 All right, I think I'm good, Neil. Okay, thank you, Jen. And welcome everybody to this afternoon's Graduate Research Series talk. I'm Neil Romanoski, I'm the Dean of University Libraries. Wonderful to have you here today. Before we get started, we are just going to do a quick housekeeping note here about MS teams. And then Jen is gonna share a slide with some info on that. Thanks, Jen. Just a few tips here for a successful team session. One, if you could all please keep your microphones muted until you are asked to unmute or until we have open Q&A, that kind of thing. So at the top you'll see a little microphone button where you can click on that to mute yourself. If you wanna share your questions, thoughts, kudos, et cetera, you can do that in the chat which is highlighted in blue on this slide. It's a little bubble icon at the top of our screen. Please use the hand raise reactions to notify speakers, and an NAK today if you wanna share or engage without interrupting. We are of course very keen to hear your questions. So please do ask them. And you can also use the reaction buttons which are the three dots at the top of the screen. And use of live captioning for enhanced accessibility is available also through the, I'm sorry, that's through the three buttons at the top, the three dots at the top of the screen under more. The hand raise and reactions is the little reactions tab with the circle face and the raised hand at the top. So thank you, Jen for that. And I am now going to get into our session here. So once again, good afternoon. It's really wonderful to be with you all this afternoon. It's a pleasure to always a pleasure to launch this series and hear about people's research. So the graduate research series is collaboratively hosted by the university libraries, the Graduate Student Senate and Faculty Senate. And the series highlights the research process of graduate students through the sharing of not only the substance of their research, but the successes and challenges and use of information resources that they experienced throughout that process. The presenters for this series are selected by the Graduate Research Series Committee, which is composed of librarians and staff from university libraries, as well as people from Graduate Student Senate. And I'm very pleased to introduce this afternoon's presenter, Anna Kay Rowe, doctoral candidate of higher education. Anna Kay's presentation entitled Endless Possibilities and Exploration of the Postdoctoral Transitions of International Doctoral Graduates explores Anna Kay's research about the experiences and processes that international doctoral students navigate after graduation, specifically in the fields of education and the social sciences. Anna Kay holds two master's degrees from Ohio University, a master of public administration and a master of communication and development studies. And she holds a bachelor's degree from the University of West Indies, Mona. Over the past three years, Anna Kay has also served as a teaching assistant at the Global Leadership Center. Anna Kay's scholarly interests focus on transitions, career outcomes and preparedness of the international doctoral students in the United States. I'll also mention that Anna Kay is one of the founding members of our library's Student Advisory Board. So please help me in giving a warm welcome to Anna Kay. Thank you so much, Dean. Thank you everyone for being here today. I am so grateful for this opportunity and to have been selected as one of the presenters for the Graduate Research Series. I believe this may have been my second time applying. So I was so excited to have been selected this time around. And I'm looking forward to our conversation today. So firstly, I'd like to start by thanking the organizers, folks who are in charge of this entire series, University Libraries, the Dean and his team, and also the Graduate Student Senate and also Faculty Senate and everyone who was involved in selecting and advertising for this wonderful research opportunity. So I'd like to thank you so much for doing this. I think it's so important that students have the opportunity to present their research. So I'm gonna start off by sharing my screen. Let's see, let's see. Here we are. And earlier, Jen judged me for my many tabs. All right, so also as we go on, if you have questions as I'm presenting, feel free to share them in the chat. I'm not able to see the chat, but I do know that Jen will be monitoring the chat and we'll take questions later on. But as you have your questions, feel free to share them. So my research is entitled Endless Possibilities and Exploration of the Postdoctoral Transitions of International Graduates. And I really toyed with the idea of other titles. I had several title options and this may even change as I continue with my research. One of the titles I had, which I really liked was called Subject to Change and Exploration of the Postdoctoral Transitions because as we know, when you're on a research journey or your graduate school journey, a lot of things are subject to change. And I think that also aligned with this area of study. So for now, it's Endless Possibilities. At my doctoral defense, we'll see if I still have this topic. So I'm really happy to share this today and also to first off, by thanking and acknowledging my dissertation chair, Dr. Pete Matta for his support throughout this entire journey. So I'm gonna start with giving you an overview of what today's discussion will sort of look like. I'll start off by telling you a little bit more about me. You've heard a little bit about me earlier. I'll add a few things there. I'll then proceed by talking about some of the trends when it comes to international students that we're seeing in the United States. I'm gonna talk a little bit about the rationale and motivations, what brought me to this research, what informed this research. I'll share the research questions that I'm working with. I'll give you an overview of the literature. I won't dive too deeply into the literature, but I'll point a few things out and talk about the major themes in my literature review. Then I'll explore the two theoretical frameworks that are guiding my study. I'll give you an overview of the methodology and my research design, talk a little bit about the data collection process and share some of my preliminary findings given that I'm still in the stages of analyzing my data. I'll talk a little bit about next steps where I see this research going, the contribution I hope this research will have and also the scope for future research. Then I'll talk briefly about some of the main library resources I utilized and perhaps some I wish I utilized sooner. I'll reflect on the research journey and I'm really looking forward to this point because this is where I'm offering advice and encouragement and really just talking about how this journey has been for me as a researcher and then we'll open it up for questions and comments. So a little bit about me and I was in preparing for today. I was gonna do how it started, how it's going kind of image but then I remember I looked at some of my pictures from my first year in 2014 and I was just like maybe let's not share that because I feel like so much has changed since then in addition to I've grown in several ways in that I look almost twice the size as I was in 2014 but that's the story for another day. So about me, I'm Jamaican. I'm an international student. I've been in Athens since 2014. I'm proud to be first gen. So I'm a first generation student as well. I've completed dual master's degrees here at OU. At present, I'm a doctoral candidates in the HESA program, higher education and student affairs hoping to be able to defend my dissertation and complete my research this year. I am a teaching assistant and instructor. I've go between those titles. This semester I'm a teaching assistant. Prior semesters, I've been an instructor at the Global Leadership Center which is a part of the Center for International Studies. I'm also a visiting scholar at the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Institute at Rutgers University. Samuel DeWitt Proctor Institute is a Center for Leadership Equity and Justice. I'm also a first gen mentor and have been since 2018. My mentee and I who still have a great relationship she actually graduates this semester. So I'm very happy to have been part of her experience at Ohio University. I also consider myself to be a global citizen. I think the world is our oyster and I pride myself on being globally engaged but being locally active as well. And I think that's something that we should all aspire towards. I'm also an advocate. I think of myself as an advocate for graduate students for professional development and support for international students and also graduate student welfare. So that's a little bit about me. So we're gonna talk about the international student experience. And as I shared with Dean earlier and Jen I think it's such a great week for us to be having this conversation because it's one of my favorite weeks on campus. It's International Week but also I realized today via Twitter that it's graduate student appreciation week. I don't think those two weeks tend to coincide very often but I think it's such a wonderful week for us to be having this conversation. So I wanna start off by just framing it this way and talking about international education, internationalization and what that means which is by design a very profound transitory experience. It involves a lot of transitions, a lot of change, a lot of adjustment. International students in particular typically find themselves maneuvering between home and abroad and re-envisioning what home means. They find themselves going between being sometimes a novice and other times an expert. We also are navigating intersectional identities. We also find ourselves being sometimes an insider and outsider in the US context. We're an alien which is something that we chuckle about and talk about but in many respects we are currently here but not from here but also we're navigating higher education and also we're thinking about our career and trying to find that middle ground and navigate those two things and prepare for those next steps. So three key tenets of this when we talk about international students we often talk about their experiences, their experiences in the United States, their experiences in their programs. We don't talk about them in terms of the assets. Often enough we tend to talk about a lot of the challenges they endure which are valid and important but they also bring so many assets and valuable contributions to higher education. And we also don't talk enough about the outcomes and following up with their experiences to ensure that things are in alignment. So I'm going to give an overview of just some of the data and the trends that we're seeing and we talk about international students. So data from the open door support from IIE shares that the total number of international students at U.S. universities declined by around 15% during the 2020-21 academic year and we can understand that this would be largely attributed to the start of the ongoing pandemic but still quite a significant number of students overall. The top five states in the United States that host international students continue to be California, New York, Texas, Massachusetts and Illinois, Ohio being in eighth place which is still a good place to be in. The top five places and countries of origin of international students again consistently this data has been consistent as well, China, India, South Korea, Canada and Saudi Arabia. However STEM fields remain a strong focus of international students with 54% of the total number of students studying in the United States are largely in STEM fields. However, overall international students make up 5% of all students in U.S. higher education. Another point that's important to note too is that international students contributed $39 billion to the U.S. economy in 2020 and that's according to the U.S. Department of Commerce. Just to give us a picture of the breakdown of undergraduate versus graduates, I've shared this image which was also from the Open Doors 2021 report and we see that naturally we have more undergraduate students and we've seen a 14% decline again during the onset of COVID-19 and the pandemic and also a 12% decline in the number of graduate students. But however consistently we're still seeing that we have more undergraduate students in the United States than graduate students but the numbers are still very significant. So let's talk about the rationale. Like what brought me to this? Why am I so interested in this topic? So there is quite a lot of literature on internationalization, international students in a more general sense. However, there tends to be limited scholarship examining the non-linear nature of postgraduate career development and looking specifically at the transitions among international doctoral graduates. We ask the question all the time, where do international graduate students end up? What factors contribute to their decisions? Do they stay in the United States or do majority of them return to their home countries? In looking at the data, I was not able to easily or to pinpoint a lot of data that talks about these outcomes and expectations. There's not enough research that is focused on understanding the specialized support that international students require both during and after their doctoral studies in the United States. Research on international PhD graduates commonly explores many of the challenges and the hurdles that they experience, which again is very valid with regard to making their transition to faculty roles and to other roles in academia. And many of us will acknowledge that most of us may not end up in faculty roles. There simply are not enough positions for the number of graduate students who are completing doctoral degrees. So we need to be broadening this conversation. There's a need for greater research, exploring disciplines such as education and the social sciences. And a lot of the research I've explored focuses a lot on STEM fields and the humanities. So continuing this, a lot of other motivations for me with this topic. So I tend to connect with a number of international students, particularly doctoral students, and I've been inspired by those interactions and the insights that they've shared. Additionally, I'm also personally curious, given my own positionality as an international student in wanting to understand a little bit more about this, especially on someone who is on the verge of transitioning myself, very curious to figure out what those experiences are like. When we talk about doctoral education, processes matter. Processes are important. Programming, different departments have programming and that's also important. We need to be concerned about experiences, but I think outcomes also matter and we need to be doing a little bit more to understand those outcomes and experiences. I'm hoping that with this research, I can explore and address the current gaps in literature and I can contribute to the ongoing assessment of an improvement of career planning among doctoral student populations, including international students and other underrepresented groups on campuses. It's also hoped that this will signal the need for improved international alumni support systems and tracking, which is something that we don't, many institutions don't do a very good job at. Additionally, I'm hoping that this research will help to inform and influence public policy regarding specific employment pathways that are specific towards international students. So for my research, these are the two main research questions that I'm exploring. The first one being what are the processes involved in the transition of international doctoral graduates in education? And secondly, what factors or experiences during their doctoral studies influence the postdoctoral work or professional activities of international graduates in education and the social sciences? So let's talk a little bit about the literature and I won't go too in depth here, but a recent study on catalysts for career transitions in the Journal of Vocational Behavior, which was published in 2020, affirmed that academic careers are becoming less linear and less secure and are increasingly shaped by environmental constraints. So there's still a large focus on STEM fields and there are several useful observations that continue to inform this study. Empirical research on the topic more generally is still limited, but it is developing. While scholars have started to identify career adaptability as an important facilitator of career transitions, very little is known about the resources and the experiences that facilitate transitions to sustainable careers. So for my literature review, these are the major headings and themes and sections that I've outlined. I start by giving an overview of doctoral education in the United States. What does that look like? What is the purpose? What is the current status of doctoral education? I start by, and then I proceed to conceptualize and talk about postgraduate transitions, defining those key terms and citing current literature in that regard. Then I talk about career development and planning specifically with the doctoral degree in mind. Then I also dive into the international student experience specifically, talking about the opportunities, challenges, immigration, for example, is a key theme there and talking about specific employment pathways, OPT, CPT, and the other immigration procedures. I also take a look at alternative careers and looking at career fields beyond academia. So these are just some of the key themes within my literature review. The theoretical frameworks which guide this research are two theories, Chaos Theory of Careers and Slushberg's Transition Theory. The Chaos Theory of Careers is a more contemporary theory and it was developed by Pryor and Bright in 2011. It has four key cornerstones, complexity, change, chance, and construction. The theory expects and recognizes uncertainty and is better aligned with the reality of most students at the end of their programs and what they will face during their transition and entry and in some cases reentry for folks who are going back into the workforce. So their main and fundamental objection to earlier theories was that they did not relate very well to real life, to life as it's lived and to the ongoing nature of career development. So the Chaos Theory understands the depths and the multiple layers of possibilities that exist and the processes involved and it's a bit more reflective of the times that we're living in as well as global challenges. Career development does not occur in isolation. There are several factors and individuals that play a role such as family, friends, culture, value systems, upbringing, the market, economic and social issues, a pandemic, case in point. So there's so many planned and unplanned changes that unfold in a non-linear way. So when we talk about chaos, chaos does not necessarily mean disorder but chaos really talks about a balance within the system. The second theory is Slushberg's Transition Theory which was developed much later. It's a much more older theory and it also has four key tenets being situation, self support and strategies. In exploring the concept of transitions among international doctoral graduates, it is useful to think both conceptually and holistically. How do graduate students define and reimagine success on their terms? What does the process of self discovery look like in the season of decision making, networking and strategic planning? So this theory provides a model for, this theory provides a model for analyzing human adaptation to transition. It helps us to better understand the factors that influence transition and how one copes with change. A transition according to Goodman et al. is defined as any event or non-event that results in changed relationships, routines, assumptions and roles. So the research design builds on the core tenets of Nancy Slushberg's Transition Theory and helps us to understand what individuals go through when navigating a major life transition. Now I'm gonna talk a little bit about my research design. So I am conducting a qualitative study using a basic qualitative inquiry. A qualitative research explores a complex reality constructed by individuals as they navigate their everyday lives and a basic qualitative inquiry methodology. It helps researchers to understand how people interpret their experiences and their realities. How do they construct their own worlds? How do they make meaning of their own experiences? Mary Mantisdale has shared a lot that really have grounded my understanding of the use of basic qualitative design. In talking about constructivism and a constructivist paradigm, this study utilizes a constructivist lens to address the research questions. Constructivism is building on knowledge in one's mind through cumulative processes or master and cell dancer 2018. So when applying a constructivist approach to research, it is very important to recognize and embrace a transformation that may occur in the participant and a researcher relationship. I utilize a constructivist approach to make meaning of the experiences of the transition of international doctoral graduates. And I will do this by reflecting on and recognizing my own positionality and potential biases and engaging in measures that seek to honor the authenticity and depth of the experiences that they share throughout the study. Now I'll talk a little bit about the recruitment and the sample selection. So the participants for my study are international doctoral graduates who completed their studies during the period of 2015 to 2020. And these are individuals who attended Ohio University specifically. An inclusion and exclusion criteria was developed, which really grounded the recruitment process. And it specifies that they had to be doctoral graduates in the fields related to education and the social sciences. And this was a key part of obtaining IRB approval. I had to go through all of these stages. IRB approval was granted. And then I proceeded to recruit participants and to set up my interviews. So I did this last summer. I disseminated emails, I created a poster, created screening surveys to confirm eligibility. Participants did not need to be in the United States to participate given that many international students opt to return home. They did not need to be employed to participate as well. But I had questions that gave me an understanding of whether they were employed, job hunting, or what exactly their employment situation was. I thought that context was important. Then I followed up with my participants to make sure that their questions were answered, requested consent, and scheduled my interviews using Calendly. And also conducted purposeful and snowball sampling during the recruitment phases, which was really, really helpful. Data collections. So I conducted individual semi-structured interviews. I did one interview with each participant. I interviewed a total of 14 persons. These were conducted virtually via Zoom. Interviews range from 60 to 90 minutes. Interview summaries, and this part I think was very important and reflections were drafted immediately following each interview. The interviews were really, really rich. And I spent time following each interview to not just provide summaries, but also to reflect on what participants had shared. And that also allowed me to write down my thoughts and questions and the things that I was processing throughout the entire phase of their data collection. So I'm gonna share some of my preliminary findings. As I stated earlier, the research is ongoing. So I'm still in the process of data analysis, but I think it's important to sort of share some of the things that I'm already seeing in the data and in the findings that have really stood out to me so far. So the first one being the influence of family dynamics, the role played by caregiving responsibilities, having to take care of parents and consider parents in their during this transition phase. Particularly individuals who are from very collectivist cultures in speaking with participants, a lot of that came out that they were not just thinking about themselves, but they had a community to consider parents who were aging, were growing old and not wanting to be too far from them. A lot of these things came out, flexibility and also the motivations of my participants who were unmarried versus those who had families and dependents. You could see the ways in which their thought processes were very different. Also, greater access to opportunities so far is coming out as one of those things that are standing out, folks seeing the United States as providing more stable and diverse professional opportunities as opposed to their home countries, particularly given the sector that they've studied is not as vibrant and as robust and developed. So they are seeking more opportunities in the United States. Another key point from the research is the US immigration system and the hiring processes with there being a lot of uncertainty, a lot of risk and the process being very complicated, cumbersome. And given the time period of 2015 to 2020, I believe that was three. We had President Obama, President Trump. No, I don't think there was Biden, but it was impossible to talk about this topic without acknowledging the role of the political climate and the political rhetoric during that period. And participants brought this up and talking about just the anti-immigrant stance, the rhetoric of Americans first and all of what that language and how they felt navigating and thinking about their future or possibility of saying the United States. So it was very important to talk about that additionally, given that some individuals graduated in 2020 on the cost of the pandemic. It's also, that's also playing a role in tighter hiring processes, in folks losing opportunities and trying to figure all those things out. Another important point too is reverse culture shock. A number of participants shared that in their specific experience, they completed at least two degrees in the United States. For some folks, they completed three degrees, a bachelor's and undergraduate degree, master's and also their PhD. In some instances that meant being in the United States for over a decade. So in some way, the United States has started to feel more like home. And for those who've had to return for various reasons, full right opportunities or other obligations, the adjustment and reverse culture shock has been very intense. Given that they've been trained, formally trained in the United States, it seems much more familiar to them. So that was a very, very interesting observation. Another point that has been coming out so far is the importance of systems of support. Many participants talked about the role played by faculty, the support they received through mentorship and faculty who particularly international faculty who have been helpful in helping them to figure out the next steps preparing for jobs and opportunities as they've been trying to navigate change. So these are just some of the preliminary findings. It's important to also acknowledge efforts to ensure validity and reliability with qualitative research. We're not concerned about generalizable data, but also focusing on experiences which are equally as valuable. So one thing that I've been really intentional about doing is journaling and documenting my thoughts, observations, questions, to eliminate points of potential bias and confirmation bias, again being an international student and a doc student as well. For the data using thick and rich descriptions as much as possible. I've engaged in member checking with my participants that has been very, very helpful because a number of participants have pointed out to me that in their doctoral programs, they were the one and only. So wanting to ensure that the way in which they are represented does not give it away. Others are fine with even folks figuring out who they are because they're very confident of what they've shared and they're happy to be given the opportunity to share their experiences. But others are noting that in my specific program, I was the only international student. So even if you phrase it this way, folks may be able to figure out that that's me. So this is why member checking is so important. And I'm very happy that our participants are giving feedback and I'm involved with them in this process as much as possible. Reflexivity, which is also very important. And I intend to do peer reviewing because I know that that can be very, very helpful to also spot possible areas of bias and things that are not as clear. So I'm gonna talk now I'm winding down I'm talking about the resources I utilized and I'm very, I'm really happy to get to this point because I'm not sure how I could have done this research without the use of the library. And I have, I found this really nice meme which I just liked that was really funny. But the main library resources that I utilized was ProQuest, Feast Use and Dissertations. And you might ask, why am I even pointing this out? I felt it was very important fairly early on in the process to go through dissertations on similar topics to get an understanding of what's there, the style, how other individuals approached similar research. Another reason why I did this is that I wanted to get an understanding of the structure and the style of dissertations that were completed by folks by my chair, by my current chair, Dr. Pete Mather, just because I think that's important to understand style and expectations given that I've never written a dissertation before. I think it was helpful to me to have that understanding and to read through what other folks have done. And in full transparency, it's also inspiring to see that folks have had similar interests. They've completed their dissertations which just reminds me of that it's possible. So that was a resource I used and I was grateful that in former classes we were taught how to go through and to search and to do all of that. That was really helpful. The Alice catalog, which I know most of us are fairly familiar with, I was able to use that to search by author and to search by subject and keyword to find many peer-reviewed articles, especially the most current ones in the field. And Ohio Link, which oh my goodness, I could not, I just think Ohio Link is the best thing ever for books from different institutions and I was able to get a lot of books that focused on graduate education and international students. So very, very happy for that. So most of these resources that I utilized were during the proposal writing phase which I conducted last year in the height of the pandemic. So chapters one and two were written significantly with the help of these library resources. I don't think I could have written my literature review in particular without being able to utilize these resources effectively. So I'm really, really grateful for subject librarians and for the library chat and just being able to access these resources even during a difficult time as the pandemic I was still able to get up to date information. For me, I had to play around with several keywords and key phrases for better results and I encourage folks to do that too. You won't always get information when you go about it one way but sometimes you have to play around with it. I also capitalized on references from relevant publications. So when I found an article or resource that was really excellent and was perfect for my research I use the references as most people I think most people do this. If not, I would recommend it. I go through their resources, their references and then that kind of provides me with additional references and it's sort of a ripple effect. So that is something that was so helpful that released a lot of the anxiety I had with writing chapter two because once I found an excellent resource the reference list was usually able to give me additional information that I could utilize. And Semantic Scholar, I'm not sure if you all can see this, yeah. So Semantic Scholar is another, it's an AI, I believe it's a Semantic Scholar it's a free AI powered research tool for scientific literature which I would also recommend which I discovered while working on my proposal last year. So those are the library resources. So I'm winding down. So the next steps for my research scope for future research where do I see this research going? So I'm hoping to expand this research to examine a wider cross section of disciplines. Full transparency, I'm not particularly keen on the STEM fields, nothing against the STEM fields but I do think that there is extensive research on STEM fields and that discipline is somewhat, it's somewhat different and it's not within my purview or specific interest but I am interested in other fields like the humanities looking specifically on different fields with greater depth. I'm hoping to conduct further research that explores mobility among doctoral graduates across varying demographics. We talk a lot about intersectionality. So I really want to conduct research using that lens to also look at the research by region of origin perhaps not country because the numbers for some countries tend to be pretty low. Jamaica for example, I think regionally versus Caribbean versus Jamaica would be a more ideal region to look at first generation status to talk about things like social class and to look at related indicators like that when looking at this research. So I hope to continue to do that. I want to also explore best practices among different types of institutions with larger international doctoral student populations. I want to incorporate and to look at alumni networks. What is the role of these networks? Career programs for graduate and doctoral students. I know Princeton, Temple, a number of universities, Virginia Tech have very robust graduate and professional development programs. I want to see the contributions and to see the ways in which those may play a greater role in the transition of international students so that we could further re-imagine the doctoral experience. Lastly, I'm hoping to cultivate networks of support among the international doctoral community so that we can have ongoing mentorship, sponsorship, career coaching and specialized advising. Not really a one-size-fits-all approach which we know does not work. Okay, and lastly, I want to talk about the research journey to reflect on it, to talk about things that I am still figuring out, things that I've not perfected, but I'm also on this journey with many folks who are also on this call. So I'm realizing and learning so much about myself as a researcher while conducting the research and consistency is so important. Discipline, I'm realizing too that I may not be as disciplined as I think I am, but also I did not anticipate dissertating during a pandemic. So there's also that. But during times when you feel, when you don't feel motivated to conduct your research, one of the things that keeps me going is to remember my why, why am I doing this? I'm first gen. My mom, my parents have made so many sacrifices for me and I've come this far and this degree is not just for me, this research is not just for me. Those are the things that help to keep me going. Don't underestimate the value of community. We're part of our graduate community. We're part of an international community. We're part of the Athens community, the global community. Tap into your community, tap into your community and your colleagues, your scholarly community. Don't underestimate the value of that because when times get particularly tough, it's so nice to know that we can commiserate, we can lean on each other, we can help each other throughout this experience. One of the things that I heard someone say recently and I have it on a post-it, is done is better than perfect. So perfectionism is not ideal. It's no more than ever. I don't think we should be striving for perfection but knowing that done is better than perfect and also knowing that, you may feel like good dissertations have done dissertation. If you don't subscribe to that, which is fine but I firmly believe that getting it done and doing it well is better than being than perfect striving for perfection. Your research matters. Your research is important but it's important to remember as well that this is the beginning and it's not the end. Pace yourself, slow progress is better than doing nothing at all and I have to remind myself of this every single day because research is hard but doing something is better than doing nothing. Take advantage of available resources. We're here, we're in this forum, we're talking about how helpful the library's resources have been, utilize them, ask for help and clarification, tap into all the available resources at Ohio University and also in the scholarly community and seek help. Take care of yourself as much as possible, socially, spiritually, physically, speaking to myself here again, trying to take my own advice. Trust the process and trust the knowledge that you have, trust your expertise, trust the wisdom that you have because most times we know more than we think we do. So we are doing this research, we are reading the literature and trust that we know what we're saying. The follow up with this, silence that inner critic. Don't give into imposter syndrome, easier said than done but we also have to know that we have to silence that imposter syndrome and not allow it to take, to consume us. Lastly and importantly, research is one thing we get to do. It's not all that we are, it also does not define us. We want to be proud of our body of work, we want to contribute to the field, we want to make a difference but research is one aspect of our lives. It is not the sum total of who we are. So just something to remember that we do the best we can and it's a privilege to be able to do research and to be part of the academy but it certainly does not define us. All right, and I think that's it. So a few folks I wanna thank, I want to thank my dissertation chair, Dr. Pete Mather, who's on sabbatical this year but has still been so very supportive of my research. I also want to thank my committee members, Dr. Dave Nguyen, Dr. Laura Harrison, Dr. Duane Robinson. Also my research participants, all 14 of them who took the time to participate and they were so eager and I'm grateful for the way in which they've given life to this research. My supervisor and director of the Global Leadership Center, Dr. Matthew Larish who is always supportive of my ideas and is very supportive of graduate education. I wanna thank my HESA cohort. I believe earlier I saw a few of them were on the call. Thank them for always being supportive, for sharing memes and encouraging each other and lifting each other up. Also wanna thank the HESA alumni who have been helpful and supportive in guiding me along the way and always been willing to offer advice. I'd like to thank the Alden Library staff for all their support and providing these opportunities, the Graduate Student Senate, also the Ohio International Student Community for just being who we are and representing ourselves on this campus and being unashamed to represent our interests and to make a contribution. And lastly, Academic Twitter, which is such an interesting community but also another supportive community and a place where I've networked and connected with folks who are doing similar research. So thank you all so much for listening. I have no idea how long I've been talking for because I can't see it. And lastly, I want to just say happy International Week and happy Graduate Student Appreciation Week. And I hope that this was interesting and I'll really look forward to your questions and comments. Thank you so much, Anna Kay. That was wonderful. We're gonna open it up to our audience. We've got about 10 minutes for audience questions. So if you would like, you can raise your hand and I'll call on you. You can unmute and ask your question or if you would like to type it in the chat, you are welcome to do that as well. And while you all are collecting your thoughts for your questions, I am gonna drop a link very quickly into the chat for a kind of a follow-up survey. If you wouldn't mind completing that for me, it's four or five questions. It'll just take a couple of minutes. I would appreciate that. Thank you, Anna Kay. That was so informative. And thank you for your research and for sharing with us. It's Kelly, I think you know that. I do have a question about one of your findings. So the finding that you mentioned, your preliminary findings, in turn the access to opportunity finding about how some of your participants were surprised that they found that the US had more opportunity than they, and so I guess I think maybe I added the surprise there when I made that note. Were they surprised or was this something that maybe their mentors or their family could have maybe prepared them that that might be the case? Or was there a mix of understanding that that could be an outcome of going abroad for school? I'm just curious about how they approached that as opposed to how it was discovered and felt later on when they were finishing their academics. Thank you. Thank you, Kelly. Thanks for that question. I think it's a mix because the reality is many individuals opt to study in the United States knowing that there are additional opportunities, knowing that having a US based degree program, whether it's a master's or a PhD, will lead to some level of advancement, access to greater opportunities. There's several motivation, motivating factors. So it was not a surprise that there were these opportunities, but many of them attributed the opportunities to, there's a preference to stay in the United States because there's greater access to opportunities. Conversely, many of them felt like the sect for the folks who were particularly in education fields that had more of an instruction on design standpoint. They didn't feel like the industries and sectors within their home country had the specific capacity at this time to make full use of their skills. So in essence, it's seen that there are greater opportunities when it comes to wanting to remain in higher education, there are more institutions that are a bit more stable as opposed to what was currently taking place in their home country. So it wasn't more of a surprise, but it's just more opportunities largely influence their decision to stay versus leaving the United States. Thank you. Thanks, that's very helpful. Good, thank you. See, another question from Salome. Actually, it's not a question. I just wanted to make a comment. First of all, I'm super proud of you. I know first-hand how hard you work and just how passionate you are about being a voice for international students in all ways possible. So thank you so much. I feel like this research is very timely and especially for international students, being one of them, as we get to the end, there's always the question of what next? And so just having research like this will really help international students understand how to navigate the next step as they try to figure out their trajectory of their careers. So thank you so much for doing this and just putting your heart, your soul, your time and your tears into this. And I can't wait to read the summary of the dissertation because I won't read the whole dissertation, but... Thank you. Thank you. I'm glad you said sweat tears everything because, oh, there are tears. So I appreciate that. And Salome and I know first, yes, a few more of my cohort mates are here. We understand the challenge of this and we're all international students as well. And we're also on the cusp of transitioning. And as I'm not sure I pointed out earlier for many international students, and we always talk about, but every person who's graduating has to figure out their next steps. Yes, but the reality is that as an international student, you do not have the luxury of figuring that out whereas some folks may be able to graduate and take time to figure that next steps out. You have to start planning sometimes a year in advance. You also have to start thinking about what you may want to do further in advance because it's not, you don't have that luxury of time and flexibility to sort of figure things out as you go, to go with the flow. So there is so much more that has to be considered for folks with families, many international students come to United States with families, there is a lot that's at stake and there's a lot to think about. So you're so right. And for many of us too who are dissertating, we frankly don't even have the time to think about it, but it just further complicates and reminds us of the complexity of this and the reason why research needs to be very thorough in looking at what these realities are. I think I say a question here, your preliminary findings on the systems of support, did you find anything about the library's contribution to international students' academic work? Good question. I have not, most of the participants have shared the role of things like professional development, have shared the role of faculty mentorship, particularly faculty who are international as well, who have gone through the ropes and they've been able to help them in more specific ways, more personal ways, because they've been in their shoes, but not specifically talking about international students' academic work. That is something that I may need to explore a little bit more, because I do think there should be something available on that. I think so too, because I know that libraries in a lot of places don't have the resources we have here in the United States or even at Ohio University. So I'm always surprised when I attend graduate students like visitation, presentations or anything, and then they don't mention the library, because it looks like they take it for granted, but knowing libraries elsewhere, I don't understand, so I think it's worth investigating why people take it for granted. Absolutely, and I'm so glad you pointed that out. One of my participants, I will remember, pointed out that that was one of the things he missed, and I'm glad you brought that out, because I remember now he really appreciated and utilized the library. And being an alumni, he really wished, because as a scholar, he's still doing research, he's working with different think tank, he's very much involved in scholarship, but not feeling connected to the institution and having access to resources like that. Now he's trying to figure out how to get these things on his own. So a few, maybe one or two participants have pointed that out as how valuable our library has been to him as a scholar and the way in which he wished that they would still have some kind of access to those resources, which I know I've shared in the advisory board and we're trying to figure out how best we could do that, but you're right. I do think some students appreciate it much more than others, but a lot of opportunities we have here, I don't think are at other institutions, so that's such a good point. That's good. There's another comment in the chat, Anna Kay, thanking you for devoting your research to the realities of doctoral students who identify as international and reiterating how proud your cohort mates are of you. Thank you. I'm so happy to see them. Yeah, we're all in this, we're all in this together. We say that during the pandemic that we're all in this thing together and we're all in the same boat, which sometimes we're not really. Some of us are in boats, some people are in cruise ships, but when it comes to this dissertation journey, I'm so happy to be in a cohort with that's predominantly international and the way in which they're here for me today is the way we show up for each other. So I'm really grateful just for their support and for the contributions and they're all student leaders and just the way in which they've been so active on campus. I think this week is just a celebration of the value that international students have on our campus. So it's really good to be in this space and to have a voice. Foster, did you have a question? Yes, Dr. Rowe, congratulations, girl. Girl, you said the bad. Shit. Oh, come on, you should accept it. Yes, and I don't know why some of us are in terms of cruising though, but yeah, we will jump on to the show. I have a quick question. Thanks for your presentation. Forgive me if I missed it. So I'm interested to find out were you able to do some comparisons in terms of your participants, those who did not stay in the United States, that's those who stayed and how the transitional experience was especially for those who went back home because I think the majority of us going back home is our ultimate goal, but yet it also comes with a little fear and anxiety. And I just wanted to drive it more from what those who walked the walk-up experience of that. Sure, thank you. That's such a good question. Some participants, majority of my participants opted to stay in the United States for various reasons. I would say four or five of the 14 have returned home. So, and for several reasons, some of them had positions prior to coming, which they had to go back to. A few of the folks who opted to stay had positions that they could have gone back to, but for family and different motivations decided to stay in the United States, but may potentially return to those positions because during the four years of your doctoral program, your interest change, you're in this field that is adjacent or very different. And now you're no longer your career goals and your objectives and your personal motivations have changed. But for the folks who've opted to return home, they've spoken at length about culture shock, for those with children, how hard it was for them to readjust. The children have adopted so many American values. They personally, as the parents have found themselves being a bit more Americanized and they talked about just the difference in adapting from the US education system to the education system back in their home country, because now they're coming with all these new ideas, these new student-centered ways of doing, predominantly for the folks who are in higher education in their home country, just how they're having to navigate through these two worlds. Of this is not how we've done things, we're grateful for your training. So they're constantly trying to figure out, okay, who am I going to be now? What pieces of the US education system can I keep? What pieces from home do I need to get back to? Especially for folks who've been away for several years, the reverse culture shock is intense. So there's a lot of that. And also folks not feeling like they are using their degrees back home in the way that they envision, because they constantly have to be shape-shifting. So it really, really was interesting. I just wish I was able to interview more folks who had gone back home to really get more rich data, but the four or five participants I've interviewed so far have really given me a lot to think about. And I would love to continue to try and balance things out with speaking to more folks who have gone back home for various reasons. Thanks, Anna. That's profound. Thank you. Of course you're going to say that, Dave. Potentially. You know, I'm not opposed to doing that. I think their perspectives have been very interesting. I had no idea Dave went, Dr. Nguyen was on here. I think you may have sneaked in after we started, but I'm not sure. So we are a couple of minutes over, so unfortunately we do need to wrap up, but I want to thank you, Anna Kay, and our audience for spending time with us this afternoon. I hope you all have a lovely afternoon. Thank you. Thank you, everyone. Thank you.