Retaining International Faculty: Meeting the Challenge

Abstract

The benefits of the presence of international faculty on university campuses are widely acknowledged. Their integration into campus life creates a global atmosphere and provides rich resources to encourage globalization efforts on campus. We set out to explore the perceptions of the challenges faced by our international faculty, with the further goal of meeting these challenges and increasing their retention. To probe these perceptions and address the challenges they identified, we created and disseminated a survey and interviewed our international faculty. The results of the study will be used to increase the retention of international faculty at our institution. The actions we propose will be to create more opportunities to socialize, provide more legal support, recruit more international students, offer mentorship based on cultural affinity, and make English language support and speech modification services available to international faculty and encourage them to take advantage of these services.