to the mix, it was delayed until much later in the process of the complex, multidimensional transition that international students go through. ­Finally, imagine that in our analogy the destination is exciting to go to but the journey discouraging. Academic support that embraces engagement and exchange can best support international graduate students, especially when it rejects the

Advancing Advocacy through Programs and Leadership  181 binary and linear logic behind the design of traditional curricular and co-curricular programs and initiatives. For instance, communicative competence required for participating in classroom discussions is a composite of many emerging abilities and skills that require time, practice, support, and motivation. Beyond having/acquiring English language proficiency, students must learn academic literacy and rhetorical skills and develop the confidence to speak or write in relation to whom they are speaking to, in whose presence, and how valued/invited they feel in specific contexts. Engaging domestic and other international students and with faculty and staff and various offices needs a lot more than being fluent in English, such as new knowledge to navigate unfamiliar systems and to start contributing to the community. As evident in institutions that have developed effective international student engagement initiatives (e.g., see programs in Glass, Wongtrirat, & Buus, 201511), creating positive, inviting, and encouraging environments requires significant investment of resources, training of faculty and staff, updating of curricula and pedagogy, and involvement of students. As current discourse of internationalization highlights, if the terms of engagement remain “ours” and “they” are perpetually seen as outsiders who must assimilate, then international students will continue to take a lot of time to develop communicative confidence. In fact, our domestic students will also miss the opportunity to benefit from robust exchange of ideas from a globalized field like higher education if we essentially view the university as a bordered community rather than a crossroads of people, knowledge, and experience.

Conclusion: Programmatic Applications and Implications These graduate students are budding researchers and we want them to finish dissertations in time…. But supporting faculty members also immediately translates … to many benefits. (A writing scholar at the University of Utah) In spite of all the attention to international graduate students in scholarship and in program-building, institutional mission statements, and even public policy discourse, both the understanding and the support for these students remains uneven. That attention does not seem to easily translate into better support practices especially because it is generated more strongly by interest in other factors (such as financial incentive, national interest, professional opportunity) than an understanding of the students’ struggles and experiences. Perhaps because there is a general lack of theoretical and policy clarity, within the current nationalistic regime, regarding globally mobile students, I found that writing support that these students received/found and often invented/repurposed was significantly more effective when at least a few professionals across

182  Advancing Advocacy through Programs and Leadership campus embraced and used the advocacy approach for supporting these students. Those advocates, my data analysis indicates, were aware of or sensitive to the experiences and struggles of international graduate students in relation to the larger political economy that often shapes institutional interest in them, the effects of hostile political climate on both policy (at all levels) and the environment of life and education while these students study abroad, and the othering of international students by definition or by conscious/unconscious choice. So, the deliberate and thoughtful approaches that I found these advocates—including writing support professionals but also others—were taking across the country seem ripe for new research and scholarship. Focusing on the theme of advocacy, let me conclude this chapter by briefly describing a few of the most promising programmatic strategies that I came across that seemed most effective for supporting international graduate students. Since international graduate students learn the many skills and abilities needed for effective academic writing from many places and people across and often beyond campus, I found advocacy to be a powerful means of leadership that writing program administrators used for promoting support related to writing and communication for these students. To do this, a number of writing professionals I interviewed who were building the strongest programs at their institutions read relevant scholarship, especially the literature addressing issues of language, politics, and internationalization of higher education. They learned directly from colleagues at peer institutions where graduate writing support and specialization on international students have advanced. They turned to emerging professional organizations like the Consortium of Graduate Communication.12 For more ideas and experiences focusing on international students, writing program administrators and instructors also joined conversations with other advocates across the network, beyond professionals in language and writing support. Recognizing and building on the strength of other academic support, leaders and practitioners from across institutions evidently helped them update policies, programs, and practices by using different perspectives. They adopted advocacy for contributing to and tapping into its distribution; these strategies were important for a number of reasons, especially in the case of international students at the graduate level. First, advocacy was needed for promoting support services relevant to these students that are already available elsewhere on campus when no new resource may be available for writing programs themselves. Second, advocacy was needed to develop or adapt writing support in order to better address the students’ challenges, to acquire funding and other resources, and to highlight their diversity. Third, especially in the process of early academic transition, advocacy helped to broaden the focus from formal programs, which tended to be insufficient to cover the students’ additional needs. Writing program leaders did that broadening of focus by adding ad hoc, temporary, and

Advancing Advocacy through Programs and Leadership  183 experimental support to formal and established programs. They kept testing the waters, gathering student feedback, building partnership and rapport with other supporters, adding resources, and so on. Fourth, advocacy also helped to highlight that, with any kind of support, international graduate students may need multiple entry points, flexible services, and supporters who create and promote environments that foster their academic development and confidence. Finally, it seemed necessary for writing programs and professionals to take the advocacy approach in order to educate these students and inform other stakeholders about misconceptions and counterproductive practices, such as to inform students and often their advisors—as well as university administrators who make consequential decisions—what support and resources are most needed for academic writing at the graduate level and for international students. For example, graduate deans and faculty advisors (as well as students) needed to understand that international graduate students do not “only” need a remedial and language-focused writing course but instead one that directly addresses their graduate-level and discipline-specific challenges of writing, even as that course may address some remedial needs for some students. Given reasons like these, writing professionals used advocacy quite productively to educate, motivate, and persuade different stakeholders across campus. I observed that academic support professionals who adopted an advocacy approach were also particularly effective in countering deficiency-­ based views about international graduate students. They promoted more nuanced views across campus about these students, as well as updating their own understanding as student demographic changed; their attention and interest helped them learn from the students as well as from other advocates. Some of the most effective advocates I interviewed were scholars of second-language writing, translingual pedagogy, and transnational writing research; but many more practitioners were informed and inspired by new insights from emerging scholarship in the above areas. The recent scholarship, which builds on second-­language writing scholarship and is further influenced by the translingual movement (e.g., Canagarajah, 2009,13 2013a,14 2013b15; Candel-Mora, 201516; Hall, 200917; Horner et  al., 201118; Horner & ­Trimbur, 200219; ­Leonard, 201420; Lillis & Curry, 201021; Lu & Horner, 201322; ­Molina, 201123; Nakamura, 200224; Tardy, 201425; Zamel & Spack, 200626), has ­challenged or complicated established views about ­language and about ­international students. While translingual theory is still being translated into pedagogical and programmatic practices (e.g., ­Martin, 201527; Blum, Frost, & ­Kiernan, forthcoming), this scholarship is influencing conversations about writing in other disciplines, to which writing support must be adapted for being effective (e.g., see Canagarajah, 2018; ­Prendergast, 201328). For instance, using her findings from a qualitative study of “college student and their scientist mentors at work in an NSF-funded Research Experience for

184  Advancing Advocacy through Programs and Leadership Undergraduates” program, ­Prendergast (2013) “conclude[d] that ‘writing to learn’ research must consider how writing fits in with an ever-­ developing understanding of the complexity of learning” in particular disciplines (5). I found that many writing professionals working with students and faculty in other disciplines, especially in the sciences, were willing to consider that writing instruction “might not be as necessary to the development of the next generation of scientists as time spent in developing physical knowledge, or manual dexterity, or visual acuity in the lab” (ibid.). As the works of scholars like Prendergast (2013) and C ­ anagarajah (2018)29 highlight, rethinking our own disciplines’ common values, assumptions, and ideologies about writing when studying those of other disciplines can lead to better practices, programs, and policies in favor of those whom we educate. Such self-reflection, I found, was particularly useful in the case of international graduate students, a group that is highly diverse and changing, as well as situated in many disciplinary contexts. The need for support for international students, as discussed in ­Chapter 2, can fall through the cracks if it is overshadowed by financial or promotional interests of institutions. As Shapiro, Farrelly, and Tomaš (2014)30 note, “with the instability of economies worldwide and in the United States, and reduction in federal and state funding allocations for higher education, many U.S. colleges and universities have come to view international students as a new revenue source” (4). B ­ ecause almost all undergraduate international students today pay full fee plus additional charges, they help generate more revenue (Heller, 2011)31 and are likely to be seen as “cash cows,” their fair treatment could be at the mercy of the supply and demand dynamics in the global market. Whereas this issue only used to be relevant at the undergraduate level, with universities seeking to admit more international master’s degree students (see Fischer, 2015), 32 most of whom pay out-of-state tuition and additional fees, the same concerns could be on the rise at the graduate level. While universities certainly need financially viable models for international education, the imbalance of educational principles versus pragmatic considerations that I observed at many institutions seems to call for scholarly discussion on the subject. Thus, if the positive findings of my study showed advocacy on the rise, other findings signaled the need for critical conversations, especially about nonacademic forces that academic support professionals seemed yet to pay serious attention to. Conventionally, writing programs are formal institutional structures that are designed for effectiveness, efficiency, and ­sustainability; they are usually not very invested in broader issues of institutional or political nature. In fact, being at full capacity and successful seemed to make many writingfocused programs somewhat self-serving and ­territorial—or, rather, so inclined to, in spite of success—in relation to other programs that focused on language, research, professional development, and communication. The reluctance about looking beyond formal program created

Advancing Advocacy through Programs and Leadership  185 indifference and blind spots regarding the support that international graduate students need with social and cultural aspects of academic transition and success, making advocacy more desirable. Successful writing support programs cannot afford to be just efficient structures made of space, people, and resources; they must be driven by strong visions. Graduate writing support in general is nascent and needs effective strategies, but it needs inspiring visions even more: it needs to educate and influence the community and garner support. One of my interviewees who had worked on a federal grant project at a university before moving to a government agency had found it useful to build on the public discourse that “scientists are great at their job, but they are not great at explaining what their job is.” That is, because science needs the support of the public that often “don’t understand what it is that the scientists are working on,” writing support programs can tap into the interest among scientists and the public. Indeed, writing programs have responded to the discourse of crisis, in educationally meaningful ways in the last few decades. “Sustainability is very difficult,” the expert said, because it relies “not just in dollars” but much more so on “the ownership of the program” among the stakeholders. She said that in her experience, it was only when program leaders and other stakeholders took ownership and used advocacy that they could truly make their programs sustainable. Her colleague back in the university discussed how writing programs can build support for international graduate students more specifically. He had used various strategies for campaigning, tackling conflicts and territorial dynamics, and trying to overcome challenges about financing and commitment or to address ideological differences about the support involved. He suggested that an additional layer of advocacy was often necessary in the case of international graduate students because graduate students usually “don’t generate money for universities.” So, the argument that the scholar made to get funding should involve showing “the university that supporting international graduate students is an investment.” He explained with an example: NSF science and engineering indicators show that top scientists remain in the U.S. after graduation…. International graduate students who go on to become top scientists and engineers benefit the university, and while this is a hard argument to make, it is an argument that needs to be made. In other words, because this is an investment that will pay off down the line, it’s worth making the investment now. That argument builds on one of the current themes about international graduate students. I say still because the political tide regarding international graduate students has shown signs of turning in the wrong direction. And the benefits are worth reminding.

186  Advancing Advocacy through Programs and Leadership Advocacy for international students should not be done without as much sensitivity to the needs and struggles of domestic graduate ­students; we must develop nuanced arguments that are farsighted, addressing issues like competition for global talent and education of domestic students in a globalized world. A recent New York Times article was, for instance, titled “The disappearing American grad student,” and it used disproportionate numbers of international graduate students in certain institutions and disciplines to support the argument implied by its title. The article pointed to the important issue of public institutions’ responsibility toward domestic students, as I discussed in the second chapter. From the perspective of educational policy informing support programs and practices, while the nation may need to balance the numbers, scholars cannot afford to let foreign students become a political football or a topic of media frenzy. In fact, we must be careful not to overuse the discourse of crisis, or of immediate and local opportunity, because arguments and strategies that pay insufficient attention to the broader context and aren’t based on sound principles can backfire. For instance, it is easy to create popular writing workshops in response to the hot-button issue of international students’ supposed inability to write originally: “everybody is so hysterical about plagiarism,” as an ESL program director in Boston put it. But responding to that interest just because it creates opportunities or even opens up ways to support students might further reinforce the problematic views in the first place. I found that the focus on plagiarism also draws attention away from other related and often much more important issues. More generally, advocacy as a driving and connecting force seems necessary for creating and promoting writing support; but it is also needed for correcting course on a number of issues. One effective advocacy-driven approach that I came across was to create engagement between international students, their domestic peers, and the campus community as a whole (see Glass, Wongtrirat, & Buus, 2015). 33 This approach not only broadened the scope of support but also involved students in academic and sociocultural life on campus. I found that a few universities had started adapting some aspects of this approach for graduate-level writing support. For instance, instead of simply promoting existing services and continuing to take conventional approaches to tutoring and to teaching students on their own terms, some writing programs created new workshops or contributed modules to academic transition programs, while others took the orientation support one step forward by offering follow-up workshops designed to keep educating international graduate students throughout their first semesters. Some contributed to pre-arrival orientation through websites and online courses; a University of Michigan online course, for example, used communication support as a means for academic orientation and engagement. Some universities also used social media to educate

Advancing Advocacy through Programs and Leadership  187 and engage new students, as well as using videos created by current students to inform and motivate their new peers. Along these lines, universities could also create online courses and modules that are ­student-centered and self-paced where students can watch videos and take integrated quizzes to self-assess their understanding; treasure hunts of writing-­related services across campus; attend events which students write about; and webinars with experts invited by the writing program to facilitate online learning. As students learn to explore support and understand the basics of U.S. higher education culture, they can learn increasingly complex skills of writing: reading strategically, reading to write and to respond, invention and organization skills, genre analysis, citing and documenting skills, avoiding plagiarism and engaging sources, literature review, the process of writing a thesis or dissertation, writing for publication, communicating with editors, writing skills for the job market, editing and proofreading skills, and so on. In general, an engagement-focused approach should also promote psychological well-being and socialization, so writing programs should provide space and opportunity for international graduate students to meet with peers and faculty and professionals from writing-­related academic services. In fact, I found a few writing centers integrating socialization to enhance their writing support services; for example, the writing group at the Ohio State University that I mentioned before foregrounded socialization as an important element of writing support by facilitating conversation and mentorship. Finally, I also found a few writing programs (and more often language support programs) involving domestic peers to foster community engagement and socialization of international graduate students, including students giving feedback to TAs and peer mentors deliberately assigned for cross-cultural sharing of knowledge and experience. At some of the universities I visited, writing programs extended advocacy-­driven writing support for international graduate students into an extremely impactful application: providing writing support to their faculty mentors as well. As stated by the scholar cited in the above epigraph, this was a powerful strategy because it not only drew attention to the students’ needs and challenges with writing but also helped the faculty advisors to become more effective writing mentors for the students. And with international graduate students, this strategy also helped to dispel some of the misconceptions that I have discussed in this book. It informed and sensitized faculty across campus about the challenges that the students face when they are new to the culture and academic system. Promoting available support through the faculty was also most effective. Writing programs at some of the universities I visited facilitated and promoted awareness by offering to share, with faculty and staff helping international graduate students across campus, their expertise on

188  Advancing Advocacy through Programs and Leadership language and culture and also on pedagogy and student support. They did not expect students and those who supported them to always come to them. The training and conversations with faculty across the disciplines they facilitated involved issues about language variations and cultural differences in writing, advanced study skills and research skills that international graduate students may need to learn, habits that help or inhibit writing and writing development among the students, interpersonal and professional communication skills, and support with emerging mediums of writing. The initiatives were not always systematic, regular, or institutionalized, but they kept planting seeds of awareness, so to speak, and making connections and building rapport around the issues across campus. Some of the initiatives also provided writing support to faculty across campus in ways that they could adapt as writing pedagogy to their own disciplinary contexts. A related and quite unique strategy that is worth the investment of resource by universities, described by the dean of international programs at the University of Florida, was to support faculty with international travel and exposure: “The more faculty have traveled and lived elsewhere in the world, the more likely they are, for international students, to provide support that makes them … academically successful.” A group of graduate students I met later that day also emphasized the benefits of international research collaborations that they were part of. If new generations of faculty are exposed to the world outside—a practice that is unusually infrequent for a country like the United States when compared to competing nations—that could help realize the larger ambition of American universities and the society to be “global leaders” in the advancement of knowledge and other domains in the world. The same is true about giving domestic graduate students the opportunity to travel and learn in other countries, as well as taking a more deliberate approach to helping them socially engage with and academically collaborate with their international peers, or “the world that is already here,” to use a common phrase. Whether it is when striving to advance research and scholarship within the discipline or when discussing the place of the profession of writing support in the broader context of graduate education and institutional mission, there are many benefits to envisioning our work as part of larger networks and broader contexts. This approach requires continued learning and a flexible, open-minded view of our work and that of other professionals supporting a given student body. Taking broadly informed approaches to our support and advocacy for international graduate students can help us participate in broader and more visionary conversations, creating opportunities for intellectual leadership and greater institutional/social impact. In addition to a focus on specialized expertise among writing professionals, informed and advocacy-driven writing support programs are important both in order to address specific

Advancing Advocacy through Programs and Leadership  189 challenges of different student groups and to make greater contributions to graduate education at large. By using bold and visionary approaches and strategies, writing professionals can make significant contributions toward that larger social goal.

Notes 1 Questioning academic discourse. In Zamel & Spack, Negotiating academic literacies. 2 Conclusion…. In Simpson et al., Supporting graduate student writers. 3 The paradox of writing in doctoral education…. In McAlpine & Amundsen. Supporting the doctoral process. 4 The institutional logic of writing programs…. In Bullock et al., The politics of writing instruction: Postsecondary. 5 From “educating the other” to cross-boundary knowledge-making…. In Martins, Transnational writing program administration. 6 The activist WPA: Changing stories about writing and writers. 7 Building for sustainability…. Praxis: A Writing Center Journal, 10(2). 8 Maneuvering through parking cones…. International Journal of Multidisciplinary Perspectives in Higher Education, 1. 9 Spelled “Thakur” in Bengali in the manuscript that was found while demolishing an old house in Chicago recently (see Bera, 2006) in Cosmo connections. 10 Cosmopolitan clubs, Tagores, and UIUC: A brief history of 100 years. Cosmo connections. Among a few, a Club survives at this university to this day. 11 International student engagement…. 12 For disclosure, I am currently on the executive committee of this organization. 13 Multilingual negotiation strategies in working English. Journal of Academic Communication, 29. 14 Translingual practice: Global Englishes and cosmopolitan relations. 15 Negotiating translingual literacy: An enactment. Research in the Teaching of English, 48(1). 16 Attitudes towards intercultural communicative competence …. Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences, 178. 17 WAC/WID in the next America. The WAC Journal, 2. 18 Language difference in writing—toward a translingual approach. College English, 73(3). 19 English only and U.S. college composition, CCC, 53(4). 20 Multilingual writing as rhetorical attunement. College English, 76(3). 21 Academic Writing in a global context. 22 Translingual literacy, language difference, and matters of agency. College English, 75(6). 23 Curricular insights into translingualism …. Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 2(6). 24 Cultivating global literacy through English …. International Education Journal, 3(5). 25 Discourses of internationalization …. In Martins, D. (Ed.) Transnational writing program administration. 26 Teaching multilingual learners across the curriculum: Beyond the ESL classroom and back again. Journal of Basic Writing, 25(2). 27 Transnational writing program administration.

190  Advancing Advocacy through Programs and Leadership 28 Writing and learning in view of the lab…. Literacy in Composition Studies, 1(2). 29 Materializing “competence”… The Modern Language Journal, 102(2). 30 Fostering international student success in higher education. 31 Trends in the affordability of public colleges and universities…. In Heller, The states and public higher education policy. 32 For international students enrolling in graduate schools, master’s programs rule. Chronicle of Higher Education. (Dec. 17). 33 International student engagement.

6 Conclusion Reflections on an Emerging Field

I will make them good to you, when I go down to New York in the coming summer vacation … *[PS] … You are the only individual I can now depend…. (Excerpt from a letter by Yung Wing, a Chinese student at Yale College, 1851, also cited at the beginning of the first chapter; Yale University library archive) Indeed, we need to reconceive the idea of “the discipline,” just as we have reconceived the idea of “writing,” as evolving within an ever-richer global mix of languages, technologies, ways of thinking, and desires for expression. (Thaiss, 2014; 475)1

An essay titled “How writing teachers can help revolutionize higher education” was recently shared somewhat virally by writing teachers across the U.S. Its writer, Denise Wydra (2017), 2 who wrote that she was “acquainted with the values and practices of a wide variety of disciplines” while working in the publishing industry and educational technology for many years, included the following reasons to support her argument that universities should turn to writing teachers to learn about some of the most advanced pedagogical practices that they use: active learning (critical reading, skills practice), formative assessment (feedback on drafts), twenty-first-century skills (communication, collaboration), interdisciplinarity (helping students prepare for and navigate disciplines), and priority of student learning (through decades of scholarship about improving education). While the text being shared was just a blog post, its argument drew much attention because it captured some of the essence of our profession. The essay resonated with me because it also encapsulated the spirit with which, as I had observed, fellow writing scholars were developing graduate-level writing support programs and initiatives across the country in the past few years. The conversation was about higher education in general, but I can imagine the same being said about the emerging professional community of graduate-level writing support  in the near future. Scholars who focus on graduate-level writing support have, in

192  Conclusion fact, started pointing out that “communication support—­and, more specifically, writing support—has emerged as one way to improve graduate student success” in response to broader ­challenges of graduate education in the United States and beyond (­ Simpson, 2016a; 5).3 Being conceived more broadly (and necessarily) as communication support, this new field of research, scholarship, academic programs, and pedagogies is now represented by a professional community called the ­Consortium of Graduate Communication. ­Interest in this area is also increasing in the profession at large, as reflected by publications and professional conversations at other organizations such as the TESOL and at conferences such as the CCCC and RSA. Based on my three-year-long study of how our universities are providing the essential academic support of writing skills to the now half a million international students at the graduate level, however, I wondered whether American universities could similarly turn to Writing Studies for “revolutionizing” higher education with respect to international students, internationalization, and the impact of global political and economic shifts on graduate education. To borrow the words of Thaiss (2014) from his afterword for an edited collection by Zawacki and Cox (2014),4 international students continue to add to the “ever-richer global mix of languages, technologies, ways of thinking, and desires for expression” (475), making the rapidly growing (and exciting) field of graduate ­writing support even more promising. To situate writing support for international graduate students in the broader context of continuing to write the story of American university, as Thaiss suggests, we need broader and bolder visions. We must ask new questions. What writing cultures do international students bring with them? How do they build on prior knowledge and why do they discard or repurpose their past skills as they transition and adapt to the new academe and its disciplines and the professions? How is their global mobility influencing graduate education in the U.S.? It is important to remember that the scholarship on writing support for all graduate students is an emerging field; it is rich and vibrant, and it is just starting to address many of the issues about graduate education. However, in the case of international students, it seems clear to me that the scholarship needs to shift its predominant focus on international students as non-native English-speaking (or second-language) students toward paying more attention to other issues about them, more directly and substantively addressing issues of politics and power, policy and ideology, local and global political economies, diversity and intersectionality of the student identities, and so on. This doesn’t mean that a language-based framing necessarily limits the breadth or depth of scholarship or the effectiveness of support (in fact, the opposite seems to be true if we look at language-focused support programs in particular). But while conventional language-focused approaches used by writing

Conclusion  193 support programs may be familiar, established, and practical, they may also be ineffective in conveying the progress made in research and pedagogical innovations to the larger community of professionals and to other stakeholders across institutions. Perhaps due to a similar dynamic, while research in graduate writing support has in some ways had a disproportionate focus on international students, that focus has also been limited to certain issues such as language proficiency and cultural difference. There are other (often emerging) issues that need greater attention and more critical perspectives, issues such as increasing proportions of international students at the graduate level, shifting concentrations across disciplines, fluctuations in student numbers by country of origin and therefore educational backgrounds and support needed, spikes in enrollments at the master’s levels (Okahana & Allum, 20155; Caplan & Cox, 20166) where writing support is yet to substantially develop, increasingly uneven distribution of international students by types of institution and regions of the country, and so on. Likewise, more than 25% of the tenure‐track faculty is now foreign-born (alongside the dramatic rise in the proportion of foreign-born entrepreneurs that the news media regularly cite). Nearly 60% of the postdoctoral population is international, along with more than 43% of the doctoral degrees awarded in science and engineering (Stephan, 2010; 84).7 In a Forbes article, Anderson (2017)8 cited a study by the National Foundation for American Policy that concluded that “21 of the 87 privately-held U.S. companies valued at $1 billion or more had a founder who first came to America as an international student.” Forty-four of the 87 billion-dollar start-ups had at least one founder who was an immigrant, typically a former international student. These numbers and trends have important implications, which deserve the attention of at least a few researchers of graduate writing support. I believe that given the number and complexity of topics and corresponding professional opportunities, we can expect (and work to develop) a necessary and impactful subspecialization in international graduate students within graduate writing support. In order to understand international students and international education in relation to the internationalization of American higher education, scholars must also advance the view of university as a “pluriversity,” a term used for arguing in favor of “universal knowledge as pluriversal knowledge … through horizontal dialogues among different traditions of thought” (Boidin, Cohen, & Grosfoguel, 2012; 2).9 More generally, as these authors argue, a broader notion of the university could actually help European and American universities revitalize their disciplines of knowledge, especially in the humanities and social sciences, by “opening the university resolutely to inter-epistemic dialogues” among the “ecology of knowledges” from across the world (2). Because “globalization, transformation from the industrial into the global knowledge economy,

194  Conclusion and international student mobility are mutually reinforcing one another and changing the higher education landscape worldwide” (Gürüz, 2011; 19),10 understanding the interactions between these dynamics can help us better understand both the challenges and the opportunities we encounter. Such a view would help us to recognize that international students bring many traditions of knowledge, including many skills and experiences of writing and communicating, with which they are pluralizing writing as implied previously in the quotation from Thaiss. Some scholars of graduate writing support—as well as the broader community of writing scholars—have started focusing on this subject. Habib, Haan, and Mallett (2015),11 for instance, have suggested that in the “dynamic context of internationalization,” we should develop models of “transformative internationalization,” which the authors argue cannot be achieved by simply “recruiting students from other countries”: it should instead be “about changing the nature, perspective and culture of all the functions of the university.” The internationalization we must seek to give life and meaning to should reach “to the heart of the very meaning of ‘university’ and into every facet of its operation” (Foskett, cited in Habib, Haan, & Mallett, 2015). Our programs and pedagogy should be driven by thoughtful and long-term visions like this because our profession tends to be on the front line of change. While the specialization in graduate writing support is emerging, it is timely and productive to encounter broader and complex questions that international graduate students often prompt us to ask. Based on my study, I suggest that we broaden the scope of our research and conversation, starting by paying attention to global and local geopolitical and economic forces especially as part of the nationalistic regime of international education and then exploring more local challenges and complexities. Writing scholars in the broader discipline have already raised some of the critically important issues that we must address in our scholarship. For example, writing for an edited collection on “transnational writing program administration,” Dingo, Riedner, and ­Wingard (2015)12 used the case of outsourcing of writing support to tutors in Bangladesh, ­I ndia, and Malaysia by a professor in Texas, discussing how “rhetoric and composition scholars [can] foreground the many contexts—­globalized and institutional, material and ideological—under which twenty-first century WAC/WID labor practices may take place” (266). Scott (2016)13 used the above case of outsourcing to make a larger point about the political economy of internationalization: “Under neoliberal political economic reorganization, global economies have seen a forty-year trend toward the privatization of everything from local mail delivery to national security and intelligence to public education” (13). In the course of my study, I observed that at many universities, international students are increasingly enrolled in essentially private enterprises within public ­institutions; increasing their numbers does have other

Conclusion  195 benefits to different stakeholders but doing so can also undermine the mission of education as a social cause. Therefore, we cannot advocate for international students without serious regard for how that advocacy may affect domestic students and the future of public education; for instance, we must be mindful not to let political leaders and policy makers off the hook by continually tolerating the replacement of public support with “international dollars.” To quote Scott again: To accept that neoliberalization is inevitable and that we can’t do post-secondary writing education in a way that is research-­ informed, ethically conscientious, and engaged with the realities of global communication and labor is to miss signs that … the neoliberal paradigm is rapidly losing its cultural authority. (26) Indeed, to accept the conditions of neoliberalization as inevitable, rather than changing and changeable, would also be to assume that academic institutions and their leaders and scholars are powerless against political and economic forces, giving any actors behind them free rein. As scholars, we are responsible to “explore alternatives to perpetual crisis” in education, showing how the crises are “a function of political economy” (26). So, on the one hand, we can and should support institutional leaders to counter the politics of austerity coming at us from state and federal governments by reframing academic scholarship and also programs and pedagogies in politically informed manner. On the other hand, given that writing scholars and teachers hold an important key to international students’ academic success, we must use this leverage to reject the lowly service position in which we are too often put or seen. We could accept the marginal position of our discipline as an inherent nature of our work and position in the university, but we could also view and use it as a unique position for influencing graduate education and higher education at large. At the graduate level, the lack of curricular integration of literacy skills on the one hand and the wide-ranging applications of writing support on the other offer us many opportunities to use writing support as a means to help our institutions address broader challenges faced by graduate education (whether writing programs focus more strictly on written communication alone or also include other modes of communication, such as when there are no other programs to address the latter need). More ambitious applications of our support will require us to understand economic and political changes at the state and national levels, as well as global geopolitical forces affecting higher education—countering the crisis narrative and pursuing ambitious educational goals. As Scott put it, “[w]hen compositionists identify crises within our own scholarly discourse and leave unaddressed the broader political economic terms

196  Conclusion of our professional work and potential spheres of influence, we diminish our own relevance” (26). One of the strategies for breaking away from restrictive and marginalizing discourses about our discipline is to tap into the interest among universities to pursue global competition for talented students and the quality and ranking of the institution. Institutional leaders recognize that international students and scholars “add to the diversity of culture and ideas on our campus, broadening the experience of every student” (Stanley, 2017; web).14 Writing scholars can build on that interest and use research and support programs to practically show them how international graduate students can be catalytic for improvement of higher education and also beneficial to society. Our profession is positioned well to educate and lead our institutions in advancing an essential set of academic and professional skills in graduate education, but in order to do so, we must begin by paying attention to global contexts and geopolitical forces; be interested in how our programs can shape institutional policies and priorities; acknowledge difference in beliefs and ideologies about writing in the disciplines; account for internal diversity and intersectionality of international graduate students’ identities, proficiencies, and experiences; situate writing support for international graduate students in the process of their academic transition into U.S. academe; and reject the false opposition between mainstreaming or universal design and separating international graduate students for writing support. We must create inclusive, accessible, and engagement-driven support programs; shift writing support away from program silos toward facilitating students’ exploration of the broad ecology of support and resources that especially international graduate students tend to exploit; and foster their intellectual and social agency by using an advocacy approach that provides us the opportunity to provide leadership for problem-solving and innovation in graduate education in our institutions.15 Such inclusive support programs and accessible pedagogies can be created not by trying to find metaphorical and feel-good common grounds that gloss over varying needs of different student groups but by asking critical questions about what is common and what is not. Our support can and should also be designed with a view to helping our domestic graduate students learn about and be prepared to work in increasingly globalized professions, as well as beyond the borders of their home country. We can begin to help international students in that direction if we design curricula and academic support programs with a focus on what students from different national and cultural backgrounds bring to our universities and our disciplines and professions. Studying the history of international education in the U.S. makes it abundantly clear—whether we focus on immigration policy, change in presidential and economic politics, international relationship, or even policies and discourses about international students within academe—that

Conclusion  197 this is a truly volatile historical/political landscape. That landscape is full of major changes—from the establishment of such powerful national programs as Fulbright and Peace Corps to visa policies for foreign students and exchange visitors to the tectonic shifts created by presidents like John F. Kennedy and Donald J. Trump—that have reshaped the worlds of scientific advancements, international relationship, and views about education and citizenship. During the 1980s, the discourse about international education shifted from politics (and peace) to economics: even though the Iranian revolution and hostage crisis prompted the U.S. government to enact strict visa regulations, corporations and other financial forces put pressure against such restrictions. The lobbying for relaxing visa restrictions (including the extension of the STEM OPT visa from 12 to 29 months in recent years in response to lobbying by corporations in Silicon Valley and beyond) continues a 30-year trend. As Trilokekar (2015)16 notes, “Reagan’s aggressive anti-communist foreign policy provided the ideological basis to support international educational exchanges, with the ‘era of sending and receiving young scholars to build mutual understanding … now a quaint artifact of a bygone era’” (6). The administration of George H.W. Bush helped to reinstate the national security agenda as a predominant policy rationale for international education (7). The Clinton administration mostly disappointed the international education community by pursuing a unilateral approach of global expansion in most fields. In the post-9/11 era, the fact that international student visas are handled by the Department of Home Securities, for instance, shows the intersection of national policies (and often politics) with educational policies. As Trilokekar suggests, scholars, teachers, and university administrators should try to understand “government policy-making structures and processes, what motivates governments, the political pressures that influence their decisions … if we are to constructively and convincingly influence government policy to more closely align with the goals and purposes of higher education” (13). But beyond seeking to resist or correct course when policy makers or institutional leaders take approaches we consider problematic, it is important to recognize the dynamic nature of international education, given how it directly interacts with global and local economic and political forces. In 2006, for example, the British Prime Minister Tony Blair announced a new initiative to increase international enrollments by 100,000 over the following five years: “We will not win back the market simply by adjusting visa procedures, and we will not win it back with a public relations campaign” (NAFSA, 2007).17 Within 10 years, his country was not just causing major disruptions in the internationalization of higher education but also pulling out of the European Union altogether, causing major shifts in the way of life of its citizens. We must pay attention to the history and issues, developing perspectives in favor of our profession and of the society and world. We cannot afford simply to be passive receivers of

198  Conclusion whichever national and educational backgrounds international students come from, nor afford just to passively absorb positive or negative impacts of national and international changes upon our profession and our institutions. As scholars of rhetoric, we are especially well-equipped to participate in the larger conversation, both because we want to and because we need to. There are also great benefits, to our programs and discipline, of paying attention to and joining policy discussions about international education on our campuses. Some issues about international students seem difficult because they challenge deeply held beliefs or established academic practices, or because they are subtly shaped by what is essentially an ambivalence created by the nationalistic regime within which educators usually view these students. First, institutions and academic disciplines cannot escape national politics or the capitalistic logic of the market (Marginson, 2013).18 The politically ambiguous and marginal position of foreign students shapes and influences institutional policies and priorities regarding those who support them, as well as obscuring complexity and change about globally mobile students. Furthermore, language and writing support programs designated to support these students are typically positioned as “service” units, deprived of professional status and respect, lacking in financial support or fair wages and secure employment for their faculty and staff. Even worse, because the landscape of international education is highly uncertain and impacted by economic and geopolitical forces, it is not easy for scholarship on writing support for these students to be up to date on issues of macro- and micro-­politics about them and how they affect the students and support for them. International students “offer both benefits and threats,” and “national governments flip between the benefits and the dangers” that they seem to pose the host society. Academic institutions and professionals cannot easily escape this context because, like nations, they “have no ready method of imagining and managing mobile persons except to treat them as outsiders” (Marginson, 2013; 16). Most scholars tend to see international students within the framework of institutional mission statements that consider “international education [as] a global market … the student is … welcomed … and [for the host nation] might become a future citizen…. [contribute] revenues, research labour, international goodwill and cross-border cultural and economic integration” (17). We are yet to develop effective responses to “border anxiety…, anti-migration sensitivities” among the larger public, or for that matter, “worry about the absorption of scarce national resources in education … dangers to … national character” (17). As Szelényi and Rhoads (2007)19 have pointed out, anxieties about international students have recently soared in the United States, perhaps more than in other major destinations. Citing McMurtrie, Borjas, and Zakaria, Szelény and Rhoads reminded us that “International students [in the US] have been depicted as [variously]

Conclusion  199 threats to national security (even as potential ‘terrorists’), ambassadors of international understanding, contributors to U.S. economic and scientific development, and excessive financial burdens on the economy” (42). The conflicting narratives and arguments make it difficult for academic institutions and programs to rely on established strategies for maintaining and promoting support programs or to advocate for the students. These are probably some of the reasons why many support professionals simply skip these other issues (not related to language or writing per se) about international students. However, academic scholarship can and should tackle these complex issues, developing and implementing educational visions in the interest of both nations and of the world at large. It is not enough to simply hope that treating international students well will help them overcome ­challenges; in fact, it is also not enough to support them with one aspect of academic transition and success—language or writing support—­ without helping them fit those pieces into the larger puzzle of their academic socialization and success. Improved writing skills are essential but far from sufficient for international students to overcome or to deal with the sense of otherness; power dynamics and attitudes (both toward them and among them) affect motivation and success with communication and writing, and students must learn how to deal with those challenges as international students. One the one hand, I found many writing professionals whose perspectives and program designs, pedagogies, and support practices were ahead of the times. In the introduction of the book for which Thaiss wrote the afterword, Zawacki and Cox (2014) express confidence in the discipline of writing to be “courageous enough to be transformed by the multilingualism and multiculturalism of our students” (34). Conversations with many writing scholars made me similarly hopeful that the field of graduate writing support could continue to better respond to the needs and challenges of these students, paying attention to the languages and cultures that they bring from around the world, their diversity and experiences, and the contribution they make to the advancement of knowledge through many disciplines. That attention could help raise broader questions about higher education as well. My conversations with academic professionals in related fields were also inspiring; they showed how working with international graduate students can provide us occasion for asking new questions about our work. Paying attention to their encounter with an educational system and society and culture that are often radically different can also help us generate new perspectives about our work. “Every appointment is an excursion to another culture for graduate career counselors,” observed James (2015), 20 in an article in Inside HigherEd. A career center advisor at my university who specializes in graduate students and pays close attention to issues of international students, James added: “We crisscross national boundaries from our desks and run smack into different visions

200  Conclusion of the purpose and intent of higher education. Graduate career counselors navigate cultural dissonance between the institution’s mission and the expectations of its students.” Writing professionals may be far from focusing on the latter transition, and the return of most international students to their home countries is an even less explored territory in writing scholarship. But I found quite a few writing programs that paid ­ merican significant attention to the students’ initial transition into the A university, in spite of the fact that mainstream conversation and practice seem to be filled with assumptions and complacencies, requiring one to look for the few who have paid attention to the less visible, more complex issues. At the summer institute of the Consortium of ­Graduate Communication at Yale University, one of the keynote speakers, Feak (2016), 21 reminded the audience how much graduate-level writing support has changed over the past three decades when “we taught vocabulary, grammar, and syntax because we believed that that’s what second language writers needed … rather than what they needed.” The question of “what students need” is not an easy one, especially with a group that comes from every country in the world, and it also evolves with our understanding of changing issues over time. Writing skills that graduate students are expected to learn also keep changing. So, I did find that many writing support programs are still “locked in the idea of proficiency” (as Feak put it). Many of them simply responded to incentives that tended to maintain status quo. But I also encountered many scholars, program leaders, and other practitioners (whose voices are not often heard) who were leading larger conversations in their institutions. Inspired by them, I concluded that there is a need for self-reflection, for asking bolder questions, and for developing more visionary perspectives. One of the issues on which my research jolted my own prior understanding and received wisdom was how international graduate students don’t simply want to adjust quickly to the institution, disciplines, society, or culture here. Instead, as Tran (2013)22 reported, they perform adjustment, in both the sense of playing roles to cope with the process and taking action to be successful. The authors identified different kinds of performances and negotiation strategies, including surface adaptation (or making superficial adjustments while disguising personal beliefs and motivations in order to fulfil required demands and getting along), committed adaptation (or adjustments when it feels positive and valuable to learning), and hybrid adaptation (combining different strategies). Having observed how international students adapted to new academic systems and practices of writing, Tran suggested that educators consider adopting what they call ­“reciprocal adaptation,” or adjusting programs and pedagogies based on continual understanding of international students and how they are responding to and learning education in a new place. The theory of performance and adaptation could be highly useful for explaining whether and how international students use available support, among other issues.

Conclusion  201 As I share reflections and make suggestions, I am reminded of limitations and challenges in my research. One such limitation has to do with generalizing the current state of support for international graduate students. Programs and policies of support are shaped by unique institutional contexts and cultures, differing visions of program leaders, the personnel and expertise available to them, and so on. So, I have not tried to paint an objective or representative picture of writing support for international graduate students nationally. Instead, I decided to identify themes and questions, challenges and perspectives, and effective programs and practices that other writing support professionals could emulate or adapt. While I triangulated data by gathering interviews with students and a variety of academic professionals, field notes, and primary and secondary data input about writing support programs and practices, and related support across institutions, I rely on how writing and other academic professionals described their programs and practices and how student interviewees commented on them. That is, observational data behind the discussion of support practices at specific institutions are relatively thin, with that limitation only being offset by the scope and richness of the overall data set. The programs and support practices that I describe as effective or successful were effective and successful in their particular contexts. They were promising and therefore worth emulating elsewhere, but the point of the discussion is to identify the understanding or approaches behind the programs and practices insofar as they seem promising for other contexts as well. I have, therefore, avoided the phrase “best practices” and instead described productive policies, successful programs, or effective pedagogies while underscoring their contingency in their particular institutional and programmatic contexts. As Thompson (forthcoming) argues, the concept of best practices “undermines the very foundations of writing as a discipline” by stripping practices of their complex contexts, limiting professional agency, and adversely affecting curricular or programmatic autonomy. So, I encourage readers to view stories as reflecting unique experiences and support practices as shaped by complex relations and realities on the ground. My intention is to prompt “a set of questions” and offer a “framework for [readers’ own] inquiry” (Thompson). Deliberately reaching those who are most actively supporting a particular student body across the nation has probably produced rosy pictures in many instances, but it was the objective of the project to identify what is working well and to discuss them in their own contexts. The recommendations I have made are based on themes about programs and practices that seemed most likely to translate to different contexts. One major recommendation, based on several specific themes drawn from data analysis, would be to broaden the definition of graduate-­ level writing as academic and professional communication, especially considering the needs of a very diverse and complex body of students.

202  Conclusion That  means that writing support programs should be viewed more broadly, as if formal support structures were the umbra of a shadow, its penumbra being a variety of initiatives around programs, such as promotional and community engagement activities, networking and advocacy, and leadership and contribution to policy. Writing studies needs to embrace and foster this broad ecology, making writing support the key node in the network. My focus on programs and practices—in spite of limitations against conducting direct and sustained observation—was driven by the desire to learn from experiences and perspectives of those who designed and ran the programs and those who delivered or received the support. While writing professionals used language and described practices that I was familiar with, other academic professionals and students provided new perspectives that helped to add nuance to the theorization of the complex dynamics of discourse and practices, power and relationships. The multiple perspectives helped me understand the contexts and underlying issues, including how implicit policies, interests, and ambivalences shape practices; how national policy and political climate are reflected in the ways that people and programs approach a student body; how cultural shifts and new or missed opportunities are seen when we focus on what the advocates are doing and pursuing; and how new alliances and collaborations become more productive if we start from the ground up with a focus on practices. Focusing on effective programs and practices, as generally reflected in recent scholarship in the field, can help to build new theories and frameworks by shifting attention from gaps and problems to what is actually being done. I have used stories shared by students as linchpins for reporting and theorizing major findings of my research. While I have tried to choose narratives, anecdotes, and examples that best reflect broader themes, I have also used stories for their thematic value and for highlighting the general importance of learning from students’ experiences, rather than because the stories and anecdotes are representative. I hope to convey that, given that writing skills can serve as virtual gateways into new academic systems and cultures for foreign students, paying attention to how they learn these skills can help produce deeper understanding of students’ challenges that may seem to have “nothing to do with” writing. Similarly, I have often prominently featured the voices of professionals from writing support programs, including language support programs that provided or included writing support. While I started by gathering interviews with these professionals in order to find my own way to the most effective writing- and communication-related support for international students around campus, the research quickly showed their value as an important source of perspectives about graduate writing education for international students. So, I included them during data analysis and theorizing whenever the issue at hand demanded. This inclusion is meant to highlight that we have much to learn from many other programs and

Conclusion  203 professionals who support these students. That understanding could not only help us better collaborate with others but also to create opportunities to address broader challenges that we are best equipped to tackle, including challenges about graduate education where we can contribute expertise and provide leadership. The data set behind this study was large. The project involved half a million words in transcribed interviews alone, alongside scores of relevant documents and extensive notes from university visits, rich information from program and institutional websites, and a few hundred scholarly sources. Yet this research is not meant to be exhaustive in terms of sampling (for instance, among at least three dozen universities that now have graduate-level writing support, I only visited five). Discussing how qualitative researchers transform often massive amounts of data into the coherent “story” of the final product, in their book C ­ omposing qualitative research, Golden-Biddle and Locke (1997)23 dedicate a chapter to the question, “How do we, then, make contextually grounded theoretical points that are viewed as a contribution by the relevant professional community of readers?” In their discussion, they observe that “in writing up field work, we develop two stories: those based in extant theoretical conversation and those based in the fieldwork” (21). I have focused heavily on the latter type of stories. Analyzing interviews of students in relation to interviews with others foregrounded a number of tensions, which gave rise to a number of themes that I used for framing chapters and chapter sections. The most significant tension was between students’ need for variety and flexibility of support and support programs’ need for structure and the limited resources they had. But from the students’ perspectives, full-fledged courses, for instance, were not always useful because the students couldn’t find or invest the time, didn’t want to risk low grades, couldn’t pay if the course incurred a fee, and didn’t get their mentors’ approval. Not many support programs were able to address this tension, but some that did used, for instance, a sequence of modules that students could choose from a large menu and combine as they needed. A second tension had to do with writing support being outsourced to our discipline by graduate programs in others: many writing support programs were not yet prepared to help with discipline-specific challenges of writing, especially when they were aggravated by international students who also brought a confusing mix of experiences and skills in writing, which most writing professionals are yet to find practical ways to recognize. Third, related to the tensions described earlier, I found a serious problem of perspective at many institutions. Writing support programs were impressed by the greater ratio of international graduate students using the support than their domestic counterparts, but that was usually a single digit percentage of all of the students. Most of the students who chose not to use writing support programs discovered and created networks of

204  Conclusion writing-related support that went far beyond formal writing programs. This also means that it was difficult to decide where to draw the line and how to define “writing support.” I am keenly aware that while it is easy to theorize the diffusiveness of relevant support that students sought and to suggest that fostering the broader ecology of support is good for the students, such a suggestion could also seem disrespectful of those who primarily focus on formal program development. However, with all the tensions here, I followed the paths shown by the data—especially using students’ stories and perspectives for developing or complicating perspectives that may be useful for writing support professionals. The more institutions I visited to observe graduate-level writing support, the more I was convinced that we need theoretical approaches that can help us extend our scope of inquiry beyond established programs— especially in order to account for the dispersal and diffusion of writing and communication support across institutions—such as the ecological approach that I have used to make sense of how international graduate students explored and navigated the university as they learned writing skills. Such approaches could help future research study about how our programs and pedagogies can be dynamically interacting and evolving organisms, including what they can do “outside the box” of conventional conceptions of academic units. An ecological view of writing support in particular could help us discover mutual benefits of interaction and collaboration with other (related) entities while enabling us to adapt and change successfully, tackling crises, and making the best of new opportunities. As Fleckenstein et al. (2008) have suggested, in the context of research, “scholars guided by ecological thinking conceive of [research paradigm, methodology, methods, techniques, and strategies] as symbiotic clusters: knots of nonhierarchical, locally enacted, semiotic-­material practices that inform each other in multiple ways” (394). To adopt an ecological approach is not only to view the program and the institution at large as wholes and dynamically interactive parts, to understand students and those who support them as complex organisms that shaped and are shaped by the environment, and to consider both visible and invisible connections. In fact, an ecological view of writing support could also help us better appreciate and promote the profession as founded on ancient rhetoric, centuries of philosophy, concern for ethics and justice, interest in human diversity, characterized by interdisciplinarity, by nature collaborative and border-crossing, often concerned about invasiveness and adaptation in relation to other disciplines that host or reject writing studies, and constantly growing and changing. With program-­ building and pedagogical innovation, the perspective can help us recognize the diversity of students and better understand where and how we can offer specialized support, as well as discuss where it is not necessary. It would also help us strategize and plan, identify hidden aspects of students’ strengths and challenges, work across disciplinary borders, be

Conclusion  205 resilient in the face of challenges, help students transfer knowledge, and work with an awareness of macro- and micro-level dynamics and forces that will further shape our profession and our institutions. One important pragmatic starting point would be to figure out what to do about the other issues that international students face while ­learning writing skills, especially during the broader transition process. Whether it was the first Chinese undergraduate student to graduate from an American college in 1851 or it is the graduate students we work with today, foreign students have to navigate complex social and cultural territories within which they must not only learn new kinds of academic skills but also deal with ideological and power dynamics that affect their learning. The story of a South Asian student best captures some of the invisible struggles that even enormous social change and technological advancements since the time of Yung Wing haven’t alleviated for foreign students. When I recently interviewed Chandra, 10 years after I had lent him some help with finding an apartment after his first arrival at the University of Louisville in Kentucky, he remembered an incident involving trying to buy salt, one that seemed symbolic of larger challenges during the academic and sociocultural adjustment that is necessary for academic success for international students. After “locals” at nearby stores had failed to understand his pronunciation of “salt,” Chandra had asked me how to find it in the stores. I had shared the shopping “literacy” that I had acquired, having come to the U.S. the previous year: I told him that items in stores are usually organized in labeled isles for customers to shop and pick what they need by themselves and that salt is typically sold in visually distinct cylindrical containers in the U.S. (rather than sealed in transparent plastic bags). When I asked Chandra why communicative failures like that “outside” the university bothered him, as he was laying much emphasis on them, he said that he could only gain confidence as a student when he was able to “communicate to make life normal.” In fact, he said that being able to interact fluently at Walmart was his measure of success: “the more I can communicate in general, the more I feel confident as a scholar and teacher. That ‘other’ confidence is extremely important for international students,” especially for engaging in “natural communication” in the classroom as a teaching assistant, at professional conferences, and among his peers and professors on campus. As a scholar of math who had just moved from the West Coast to a university in Texas, Chandra said that he hadn’t paid much attention to written communication during the first few semesters, until it started causing problems; when he realized it, he wasn’t able to do much about it, given how busy he had become. He said he wished that he had some guidance to help him explore resources and learn to ask many questions he ought to ask. When asked what the writing support programs at his first university could have done to help him develop communicative confidence, he said: “Combine both the academic and community-based approach to

206  Conclusion teaching writing and academic communication.” He had a noteworthy justification for such an approach: “Graduate students need to deal with the society … they are mature and many of them have family. They need to understand the profession. They need to teach.” As we explore the intersections between academic challenges and broader issues that may aggravate those challenges, we should listen to students’ stories and learn from their perspectives. As it happened with Chandra, whenever my student interviewees shared their experiences with candor and depth, their stories illustrated how sociocultural contexts and political forces shaped their education and careers, reminding me of Yung Wing’s story beyond his undergraduate degree in his pursuit of further education and social impact as an intellectual ambassador between his host and home countries, when his challenges became more dire. Because of deteriorating China-U.S. relations and rising anti-­ immigrant sentiment in the United States, Yung Wing lost his citizenship (which he had acquired in 1852) after the 1870 Naturalization (Chinese Exclusion) Act, a fact that he learned in 1902 when he was fleeing persecution in China (Railton, 201624; Bevis & Lucas, 200825). Even though he had received his honorary doctorate from Yale in 1876, served in the Union Army, and spent many years trying to establish educational exchange programs between China and the United States, he was denied entry into the United States. He later managed to be smuggled in by his friends, just in time to attend the graduation ceremony at Yale of one of his sons. He then lived in poverty until he died in Connecticut in 1912. Politics and policy, ideology and power continue to affect international students in often eerily similar ways. But except in times of severe impact, academic leaders and scholars seem to be resigned about restrictions and challenges posed by our governments’ swings in policy. For some, these larger issues don’t seem to be within professional concerns, and for others the issues may be too contentious or complicated to address. Regardless, for scholars who study or work with international students, to ignore the entanglements of the students’ education with the political economy of international education could be short-sighted. Hence the need for different kinds of attention in our scholarship, rather than just the amount of it, as well as the need to identify and promote effective programs and pedagogies that are able to address those issues, through design and attention. Paying attention to students’ experiences can help to fill the gap. Combining intellectually and politically savvy approaches to research and scholarship that is guided by ecological views of academe and our profession will best help us advance our profession and contribute to graduate education. On the one hand, we cannot afford to ignore “the movement and broader influence of globalized power—economic, political, cultural, governmental, sovereign, disciplinary, biopolitical, all forms and mixes of forms at work” (Dingo, Riedner, & Wingard, 2013; 519). 26

Conclusion  207 In fact, as Rose-Redwood and Rose-Redwood (2017)27 emphasized with reference to the era after the 2016 Presidential election, “This is a critical time for scholars who study international students,” a time when it is best to “re-assess our research agenda for the field, because we simply cannot proceed as if it were business as usual within the current political context” (II). On the other hand, we must build programs and pedagogies upon the deep awareness created by our discipline at large about cultural, linguistic, economic, and political dynamics affecting both the diverse student bodies we educate and our own work. To achieve balance in this enterprise, we must be willing to rethink convention and to introduce our diverse students’ stories and the perspectives of other professionals who work with them into the agenda of graduate writing education. That balance will help liberate us from the limited role of academic service we are often seen as playing in the margins of institutional organization and conversation. And the increased respect will help us provide more significant intellectual and educational leadership to our institutions and more substantive contributions both to the graduate students we serve and to society at large.

Notes 1 Afterword…. In Zawacki & Cox, WAC and second language writers. 2 How writing teachers could help revolutionize higher education. Getting Smart. (June 12). Weblog. 3 Introduction…. In Simpson et al., Supporting graduate student writers. 4 WAC and second language writers. 5 International graduate applications and enrollment: Fall 2015. 6 The state of graduate communication support…. In Simpson et al., ­S upporting graduate student writers. 7 The I’s have it…. Innovation Policy and the Economy, 10(1). 8 Kicking out international students will mean fewer entrepreneurs. Forbes. (Dec. 15). 9 Introduction…. Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge, 10(1). 10 Higher education and international student mobility in the global knowledge economy. 11 The development of disciplinary expertise…. Composition Forum, 31. 12 Disposable drudgery…. In Martins, Transnational writing program administration. 13 Subverting crisis in the political economy of composition. CCC, 68(1). 14 Anti-immigration rhetoric is a threat to American leadership. Scientific American. (Mar. 20). 15 Simpson (2012), in WPA, 36, 1, has suggested that writing program administrators recognize the need but may be reluctant to allocate resources for graduate-level writing support in general; however, doing so, Simpson states, would mean “missing out on opportunities to develop cross-campus partnerships and build respect for writing program work” (95). 16 From soft power to economic diplomacy?… Research & Occasional Paper Series. 17 An international education policy for U.S. leadership, competitiveness, and security. Statement.

208  Conclusion 18 Equals or others? In Sovic & Blythman, International students negotiating higher education. 19 Citizenship in a global context…. Comparative Education Review, 51(1). 20 Confusion at the border…. Inside HigherEd. (Oct. 26). 21 The future of graduate writing support. Keynote. Consortium on Graduate Communication, Yale University. 22 International student adaptation to academic writing in higher education. 23 Composing qualitative research. 24 Yung Wing, the Chinese educational mission, and transnational ­Connecticut. ConnecticutHistory.Org. 25 International students in American colleges and universities. 26 Toward a cogent analysis of power: Transnational rhetorical studies. JAC, 33(3–4). 27 Rethinking the politics of the international student experience in the age of trump. Journal of International Students, 7(3).

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Index

Abasi, A. R. 96, 209 Adhikari, S. 87 Adler-Kassner, L. 163, 164 advocacy 158–96; distributed 168; students as advocates; writing professionals 168; international center 171 agency: power/powerless 37; fostering 125; definition and features 126–8, 171; mentoring 131; voice 132 Aitchison, C. 74, 75, 150 Akbari, N. 96, 209 Albert, R. D. 44 Allum, J. 47–9, 193 ambivalence 9, 42–3, 118, 198 Anderson, J. 112 Anderson, R. 175 Anderson, S. 193 Anderson, T. 95, 112, 175, 193 Andrade, M. S. 29 Angelova, M. 96 Arkoudis, S. 29 Asenavage, K. 95 Atkinson, D. 78 Australia 50 Aw, F. 29

Belkin, D. 81n64 Bell, S. 16 Benesch, S. 71 Bera, A. 178, 189 Berg, J. A. 87, 120, 123 Berkes, F. 112 Bevis, T. B. 2, 24, 33, 53, 206 bias: othering 56; nationalistic regime 52, 75, 77, 100; stereotype 77 Bista, K. 28 Blackledge, A. 104, 134–35, 157, 211 Blanton, L. L. 127 Blum, S. B. 183 Blythman, M. 31, 36, 80, 114, 208 Boidin, C. 193 Boyle, C. 112 Bradley, G. 29 Braine, G. 26–7, 34, 96, 114 Braxley, K. M. 25 Britain 51–2 Bronfenbrenner, U. 112 Brooks-Gillies, M. 31, 111 Brown, L. 51 Büker, S. 89, 94 Butler, D. B. 28 Buus, S. 29, 58, 119, 181, 186 Byrd, P. 34, 114

Bagnall, N. 31, 97, 120 Bai, K. 28 Bailey, K. M. 44 Bailey, S. 27 Bailiff, M. 15 Ballard, B. 78 Banathy, B. H. 18 Barab, S. A. 123 Bawarshi, A. 15 Beaufort, A. 95 Beigi, M. 88 Belcher, D. D. 26–7, 34, 96

Canada 50–51 Canagarajah, A. S. 109, 125–26, 135, 146, 183–84 Candel-Mora, M. 183 Canseco, G. 34, 114 Cao, Y. 28 Caplan, N. 20–22, 27, 107, 193 Carson, J. 62, 101, 135 Casanave, C. P. 26–7, 96, 101, 114, 121, 124 Cayley, R. 116 Charmaz, K. 6–8, 11–2

226 Index Chawla, L. 123, 128 Cheng, Y. -C. 120 Cherian, S. 81n52, 95 Cheung, D. 111 Chlup, D. 87 Choi, D. M. 148 Choudaha, R. 52, 119 Chow, Y. A. 120 Chui, W. H. 112 Clanchy, J. 78 coding 6, 10, 18–23, 25; open-ended coding 11; axial coding 10–12; in-vivo 10–12, 44 Cohen, J. 193 Coles, R. 114 Collins, J. R. 41 competence in language 87 composition skills 89 confidence 93 Consortium on Graduate Communication xi, 155 content, knowledge of 90 context, knowledge 91 Cooper, M. M. 14–5, 25, 126 Corbin, J. M. 6 Costino, K. A. 120 Cox, M. 16, 20–22, 27, 33n38, 101, 107, 114, 128, 192, 193, 199 Crenshaw, K. W. 103 Cresswell, J. W. 6, 14 Cumming, A. 25 Curry, M. 27, 117, 124, 183 Davis, M. 31, 111 demographic studied 4 Deppeler, J. 112 Dingo, R. 194, 206 dispersal of support 9, 22, 107 diversity: international students 97–101; intersectionality 103–4, 196 Dong, Y. R. 26 Douglas, J. 96, 101 Duff, P. 95 ecology: program versus ecology 104; ecological theory/framing 14–18; ecological approach 82; ecological view of education 112–13 emic perspectives 26 English Language Institute (Michigan) 23 Esses, V. M. 31, 121 extra-curriculum 112 Ezzy, D. 12

Farrelly, R. 28, 42, 120, 184 Fatima, N. 29 Feak, C. 27, 200, 213 Ferris, D. 27 field notes 12–3 Finder, A. 44 Fischer, K 81, 184 Fleckenstein, K. S. 15, 23, 204 Fredericksen, E. 110 Frost, A. 183 Fujioka, M. 26 Fujishima, N. K. 26 Garcia, E. G. 31, 112 Gardner, S. 108 genre theory 28, 96 Gere, A. R. 112 Ghosh, A. 77 Glaser, B. G. 6, 11 Glass, C. R. 29, 58, 119, 181, 186 Golden-Biddle, K. 203 Goodson, P. 87 Graham, H. D. 54 Granovetter, M. 11 Grav, P. 116 Graves, B. 96, 209 Greeno, J. G. 123 Grego, R. C. 16 Grosfoguel, R. 193 grounded theory 6–11; constructivist 6, 8, 14 Guillemette, F. 14 Gürüz, K. 100, 194 Haan, J. 57, 81, 95, 194 Habib, A. 57, 65, 81, 95, 123, 148, 194 Hacking 143–8 Hall, J. 183 Hanassab, S. 29, 114 Hare, J. 52 Harklau, L. 27 Harwood 31 Helgeson, L. 94 Heller, D. E. 184, 190 Hoekje, B. 44 Holloway, I. 114 Holt, S. 28 Horner, B. 44, 62, 73, 126, 153, 183 Hu, H. 33n48 Huang, Y. 29, 77, 78 Huerta, M. 87 Hum, S. 62 Hutchinson, S. 28

Index  227 Hyland, K. 25, 28 Hyon, S. 120 Ideology: international students 97; language 62; writing; traps 70–5; in the disciplines 62–6 Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency 48 Indelicato, M. E. 80n21 Institute of International Education 32 international center 171 institutional leadership 196 international students: politics of 40–3, 57–8; diversity 97; numbers 46–50; demographic view 76; vis-à-vis domestic students 78 interview questions 9–10 Jablonski, J. 116, 119 James, A. 199 Jenkins, S. 114 Jiang, A. 28 Jindal-Snape, D. 31, 97, 114 Johns, A. M. 97 Johnson, D. C. 72 Johnson, E. J. 72 Jones, T. 61 Jordan, J. 65, 81, 114 Jordan, M. K. 102 Jordan, M. 81 Journal of International Students 29 Kam, A. 85 Kamler, B. 150 Kashubeck-West, S. 121, 157 Kavanaugh, P. R. 29 Kedrowicz, A. 65, 114 Kennedy, J. F. 53 Khawaja, N. 29 Kiernan, J. 183 Kim, S. H. 31,111 Kingsbury, C. 94 Kirby, K. 77 Kockelman, P. 127 Krasny, M. E. 17, 113 Kretovics, M. 77 Ku, H.-Y. 120 Kwon, Y. 29, 77 Lahman, M. K. E. 120 Lantolf, J. P. 135 Lavalle, T. 31 Lea, M. R. 95

learning to write: competency in English 87; composition skills 89; content knowledge 90; context knowledge 91; confidence to write 93 Lee, A. 74 Leki, I. 25, 29, 62, 71, 101, 135, 148 Leonard, R. L. 183 Leydens, J. A. 65 Li, X. 26, 101, 211–12 Li, X. M. 26, 101 Liamputtong, P. 12 Lillis, T. 183 limitations 201 Lindemann, S 25, 28, 149 Liu, L. 29 Locke, K. D. 200, 203 Losey, K. M. 27 Lozanov, G. 132 Lu, M. -Z. 44 Lucas, C. J. 2, 24, 33, 53, 206 Luckerhoff, J. 14 Lynch, P. 113, 144 Lyon, A. 62 Mallett, K. E. 57, 81, 95, 194 Mangelsdorf, K. 110 Manthey, K. 31, 111 Mao, L. 75 Marginson, S. 52, 55, 56, 198 Martins, D. S. 189 Mastroieni, A. 111 Matsuda, P. K. 23, 81, 116, 119 McCulloch, S. 31 McKenna, L. 78 McLeod, S. H. 16, 27, 121–22, 163 Meckelborg, A. 29 Meinema, Y. 85–6 Melles, G. 30 Melzer, D. 16 memo 12 Miller-Whitehead, M. 29 Miller, C. R. 126 Miraglia, E. 16 missionaries 1, 24, 59, 106 Mohamedbhai, G. 50 Molina, C. 183 Morita, N. 65, 96, 109, 114, 127, 134 Morley, S. 87, 120, 123 Morse, S. 16 Murray, D. E. 27, 124, 211 Murshidi, G. 29 Mussi, E. 30, 114

228 Index Nakamura, K. 183 National Association of Foreign Student Advisors 60, 197 Okahana, H. 47–9, 193 Ostler, S. E. 83, 110, 121 Paltridge, B. 27 Papper, C. C. 15 Patel, V. 30 Pavlenko, A. 104, 134–35, 157, 211 pedagogical applications 147 peripheral skills 105 Perrucci, R. 33 Petrić, B. 31 Phelps, L. 163 Phillips, T. 27, 68, 96, 101, 111, 130 Pierce, B. N. 101 policy 59–61 political economy 38–9, 45–7, 194, 206 Porter, T. 16 power: power 54–5; powerless 37–38; language and power 42–5; knowledge of 30 Poyrazli, S. 29 Prendergast, C. 71, 183–84 Prior, P. 25 professional development 188–9 programmatic strategies 181 Railton, B. 206 Ramanathan, V. 78 Ranta, L. 29 Ravichandran, S. 77 Redden, E. 52 reflective encounters 75–9 Reiff, M. J. 15 research questions 8 Rhoads, R. A. 198 Riazantseva, A. 96 Riazi, A. 26 Rickly, R. J. 15 Riedner, R. 194, 206 Rienties, B. 97, 114 Rizvi, F. 95 Rose-Redwood, C. 207 Rose, M. 65 Rosenthal, D. 114 Rosenthal, G. 7 Roth, W.-M. 123 Royster, J. J. 183 Rubin, D. L. 79 Ruona, W. 12

Russell, D. 62, 65 Russell, J. 114 Saldaña 6, 10, 12–3 Schneider, M. 26 scholarly context 18 Scott, T. 39, 41–2, 47, 194–95 Shapiro, S. 28, 42, 120, 184 Sharma, G. 102 Sherry, M. 122 Shima, A. 31 Shuck, G. 128 Siegal, M. 27 Silva, T. 25 Simnitt, E. 128 Simpson, S. 20–2, 27, 32n10, 42, 68, 101, 110, 115, 117, 120, 150–51, 166, 192 Slater, T. 51 Smith, K. A. 79 Smith, T. 79 Soja, E. W. 16 Song, B. 29 Soven, M. 16, 17 Sovic, S. 31, 36, 80, 114, 208 Spack, R. 101, 183, 189 Spencer-Rodgers, J. 77 Spinuzzi, C. 15 Sriskandarajah, N. 17, 113 Stallman, H. 29 Stanley, S. Jr. 196 Starke-Meyerring, D. 140, 162–4 Steinmetz, C. 30, 114 Stephan, P. E. 193 Stevens, S. 95 Stossel, S. 54 Strauss, A. L. 6 Street, B. V. 95 Struck, H. R. 24 Sullivan, C. 121, 157 Summers, S. E. 152 Surdan, J. C. 29 Suspitsyna, T. 75–7 Swales, J. M. 25, 27–8, 34, 149 Swami, V. 114 systems theory 17 Szelényi, K. 94, 120, 198 Tardy, C. M. 25, 28, 79, 95, 183 Tedick, D. J. 96 Telbis, N. M. 94 Thaiss, C. 16, 27, 191–92, 194, 199 The Economist 30, 58

Index  229 theming 10–5 Thomas, P. 122 Thompson, N. 16, 201 Thompson, R. C. 201 Thomson, C. 16 Thomson, P. 114 Tidball, K. G. 17, 113 Tierney, J. 119 Tomaš, Z. 28, 42, 120, 184 Tran, L. T. 209 transition: social 19, 25–8; academic 8–11, 15, 24, 29; “other” challenges 82–4, 96; learning to write 85–7; 5-dimensional model 87; other models of learning to write 94–5; intersection 102–4; engagement 186; forms of adaptation 200 Trice, A. G. 28 Trilokekar, R. D. 58, 60, 197 Trimbur, J. 44, 62, 73, 126, 153, 183 Trines, S. 59 Trump 52–3 Turner, N. J. 112 universal design 113–21

Valdiriz, J. E. 29 Vertovec, S. 123n51 Voice 125 Watson, J. 31 Weaver-Hightower, M. B. 18 Weiland, P. O. 114 Weisser, C. R. 33 Werder, C. M. 127 Williams, J. 44 Wingard, J. 194, 206 Winsor, D. 65 Wisser, C. 15 Wongtrirat, R. 29, 58, 119, 181, 186 WPAs 163–4, writing education 167 Wydra, D. 191 Yeh, H. -T. 120 Yook, E. L. 44 Yung Wing 1–3, 59, 191, 205–6 Zakaria, F. 78, 198 Zamel, V. 101, 158, 161, 183, 189 Zawacki, T. 27, 33, 36, 65, 101, 112, 123, 148, 157, 192, 199, 207 Zhang, Z. 88, 95, 123, 209