 The broadcast is now starting. All attendees are in listen-only mode. Good afternoon, everyone. It's a pleasure to have you join us for our webinar on attracting international students to your community. My name is Josh Thompson. I'm with the Economic Development Division of the Ministry of Jobs, Tourism and Skills Training, and I'll be moderating and providing technical support for today's webinar. I'm joined today by my colleague in the Ministry of Advanced Education, Catherine Bola, who is a senior policy advisor of international education. I'm also very pleased to have Adrienne Conradti, Associate Director of International Student Services and Study Abroad from Thompson Rivers University, and Arjun Singh, a counselor with the City of Kamloops, who will both be speaking to their experiences collaborating to attract international students to Kamloops. Before I hand things over to Catherine, who's going to give a brief intro of how the Ministry of Advanced Education is supporting international education in BC, I'm going to briefly run through some tips that will help you get the optimal experience with go-to webinar. So this is the control panel that you should see in front of you here now, and there are just a few buttons that are going to draw to your attention. So this orange button with the right arrow will hide and unhide that control panel if it's in your way of any details on the slides today. This button here will make it full screen, just to blow everything up and make sure you can see it as clearly as possible. This button here is the raise hand button. So if you're having any technical issues or can't figure something out, feel free to raise your hand and I'll work with you behind the scenes to sort any issues you might be having. And lastly, we will be having a robust question and answer period today, so feel free to type your question in any time. And if there's a natural break in the presentation, I'll just briefly interrupt our speakers and see if we can answer that question right away. I have actually seen that we've got a question already, so that's great. We're off to a good start. So with that, I'd like to introduce Katherine Bolak. She's a Senior Policy Advisor in International Education Unit in the Ministry of Advanced Education and has worked there since 2009. Prior to joining the Ministry of Advanced Education, she worked in the Ministry of Children and Family Development in the Policy and Planning Branch. Katherine holds a Bachelor of Commerce from Memorial University and as part of her studies worked abroad in the Netherlands and Ireland, which certainly helps her in her current role in international education. In her spare time, Katherine is very active and loves enjoying Victoria's great weather. Next weekend, she and her four-year-old son will be taking part in the kids' run portion of the Victoria Marathon. Katherine, I'm going to transfer screen control over to you now. And as soon as we've got that set up, feel free to take it away. Thanks very much. I'm very pleased to be here with you today to present this webinar on Attracting International Students to the Community. I'm here representing the Ministry of Advanced Education. I'm here to provide a brief overview of the international education sector in British Columbia. I'd like to thank my co-presenters today, Adrienne Kongradi and Arjun Singh, for joining us to tell this good news story about international education and the way in which they work together to create a very welcoming environment for international students and a very positive reputation abroad. The economic benefits of international education are well documented. This sector clearly generates significant spending, jobs, and revenues for British Columbia. For example, in 2013 international students spent close to $2.3 billion in the province of tuition, living costs, and food, among other things. This translates to $1.6 billion in GDP contribution and over 25,000 jobs. The international education sector is actually equivalent to the fourth largest export good and 7% of total exports. Just to give you a sense of how large the sector is for the province. As you can see, the GDP distribution is focused in the mainland Southland and that's primarily because that's where students are focused and that's where the majority of students are located as well. We're currently in the process of doing a revised economic impact study and the results of that will be released in late fall 2015. As you can see, there are multiple partners that work together in the international education sector in British Columbia. So primarily there are four ministries, the Ministry of Advanced Education, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of International Trade and Jobs Tourism and Skills Training. The Ministry of Advanced Education has the lead on the province's international education strategy. So as the lead we're responsible for reporting out on the strategy but it also gives us the ability to look at the sector as a whole so including public institutions, private institutions, language schools, and K-12. The Ministry of Education is responsible for the K-12 sector including onshore, offshore, and distributed learning. The Ministry of International Trade is responsible for our education marketing managers. So there are a number of managers, education marketing managers, located in the BC trade investment offices and they're located in China, Japan, Korea, and India. The Ministry of International Trade is also responsible for promoting British Columbia internationally. The Ministry of Jobs Tourism and Skills Training who is leading this webinar today, we were closely with that ministry on immigration because that ministry is responsible for the Provincial Nominee Program. Another key partner for the ministry is the British Columbia Council for International Education. They're a Crown Corporation under the Ministry of Advanced Education. The BCCI is the acronym for that organization. They work very hard to bring the sector together and they undertake a number of initiatives such as Team BC mission to key markets, both existing markets and emerging markets. They do a lot of promotion of British Columbia in countries abroad as well. We work with the federal government for immigration and promotion of Canada. We work with other provinces and territories. We work with communities and courts, the schools and institutions in British Columbia. These schools and institutions are really the heart of the sector and we're very hard to provide education and learning and living experience for international students. We're obviously doing a great job because British Columbia is continuing to welcome more and more students every year. So international education is a key priority of the government of British Columbia and this sector is increasingly competitive both within Canada and on a global scale. So many nations now have coordinated international education strategies and for British Columbia to remain competitive and to seize the opportunity for growth it would recognize there was a need for a coordinated strategy. So to this end in fall 2011 international education was named as one of the eight key sectors under the BC jobs plan. Under that plan there was a commitment to increase the number of students by 50% by 2016 and there was also a commitment to develop an international education strategy. Other sectors that were named as key sectors under the jobs plan include agri-food, forestry, mining and energy, natural gas, technology, green economy, tourism and transportation. So in 2012 British Columbia launched our international education strategy which promotes the two-way global flow of students, educators and ideas between countries. Our strategy includes over 50 actions under three goals over four years and we've been working hard over the last couple of years to implement a number of those actions and have made tremendous progress. We're building on the success of British Columbia's reputation for excellence to ensure both domestic and international students have a positive experience. In 2014 Canada announced an international education strategy as well which also included an ambitious goal to increase the number of international students, sorry to double the number of international students by 2022. The deliverables under our strategy are shared amongst a number of partners and we all work very collaboratively to move this forward. The media currently attracts approximately one-third of the international students that come to Canada to study. We run second to Ontario. In our most recent data we have over 114,000 students in the province. On average about 4% of those students are located in the Thompson Okanagan Economic Region. International students choose British Columbia for a number of reasons. Our commitment to providing high quality education, our teachers and institutions are ranked amongst the best in the world. Our education quality assurance designation or EQA. So we are the only province in Canada to have such a designation that allows international students and parents to recognize a high quality institution and that is now our standard for institutions who would like to host international students on study permits. British Columbia is a welcoming and exciting place to live. As you will hear later in this presentation, the way that Thompson Rivers University and the City of Cannes have worked together to support international students and this relationship has created a very welcoming environment for students. As we know, over 50% of students or around 50% of students actually choose their vocation based on word of mouth. So feedback they receive from friends, from counselors. So the positive work that's going on in Cannes really helps to create that strong reputation abroad and enables the institutions, Thompson Rivers and the school district to continue to attract a number of students. British Columbia's got a world class standard of living and the cultural diversity and safety and security in the province are also ranked very highly amongst international students. So international students from the top three sort countries do represent 49% of the population. Two markets that are noteworthy of growth include Brazil and India. So as you can see, Brazil has increased, a number of students have increased by 62%, and this is over four years, and India, 219%. So strong growth from those markets hope to continue to see that growth and hope some other emerging markets continue to grow as well. As I mentioned previously, we do have a target under the BC JAWS plan to increase the number of students by 50% by 2016. So we are making strong progress towards that target. To date, we've increased by 22% or over 20,000 students and between 2009-10 and 2013-14. The highest growth rate has been in the private post-secondary sector with 58%. So the private post-secondary sector includes private degree granting institutions and private career training institutions. The growth in the public post-secondary institution was second, and that was a 41% growth rate, so that's a very strong growth rate as well. And those are followed by key to 12 and then the private language sector. So average historical growth has been about 5% per year. That concludes my presentation. If anyone has any questions, I'd be happy to answer them now or join the question period at the end. Great. Thanks so much for that, Catherine. I really appreciate the overview and it's really clear. I mean, seeing those numbers in front of you really demonstrates how big of an impact international education is to the economy. And it's not something that I think a lot of people would necessarily jump to right off the bat as one of our main exports. Just as we're waiting perhaps for a question to come in, I'm just going to launch a quick poll to give us a sense of if we've got anyone who's watching the webinar in a group, if perhaps you're sharing a boardroom or something like that. So if I could just get you to click on that screen right in front of you there and that'll just help us better track our numbers and better our webinar deliveries. Seeing 85%, 90% have voted. That's great. Thanks very much. So now I'm going to hand things over to Adrian and Arjun. Arjun Konratty is the Associate Director of International Student Services at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, B.C. Prior to his current role, he spent 12 years at B.C.'s first offshore school in Dilan, China. His experiences there are documented in his book, Dragons, Donkeys, and Dust. Memoirs from a decade in China. Let's just see if I can get your webcam up there. There we go. And Arjun Singh is serving his third term on Kamloops City Council. He served on the City Hall's Diversity Committee and has done contract work for Kamloops Immigration Services. He currently serves on economic development boards and committees at the local and regional level. In 2014, he helped design and facilitate welcoming community dialogues for his community. Arjun's parents immigrated from India in the 1960s. He's married, has one sister, and enjoys his wonderful niece and nephew. In his other life, pardon me, Arjun's family owns and manages apartment buildings, and he's rented to many international students at Thompson Rivers University. Gentlemen, thanks very much for joining us this afternoon. I'll transfer the screen over to you now and look forward to your presentation. There we are. Hello, everyone. Can everybody hear us now? Hear you loud and clear. We can't hear you, so okay, thank you. First of all, thanks for having us. We're excited to give this webinar to everybody here today. And I just want to add on to Arjun's bio and say congratulations publicly because Arjun was just elected, I believe, third vice president from the Union of PC Municipalities. Thank you. Anyway, let's get going here. The title of our webinar is Attracting International Students to Your Community, but I think I want to make clear that we're not actually talking about marketing and recruitment efforts. We're more talking about welcoming international students in our community, or maybe better, attracting them to become permanent residents or to stay on. The other thing that we might want to mention right off the bat, Arjun, maybe you could jump in here, is that some of our collaboration between the university and the city is not necessarily formal. And we'll be talking about the ad hoc nature of it. Hi everybody, Arjun Singh here. I also want to thank Adrian, Josh, and Catherine for having me here today. And thank you for showcasing our community in Kalos. Adrian's the expert. He's written a book I haven't. But certainly from the perspective of the relationship between the city and the university and international education, it's not really a formal relationship in a lot of ways. They'll call us on an event or initiative by initiative basis, and we're always there to help. I would say that maybe 10 years ago when a lot of the stuff was starting in Kalos in terms of students from India or enhancing students from China, our mayor went to China. At the time, our mayor was Terry Lake, and he was actually on a leave from faculty of veterinary medicine at TRU. So he was asked to go to China by the then president and then somewhere there, just some events. And then I also helped guarantee some of the initial Indian students who come to Kalos. So certainly from the perspective of the relationship, it's strong, but it's not necessarily something we meet about it all the time. It's kind of more of a case-by-case thing. Okay. So in terms of the number of international students that TRU and Kalos welcomes each year, we currently this semester at TRU have over 1700 international students from more than 70 countries. But really this number doesn't tell the full story because this number just represents students, international students who are registered in credit-based courses on campus. If we include all the students throughout the year registered in credit-based courses, plus the approximately 1,000 international students who come to TRU for non-credit, short-term specialized training. And we include the 100-plus students in the school district in Kamloops, in SD73 in Kalos, Thompson, and in the independent schools in the region. We're well over 3,000 international students probably from over 80 or 90 countries and regions around the world that are in our community each year. Now one of the things that we've found very important is to really sound obvious, but to really get to know who your students are so that that can shape the support that's provided. And I'm just going to pull up a useful tool for demonstrating the type of diversity that we have on our campus and in our community and also sort of illustrate how some of the demographic shifts that occur over time impact the way we support the students. So I'm not sure how well everybody can read the names on this graph, but in the far right corner of your screen you'll see that China is our largest source region similar to the statistics that we just saw from Catherine followed by India and then Saudi Arabia and Nigeria Russia and Ukraine. So you can see a tremendous diversity what's going to happen when I click this little button over here is we're going to go back in time to approximately 20 years ago and you'll see that things were pretty different then. So for example if I stop right here in 1998 you'll see that the top source countries and regions for international students at TRU were Japan, Taiwan South Korea, Hong Kong and well there's a little blip of Mexico but then Macau and really mainland China which is highlighted in yellow is barely surfacing there. So a couple of interesting things here and that is first of all most of our students were from East Asia similar, culturally similar places, you know confusion based societies that really value formalized education and higher education and that definitely impacts the way that we support them. Now if we continue on in time we see something very interesting around the year 2001 all of a sudden due to government visa regulations and changes we see the massive expansion of growth of students from mainland China and you might wonder well what does that mean? Well really it does change the way we provide support for students because they come with different needs so 15 years ago students from mainland China were very much closed they're coming from quite a closed society where they had little knowledge of the west where they had very different sort of etiquette and norms and that impacted for example things like housing so during that period of time when we saw massive influx of students from mainland China at TRU our home state program for example encountered some difficulties where the even things like for fear of sounding a bit controversial even things like bathroom washroom expectations and norms were incredibly different expectations for food when a home state family we're expecting them to provide three meals a day to our students if they couldn't provide food that students from China were accustomed to or could easily adjust to that created problem so we had to make some adjustments there that's just our first example if we carry on you'll see the years changing here all of a sudden we go to 2010 11 we see a massive number of Saudi Arabian students so you know over 400 students from Saudi Arabia almost to descend it upon the city and some of the interesting things that we need to consider and accommodate with a group like Saudis are first of all they're predominantly devout Muslims so you're going to need prayer space on your campus and possibly in the community and it's not prior to the arrival of the Saudis at TRU we had a designated multi-faith prayer room but it was designed for people who wanted you know a solitary moment now and again to you know show their spirituality have a quiet moment it wasn't accommodate you know several hundred people who all need to pray in a particular way at the same time so you need to make accommodations and consider things like that another issue that popped up the arrival of the Saudi Arabian students is that that 400 that number of approximately 400 students didn't represent the true number of Saudis in our community because many of them were married and brought spouses and children and many of the spouses if the and I should also add that the Saudi students are predominantly sponsored by a scholarship program called the King Abdullah scholarship program sponsored by their government where the primary sponsored student can bring their dependence as well so the primary sponsored students typically but not always were males and this meant that their dependence sometimes daughters and in many cases wives were here in our community and not necessarily comfortable going down to the swim public swimming pool for swim for example and they started coming to our international student advisors and saying what can we do to create opportunities for for the female Saudi students and dependence to socialize and to have an active you know normal life and so that's where some of our opportunities to see what the city occurred because at TRU on our campus and adjacent to our campus we have an amazing facility called the tournament capital center with an Olympic size swimming pool well the Saudi students started asking us could we arrange to have a women's only swimming time where we put up some barriers so that the public can't peer in on the female Saudis who are swimming for reasons they weren't comfortable with that and so we did have really amazing support from from the city and the recreation department there so that's one example of some accommodations if we click forward then we see a change basically the Saudi students move into third place and the Indian students move into second place in terms of numbers of students on our campus and in the community and a very interesting thing when we look at these three groups and compare them is we need to think about what their goals and aspirations are why are they here, why have they come to TRU and why have they come to Kamloops statistically speaking we know that the Chinese students in Canada 50% of them now return home after completing their diploma their degree the Saudi students on the other hand 100% of them I shouldn't say 100, nearly 100% return home because that's a requirement of their sponsorship the Indian students on the other hand which are one of the fastest growing groups are and this is anecdotal and I'm not backed by any research but they are predominantly viewing their educational experience in BC as a stepping stone to a pathway to permanent residence in British Columbia or elsewhere in Canada so the way we support those three groups for example is quite different knowing that some of them are only here temporarily some are here and will likely become Canadians and their experience as a student is just the very first step and we certainly want to make sure that we are welcoming all three of those groups but also that we're aware of why they're here the approach that we've taken at TRU is to have really to have a language and cultural specific support and we really want it to be one-on-one and personalized so we've invested at TRU in the largest and most diverse ISA team ISA stands for International Student Advisor so in this photograph you'll see that we have a large group of nine members we currently this photo is a little bit old but we currently have two Mandarin speaking advisors a Japanese speaker an Arabic speaker a Swahili speaker a Russian-Ukrainian speaker and a Korean speaker so we've matched each of our major cultural groups with an advisor and that way we know that students who do need that help are in appropriate ways and within their own language if necessary now one of the things I wanted to just ask Arjun to talk about connecting with the last slide as well is in terms of the different cultural groups that come to Kamloops as a property manager did you notice or feel different pressures or needs with each group? Yeah, so thanks Fabian so I wear a couple of hats and I'm a property manager and also a facilitation work on welcoming community staff with a property management job with our apartment buildings we have two buildings in Kamloops my family, about seven or eight years it's quite close to the university and we certainly notice an increase in international students applying or renting from us certainly there is a little more work to be done there letting them know about the way rentals work in BC and we have lots of help from the university with that as well we also have different cultural practices like people like to bargain for rent, which we don't do other folks don't understand issues around leases and that kind of thing it almost is kind of like if you have one tent that's of a certain cultural group and it rips out well, which they normally do that others come because it's kind of an internal grapevine they have among their cultural or sorts of Chinese community or the students of the Saudi community students as examples that Adrian gave it's really enriching for our tenants generally our tenant base is culture diverse a lot of other folks get a chance to meet people from other countries a lot in terms of having that ability to expose ourselves and do other tents to other cultures and typically it doesn't take too long for everybody to kind of understand a situation and we can help accommodate things sometimes as well in terms of sometimes some of the tenants, for example from Africa sometimes have trouble with their money coming up with their parents so we have to wait a while and obviously they've been there for a while with us to kind of understand and we can make arrangements that way so it does take a little bit of I don't know flexibility but not a lot in my experience over to you. Thank you, Arjun and this is another opportunity for me to say thank you to Arjun because as a local property manager he really stepped up a couple of years ago when we had an unfortunate apartment fire in a property that wasn't managed by his family but we had 30 students from TRU who were displaced by this fire and when in the international department in international student services we sought to immediately find solutions housing solutions for those students and the city of course managed an emergency response center to help assist them as well but in terms of sort of the medium term support that's where as a university we felt that was our role and because of the time of year being I think at the beginning of March or late February it was tricky to find property managers in the city who were willing to accommodate students for just the two or three months to get them through the school year and Arjun's company we gave him a call and he stepped up and said if we have spots if we have any apartments available we'll make sure students are housed to the end of the school year until they can get back on their feet or find another solution so well thank you too because there's sort of a motive there around having students stay longer than just the short term so most of them did so worked out pretty well for us too and it's just one more example of how when we're dealing with international students we can't have the cookie cutter approach the one size fits all they can't be treated the same way that another person walking down the street looking to rent an apartment would be treated because they have very unique needs that's why at TRU we've sort of invested in developing this very diverse international student advisor team because another example of some unique characteristics of each cultural group and the previous slide talking about knowing who your students are is that some cultures are much more independent than others and integrate better while others are sort of notoriously disengaged and that's where having the language and culture specific support within your team helps they can act as the liaison not only to supports on campus but supports in the community in terms of this idea of building a welcoming community even beyond the university campus there's a number of things that we do first of all we engage in social media we can build a sense of community prior to arrival and TRU is very proud specifically our international department TRU World we're very proud of the fact that we now have a half million likes on our Facebook page and you can snoop on a few other universities even really big ones in places like Vancouver and Toronto and they don't come anywhere close to that number of likes and traffic on their website some research has shown specifically research done with Chinese international students that when they engage on social media they are more likely to engage with other students in the classroom but if they don't have that sort of safe space with a bit of anonymity I've said the word wrong anonymity then it's much tougher for them to engage and make friends and even connect with their instructor people in the community of course it can be quite daunting to do that as a newcomer so engaging on social media is a big part of this personalized pre-arrival communication making sure students get a lot of information about where they're coming to not only information about what they'll be studying and connecting them with academic advisors and things like that but connecting them to supports in the community and we do that in a number of ways and the third point on this slide is the airport and bus depot reception and this is one of the ways that TRU stands out we aim to meet the vast majority of our students when they arrive in Kamut we want to meet them at the airport or at the bus depot and not every university or college or private language school is able to do this and we also recognize that in some places it's not as feasible and maybe not as necessary but one of my colleagues from College of the Rockies at a recent international education conference said in a room full of people in similar roles as ours he said, I believe that every single international student must be met at the airport to give that first impression that you're welcome here and that we care about you and so that's again the approach that we've tried to take now depending on what kind of community you're in there are a number of different options in our case our staff sets up a booth at the airport and this is one of the ways we're liaising with the community in collaborating. The airport in Kamut has very generously provided as a space where we can have a banner and a desk and where we can leave at the end of the night when the airport closes around midnight after the last flight from Vancouver we can leave our materials there and they've even waived the parking fees for our staff on those days and for our student volunteers who are there and likewise the Greyhound station has done the same thing so that's an area where collaboration is really benefitting the first impression to welcome students the next thing we do is a week long orientation where we have a number of events for students specifically for the new international students and we spend a lot of time liaising with local businesses so whether it's the cell phone providers because sometimes students the first question they ask is where can I get a phone I need to send a message home to mom and dad or my parents want to wire some money to me how do I set up a bank account so we're liaising with those businesses cell phone providers the big banks in some cases we invite them to come to campus during our orientation depending on the weather in the time of year at other times of year we get the students we take a more student centered approach and we get them out on a bit of a tour of the city a scavenger hunt where they stop at various businesses and and get support there and then finally we have a very large welcome reception or party with the president of the university and deans or directors and we always have a mayor or deputy mayor just pass this over to Arjun to talk a little bit about the importance of that interaction I think it's something where you can use your local council members to invite them to these kind of events they're really enjoyable to come to and provide them a welcome from the community as an official if you want to call that capacity and give the students the the right feeling that this is all a team effort in terms of the community as a whole is very excited to have them here when we have them now at TRU there's probably 500 countries sometimes on those receptions and everybody gets a bit festive with flags and have a chance to meet people and talk with them about the various cultures again it's largely a ceremonial role from the perspective of deputy mayor kind of a role but it is important for us to be there and I don't think you ever have time no one came people are always there and it is a priority for us to support the university in that way just as an added thing I think part of what we'd like to do is try to enhance the post once they're graduating and potentially start a business approach we had a couple of businesses over the years but it hasn't been as active as the welcome stuff so that's probably a to-do list so they kind of come great okay the next thing that we've really focused on that TRU and in the city is intercultural competence training and it's something we're doing with the students themselves with faculty community and employers and there's research out there that shows that just by bringing international students to a campus or a community does not mean that intercultural learning will take place and in some cases if there aren't purposeful interventions to promote intercultural learning and competence then actually you can have the opposite of the intended effect so in other words internationalization as a process as something positive doesn't happen just by recruiting a bunch of international students you have to really take some efforts and we're doing that TRU has got we're very lucky that we have Dr. Kyra Garson a renowned intercultural communications and competence expert on our campus and she facilitates a lot of workshops for faculty and for students we have a group of students called the intercultural council and they are international students domestic students including aboriginal students who receive funding from TRU World the international department with the purpose of engaging different cultural groups on campus and creating events that encourage intercultural learning we also at the university have come up with a credential called the global competency credential and this is something that students earn by having intercultural experiences for example a student who goes on the study abroad would earn X number of points towards this credential they could demonstrate intercultural learning by being in group work in certain classes with students from around the world or from other cultures they could also earn points towards this credential by speaking second or third on additional languages so that's something where we've made an effort to recognize and encourage intercultural competence and learning and basically stating to the community and to the students this is important learning to work together and learn together is important and we want to recognize those of you who have taken the time to focus on that and who also have reflected on the experience because again you have to have something purposeful for them to be a real benefit and we also have a real focus at TRU on this idea of comprehensive campus internationalization again this is the idea that you don't just bring students here and expect magic to happen we have to work with faculty it could be as in terms of things like making sure that faculty are revisiting their curricula because if all of your references are Canadian that might not suit the needs of these learners who have come from all over the world finally I want to point out a really valuable tool that we've been using is something called the intercultural development inventory or IDI and you can see the web link there we won't click on it now but you might want to jot that down if you're not already familiar with it but in a nutshell it's a tool that allows the participants to fill out a survey and that survey then places them on a continuum of mindsets and each mindset is organized around the ability of the individual to recognize cultural similarity and difference and so on the one end we have for example denial people who simply don't see that culture impacts their lives and they recognize for example that they're such a thing as Chinese food and Indian food but they don't recognize that there might be some cultural values hidden somewhere in the way that food's prepared or in how people eat it and things like that and then on the other end we have adaptation people who not only recognize cultural difference but they actually can adapt their behavior appropriately depending on which cultural groups they're working with. We found this to be an incredibly valuable tool when working with support staff on campus with faculty with the students themselves and with community groups and I've been involved with Dr. Kyra Garcin in delivering workshops for two community groups here in Kamloops the Elizabeth Frye Society and the Phoenix Center which came to be as a result of something called our Welcoming Communities Initiative. I'm going to hand this over to Arjun to talk a little bit about that Welcoming Communities Initiative because he played a major role in it. There was a better government initiative around the Prince of Government, I'm not too sure but it was a government initiative to try to get our businesses thinking more around employing people from different communities and it just wasn't about the cultural communities, it was also people from different abilities handicaps, those kind of things. So we facilitated two workshops at the beginning and the end of the process to try and see if this just set it up and do a bit of a recap at the end. I think it was useful in the sense that there was certainly a lot of people in the community who had a good history of working in this way. Calum as a community has sort of multiculturalism baked in its DNA for the last 150 years so much around our First Asians communities. We had one of the first African-Canadian City Councils back in the 1910-1920 era. First Aboriginal MP Len Marchand, First Chinese Heritage Mayor, and Peter Wing back in the 70s. So this is something we kind of have a bit of a history with but we definitely do have our issues as well in terms of an example of that would be right now some of our Saudi student community when we have young ladies walking around in the cabs or in different kind of dresses and the community has different views on that. Definitely it can sometimes be a bit of a conflict here and there. So working through those questions in terms of a dialogue, in terms of having a way of community coming together to talk about those things in a safe and sort of open generative kind of a way is what we do in those two dialogues welcoming communities. And certainly I think I'm glad to hear that Kyron had some opportunities to post those things with those wonder after the dialogues what comes of them because these are time limited projects in terms of the staff funding that's supporting them. But we also have a very good campus immigrant services in Canlips. Our American services association here is very strong came around actually during the days of the 70's with the Vietnamese bold people issue and beverages coming to Canada in that that era and then growing from there and really offering so many intercultural services over the years in our community. So that was basically that whole initiative. Thank you. Now I apologize for this slide being probably full of more information than you want. Probably. But basically just want to identify a number of ways that the University international student services support staff orient and facilitate access to various things for our international students. So it's not always necessarily a collaboration specifically with the city but it involves the community. So in an earlier slide we talked for example about the getting to know your students and their goals and their purpose for being here. And I mentioned that our Indian students that are growing in numbers tend to be focused on a pathway to permanent residents. So what we're noticing for example is that the first question many students from India ask us when they arrive is not how do I read my course schedule but how do I get a job what is this social insurance number I've heard about where do I get it. So that's just one example of where we've worked with services Canada in Cabloops and they actually recommended to us because they found themselves being flooded at certain times of the year with new students. They recommended well could you provide a place up on campus during your orientation and we'll come and set up there and we can issue SIN numbers on the spot to new students and they said wow fantastic that's going to make life so much easier for the students it's going to reduce one of their stresses and it's been a wonderful collaboration. Tax returns, GST credits and then the big one CIC that Citizenship and Immigration Canada applications for things like study permit extensions etc. Those are all things that as a staff we need to facilitate access to some of them are available in the city through federal or other organizations some not in the city but we still help with that. In terms of provincial programs TRU we're very proud to be as far as I know only the second public post secondary in the province that offers an MSP group plan for our students and kudos to the University of the Fraser Valley for being the first there and many universities don't want to touch this they might be afraid of liability and a few other things but we decided that we would much rather know for sure that every one of our students is covered by medical insurance then leave it up to them so we work closely with the folks at MSP and we manage that group plan for them things like driver's licenses that's another you know provincial service nearby that we facilitate access to and in terms of local resources obviously we need to work with the medical clinics because prior to an international student being eligible for MSP we've registered them all in a private medical insurance plan so we need to assist with students finding the medical clinics and health clinics in town here in Kamloops that will accept their medical coverage pre-approved so they're not out of pocket and things like that. We've already talked a little bit about the housing and one of the things that Arjun and I have discussed in the past and we haven't quite gone on to this initiative yet is creating some kind of guide for property owners and managers in the city and what could we do as a university to help assist creating guidelines to reduce issues that come up between international students who are tenants and the property owners so that's on our to-do list public transportation we've worked well with the public buses in Kamloops so that when new students arrive they're able to ride the bus even before they get their what we call a U pass which is their student card which allows riding the bus for free so we had some pretty good success there and legal advice every now and again our students do find themselves in trouble or on the wrong side of the law and we collaborate with people in the city to make sure we get them advice that they need club events and activities for social integration we're really focusing on this and I mentioned the intercultural council but we also run an activity program for international students which connects them with the kinds of things that Canadians love to do so there's a lot of outdoorsy stuff a lot of getting out in a canoe going up to sun peaks going for students who are over the age of 19 taking them to tour the wineries in the Okanagan and things like that or here or here we do have some now a couple of good the three good wineries in the Thompson 4 and so things like that we've started integrating with or collaborating I should say with a number of organizations in the city to get students out and accessing the fun things that are happening for them with the idea that if you can connect you can connect with locals easier if you like and enjoy and know how to do the things that locals like to do so that's a big part of it volunteering opportunities we're always looking for organizations and we have found so many in Kamloops that provide opportunities for students to volunteer things like the St. John's Ambulance even the their name escapes my mind the Mounted Patrol in Kamloops the Mounted Patrol Kamloops Mounted Patrol they welcome visitors to Kamloops that's right things like that of course we're liaising with faith communities and various we talked about the issue of prayer space so we're very lucky that most of the major faith groups have a community in Kamloops and a space there's now a mosque here for example there are temples for quite some time but we connect students to those places in addition to the fact that we do have a multi-faith chaplaincy on campus the Kamloops Multicultural Society has been an important organization that we liais with and they're very much involved with the city during Canada Day celebrations Arjun maybe you could talk briefly about that our Multicultural Society Kamloops basically runs Canada Day it's run by the Multicultural Society so that's a group of all cultural societies in Kamloops we have a very very famous I would like you guys and Canada Day to come by for our famous Multicultural Food Boost on Canada Day and so very much a Multicultural component to our Canada Day we have people who speak Canada in different languages and also on that point the students up here are getting more involved with that now where they're coming down and setting up boosts and having a strong presence as Canada Day and that's also helping integrate into the community so again not really a formal formal thing that we do in the city but a very meaningful thing that happens around a city's response or a city's sort of contracted out if you will eventually Multicultural Society to run that and our Canada Day usually depends on whether it runs about 30 or 40,000 people in our main park Riverside Park now Arjun has already talked a little bit about Kamloops Immigrant Services and what a strong an excellent organization that is and of course the school district we liaise with them in terms of marketing and recruitment joint efforts and also supports for students so we're working more with them to bring international students who are in the school district on to the campus at TRU to get them interested in staying here and I think one success this fall was that we had eight students who converted from international students who converted from the school district to TRU which does I think demonstrate that they want to stay in Kamloops and they're enjoying their time here. In terms of specific reports on campus we're seeing more and more pressure from international students for the university to provide career education support to provide co-op job positions to put on and host job fairs and career development workshops and those sort of things our writing center so back to the idea of co-op that requires the university to liaise with local businesses because they are the ones who actually provide the job opportunities and many of them have given just amazing feedback about the quality of a worker they're getting in an international student who might be in their third year of their program. The writing center on campus is a place that brings community volunteers who are giving their time to help assist students in writing and this is all students not just international but we do find that the largest users of the writing center are international students so that's a nice connection there and the school of business and economics at TRU has really done tremendous work in organizing networking and mentoring events where they identify local entrepreneurs business owners and they match them together with business students and we haven't talked about this previously in the webinar but the school of business is the faculty on campus that has the largest number of international students so just the nature of this program means that we are seeing international students being connected with local business owners and you see them around town you go to dinner at Earl's and you'll recognize oh there's one of our international students having a one-on-one dinner and conversation with one of the most successful entrepreneurs in town it's really amazing to see and service learning courses if you're not familiar with that term a service learning course is a for credit course where students get out into the community and volunteer and have learning outcomes attached to what they're doing which they then have assignments connected to and that's evaluated and for credit and Arjun could talk a little bit about some of the experience he's had with service learning students in the city of Kamloops so as the counselor I did this course I think it's a really important thing for it's come out of international education at TRU but it can obviously be for any kind of student but it really gets people out in the community learning off campus being part of the greater you know community and what I had I had two international students actually work with me and one we really went quite far down the line of actually trying to help plan a car sharing program in Kamloops and give it over to a community group which is so working on getting it set up and what you found with Karen the young lady from Eastern Columbia that I work with is that you're really really interested really really very very punctual wants to really showcase what her abilities are and I think that that's a really great way for also international sort of student communities which typically in my experience tend to sort of come together there's not a lot of mixing sometimes between different communities as far as I can see so it gets them out into the larger community meeting people from outside their cultural group and building relationships and friendships out there so really awesome and something I would definitely recommend at a university I take up and then finally we just have a point here about leadership programs on campus and the importance of those and one of my observations has been particularly with the Saudi students because of their sponsorship program they were actually not they're forbidden from working from paid employment but they really so many of them strongly desired the opportunities to volunteer and to gain leadership skills so specific programs that can be developed on campus or in the community that are non-paid but that are focused on developing leadership skills will be very much appreciated by many international students so yeah thanks for this slide so we're talking about some of the more formal things that happen with the city as we said this is kind of more of a it's more of informal as they need the city we get involved but we do have some significant programs international realm that are not a lot of years 25 years of city leadership of the town in Japan called Uji we're actually five of us from our council and some community members following their next week for our once every two year trip with a very special request this year because 25 years of relationship we have certainly had Uji students in TRU and in the school district the city of Kalimps actually sends an English teacher every year to Uji high schools I believe to teach English there and so every second year they're here the ultimate year we're there and it depends we can make it for the trip of that kind of thing usually not so many politicians go it's a big one this year so a bunch of us are going and it really is a hallmark of one of our international things we do in the cities it's quite formal our Japanese community and Kalimps is very invested in that program TRU is very invested in that program and it really works very well I think from that perspective protocol functions have already covered pretty well we have two economic developments that are functions maybe three in the city venture Kalimps economic development arm and obviously there has been some I think TRU when they market when they host international students they have brochures and information around helping businesses set up or retain businesses in Kalimps and our tourism our tourism which is tourism Kalimps which has a staff and a budget to sort of promote tourism opportunities in town you see a lot of our students actually in my experience do work in the hotels after as a side job or after graduation I find a lot of them see them again in the hospitality industry which I think is really a great thing for us in the community hope it's good for them too I would be remiss if I didn't mention just our whole sports hosting and our sports focus in Kalimps with German capital branding that we have so a lot of people I think really come here and they get into physical fitness they are able to look at watch and participate in quite high quality sporting events and you know whatever brand you have as a community you can build on that I think to attract a bit of an edge for people who would enjoy what your community offers what your college or what your particular situation offers we are really big here in Kalimps on sports hosting and sports and physical fitness and health and wellness just generally so I see a lot of our students in the gym at the German capital center getting quite fit and it makes me very happy so yeah thanks Arjun I'm just going to jump in with one little story about the value of collaboration with venture cam loops they often host events on our campus and in one of these networking events I was introduced to a local fellow who was starting a business from the ground up where he was sourcing drills that were going to be used in the mining industry in China but he needed somebody to translate some manuals for him and he didn't have he wasn't at the stage in his business yet where he could afford to a large translation firm so he just asked would you know anybody and I said well yeah in fact I know about 600 people who could help and we approached some students and it was great because we were assisting a local you know budding entrepreneur who was just at the very beginning of his venture which hopefully grows into something big and employs people and brings some prosperity here in Kalimps but we were also providing that very first opportunity for a Chinese international student studying business to have a real life interaction and do something that they were going to get paid for but also we're probably going to learn a tremendous amount from and something they could add to their resume portfolio finally I just wanted to talk briefly about some gaps in support for international students or some you know the other side of the coin is viewing them as opportunities for intentional support we have some issues with things like the rigidity with rules and definitions so PR meaning permanent resident international student refugee claimant for example so we give people labels at the university and this impacts the support they get one example is we talked about immigration services and as a settlement agency they receive funding from the federal government and that funding is only to support people who are permanent residents landed immigrants so when you are an international student you get support from the university when you are permanent resident you get support from the settlement agency like services but what happens to you during that period of time after you've graduated and you're here on your 3 year post grad work permit you're a temporary foreign worker so there's a big gap whereas the university we want to extend our support even though they're no longer students and Kamloops immigrant services has been exceptional about exceptional about always having their door open for people and never turning anyone away even though technically they're not allowed to so we've got some issues there and that's where the close relationship with the community organizations is really important another example of a gap is that CIC Citizenship and Immigration Canada they state and you can find this on their website that if you're an international student in Canada that your child can participate in K to 12 education free of charge but the problem is education is a provincial jurisdiction and the province of BC has said that it's up to each individual school board to determine if they're going to charge tuition or not to children of post secondary international students so we've got a bit of a gap there and that requires collaboration between the school districts and the universities and colleges and private schools and then another issue we have in terms of an opportunity is to come up with funding for international students in financial need there is an expectation that international students are coming with a lot of money and in many cases that is true and they in order to get a visa or a study permit to a student in their family does need to demonstrate that they have the funds to get the student through their program of choice however we know that in the real world situations change tragedies can occur to a family or to the funding source we have sponsored students who then lose their sponsorship and now they're in Canada we have natural disasters that occur overseas and impact the way a student may receive their funding and we're also seeing more and more and I think particularly about students from India we're seeing students who are taking loans student loans back home and I often think about the pressure that a student from India must feel when they borrowed so many rupees to pay for a Canadian dollar education if they're not successful and they have to go home and pay off that loan but they can now only earn rupees not dollars what stress that puts on them and typically the scholarships that are available for international students tend to be they tend to be entrance awards used to attract students but not to retain them not to retain students in financial needs so there's definitely more work to be done there and perhaps collaboration with sources of funding in the community we could do more to engage disengaged groups on campus certain cultural groups tend to hang out with one another and not integrate as well there's more work to be done there perhaps liaising with the multicultural society or other cultural organizations in the city and this idea of open learning or online learning if you're not familiar with the term MOOC that stands for massive open online course essentially that is a free online course that could be delivered all over the world and one of the things Arjun and I were talking about just last week was what if we worked together to develop a course that introduced newcomers to count loops pre-arrival to the history of the city the region the province and to what to expect when they get here and what supports are available and we could offer that free of charge through the university as an online course I think that would be tremendously valuable and Arjun already talked about trying to retain parents and family and so maybe we would work more on an orientation for parents and family not just focusing on the individual student and also in terms of the follow-up when the parents show up for graduation or a convocation ceremony what could we do together with the city to even though it's not a welcome but to continue to welcome them and encourage them to stay and basically that's it for us I jotted down this quote when I was at a conference last year that minister Alexander said integration takes place in the classroom in the hallways and the library and I took the liberty of adding a few more points and in the streets in the hallways in university residences grocery store and co-op work terms at student club events and activity programs and major city events on the internet and we could go on and on so I want to thank all of you hopefully you're still awake and not in a post lunch siesta and we're ready for any questions if you have any awesome thank you so much both really loved all of the real world anecdotes that you were able to share about how really how clearly successful the two of you have been with your respective organizations in making you know not only the TRU campus but Kamloops and the region as a whole as such a welcoming environment for international students that's really great to hear we do have quite a few questions that have come in and I'll start from the top and work our way down we've got about 15 minutes here we can determine classroom capacity and dormitory capacity is there any way to determine community capacity well maybe I'll just jump in and say I know that work has been done by I think by the Canada homestay network and some other groups on determining not exactly community capacity but specifically the capacity of the community to host international students in a homestay program and I can tell you that I can't remember the exact ratio of you know residents to students but we have blown past that probably three fold here at TRU and it's a question we ask a lot because we do at certain peak times for example the month of July we have a lot of pressure to host short term non-credit specialized training groups from around the world and I believe last summer we placed about 180 students in the month of July in homes in Kamloops and Kamloops is a city of approximately 90,000 people yeah I say for sure that we have a pretty strong hosting ability in Kamloops you have to develop that over time also develop I mean you know where a cultural groups you have might be a good way of starting also that notion of community capacity in terms of understanding multicultural communities great thanks both David asks and this is in reference Catherine to one of your slides there I think just with the breakdown of the types of international students in BC David asks curious if there's any explanation in the drop in private language school participants over the last two years 2013-14 as noted on this slide there potentially could be several reasons for that being certain issues with visa refusals delayed processing time challenge implications as well as implementation of reforms to the international student program at a federal level which in turn all provinces and territories had to provide the federal government with a list of designated institutions who are now able to host international students on study permit so some of those changes potentially did have an impact on that sector as well I think though going forward it looks like that T3 has rebounded in the future years so we're happy to see that positive growth. Awesome thanks Catherine and again I'm thinking this is in reference to other slides Catherine Alan is asking who is marketing the programs overseas no more specifics given for that but I would just I'll let you run with that maybe it makes more sense in your context Sure well first of all schools and institutions do the majority of marketing they are traveling all the time they are promoting themselves they have agents who promote themselves it's very hard to do that to support them the government did hire education marketing managers so those are individuals I mentioned are hired by the Ministry of International Trade and they're located in offices in China, India, Japan and Korea so their job is not to promote specific programs although they do have a knowledge of programs their job is to promote British Columbia as a study destination the high quality education we have the many benefits of coming to British Columbia to study they also support our schools and institutions in market so for example if an institution is planning to visit Korea that education marketing manager can provide support and help identify meetings they also do participate in a number of events and again they often do to gather support or sorry they often do a kind of more coordinated approach to events so they may have seven or eight institutions who are interested in attending and they will coordinate and organize that in addition to the education marketing managers we have the British Columbia Council for International Education so they're a Crown Corporation they do a lot of work with promoting British Columbia through the coordination of team BC missions abroad so for example one minister one minister travel to India and fall BCCIA that's the education delegation and had a number set up a number of round tables meetings where again they were promoting British Columbia as a study destination we also have the the ministry has a website an international education website that has information for international students and parents who are interested in coming to British Columbia and that website is translated into a number of languages and BCCIA also has a website promoting British Columbia and again information about studying and learning here in British Columbia as well as potential work opportunities awesome thank you Catherine this is a question for Adrian Pamela asks what percentage of your total student body is that 1750 international students well it always depends who you're asking for numbers but in which semester we're talking about in a fall semester which is our largest semester on campus at TRU it's approximately 20% great great Lucas Lucas is saying TRU started from humble beginnings and is truly earning a well deserved and frankly awesome reputation here in BC however a student in a country such as China where reputation is everything may not have heard of TRU or even Kamloops what sort of things do you do to attract students to TRU especially in a place where TRU or Kamloops may not be as well known as other Canadian institutions specifically UBC SFU or UVic well that's first of all that's a huge question and it's one better directed to our marketing and recruitment team but I'll jump in and try and add something here it really depends on the market that we're talking about in China for example the students and more importantly their parents tend to be very much focused on name recognition and ranking so when once they've made the decision to come to Canada it's tough to even market BC because they're going to think I want to see the list of the top ranked universities in Canada they're likely going to end up with the McLean's magazine ranking and see U of T at number one etc so you've got to find a way to make a splash you've got to find a way to educate people who influence the students' decisions about why your institution is a good place one of our big selling points at TRU is the amazing array of support that we have for students but that's not always what the student or the parents think is important so we need to identify in China for example who influences the student decision if it's a student for example in a BC offshore school each school has a unique culture we need to identify is it the BC principal and vice principal who are influencing the students? in some of those schools you can go to a university fair and the principal will tap a student on the shoulder and say Jimmy you really need to talk to my friend from TRU over here I think countless of TRU would be a great place for you you're a good match that can go a long way but in other schools it might be a Chinese counselor making those decisions or and this happens more often than not it's an agency that the students and their families are using to help match them with a university and apply to a university and apply for their visa that is influencing their decisions so what we do at TRU is we use a network of agents and we hold agent training sessions so it's important for us to be on the ground in many of those markets to walk into those agents offices make sure they know the latest information about our programs that we're offering the supports that we offer because more often than not a student and a family are walking into that agent's office and saying little Johnny wants to go to Canada where should we go so that's a key thing to do UBC and UVic they're not working with agents they don't have to worry about that they have their branding and their ranking but smaller institutions like TRU and many others we have to work a little bit harder that's one of several of the things that we would need to do great thanks for that Danielle asks do you have a centralized international education office that includes recruitment, admissions, student services, student engagement, partnerships etc or do you partner with your domestic equivalents wondering about the size of your staff we are very lucky at TRU we do have a centralized approach although we don't have everything on that list in our office in the TRU world right now we have international student services we have the study abroad office which is also supporting domestic students who want to study abroad we have our transnational education which is working on partnerships 2 plus 2 programs for example we have our international training center that's the short term non-credit stuff and we have our marketing and recruitment team the actual international admissions office is in a separate location housed in the registrar's office but with very strong liaison in fact I'm the individual that liaises with that office and at various times that office has reported to the international department I think if you asked your colleagues from international departments around the province what model would they prefer to see I understand this is a bit controversial so if there's any registrar's in the room these closed rears I think we would find it better for recruitment and conversion of applications if the international admissions office was reporting to the international department that seems to be the most efficient way my bias perhaps thanks Adrian another question here from Alan he asks are there any resources available through the province to help develop new international student programs Catherine I'll turn that one over to you they are there to support all sectors so that's public, private key to 12 and the language sector as well there's also the British Columbia Council for international education they also are there mandated to support all sectors so those are great resources for schools or institutions who are looking to break into new market or who have any questions about international education or recruitment of students etc and their contact information either they can contact me for it or it's also available through the British Columbia Council for international education that lists education working matters with contact information so like I said those are two great resources where someone could go to find support and Catherine for those that do want to get in touch with you what would be the best way for them to do that Thanks very much and for those of you that may not have been able to jot that down quite quickly enough this webinar is being recorded and it will be available about a week from today available on our website to those of you who have registered you'll receive a link to that recording in about a week's time as well that is all the questions that we've had come in Valentina did ask a question but it was essentially the same as Alan so I'll consider that one answered Valentina if that didn't quite hit the mark do feel free to email Catherine and she can help you out with that I'm sure Arjun, Adrian, Catherine thank you so much for joining us today that was some really great insights as to really the sheer vastness that is international education to our economy and all of the fun ways that you can grow that sector and also your community as well in a really meaningful way so thank you so much for joining us and thank you to everyone on the line who's joined us to participate today if there are any other follow-up questions I think that Adrian and Arjun have provided their contact info as well as Catherine but I think that's it and until next time thanks very much take care thank you Josh Bye Catherine Bye