University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

The Problem of Diversity: Do International Students Feel Excluded from the SU Community?

ACANT300

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/16344

Description

Title
The Problem of Diversity: Do International Students Feel Excluded from the SU Community?
Author(s)
ACANT300
Issue Date
2010
Keyword(s)
  • Diversity
  • Self-Segregation
  • Campus Community
  • International Student Experiences
  • ANT300
  • Syracuse
  • Spring 2010
Abstract
International students often experience difficulties achieving the diverse experiences that is a large part of why they left home and choose to study Syracuse University. SU promises students this diversity but fails to provide the environment to foster interaction and mutual learning betweens groups. For this reason many international students feel left out of the picture and a nomimal part of the more dominant white, American community on campus. I spoke to students, attended culturally specific group meetings and interviewed the head of International Students Services at SU to get a better idea of the international student experience on campus. I wanted to find out more about self-segregation among international student groups, how students gauge their level of integration into campus life, any specific difficulties that students encounter on campus i.e in the classroom setting, financial burdens etc., as well as what could be done to better meet the needs of international students.
Series/Report Name or Number
  • The Ethnography of the University: Studying Scholarship in Action was designed to introduce undergraduate students to ethnographic methodologies, institutional analysis, and the research publication process. Students conducted ethnographic studies of Syracuse University Scholarship in Action projects of their choosing and had the opportunity to produce their results on the web. All the steps in the research process, from the formation of research questions to the creation of final research papers, was produced on-line at a collaborative website, Moodle, that has been created at the University of Illinois to facilitate undergraduate ethnography of the university projects. This project is titled the Ethnography of the University Initiative (EUI).
  • Students were encouraged to make their work public so that their research subjects, fellow students and Syracuse community participants, would be able to comment and provide feedback on their research. The IDEALS on-line archive would enable this process to be recorded for future students in the hope that they will build on present student research. The archiving of “scholarship in action” research for ANT 300 may help Syracuse University better understands the learning outcomes of “scholarship in action” initiatives.
  • It is important to remember that “The Ethnography of the University” is not only a course but also part of two larger projects, the “Imagining America Project,” a national project combining the arts, humanities and social sciences to create interdisciplinary discussions about America’s future http://www.imaginingamerica.org/ , and the University of Illinois centered project, the Ethnography of the University Initiative (EUI) http://www.eui.uiuc.edu/
  • The Ethnography of the University Initiative (EUI) includes several universities and community colleges located in the state of Illinois. All of these schools are public. Syracuse University is the first non-Illinois and first private university to join the group. This class joined an inter-campus learning community in which many classes from several schools (most, however, are located at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) explore their universities and colleges ethnographically. In order to explore Syracuse University ethnographically, we needed to think about what “the university” is, what “ethnography” is, and what “scholarship in action” is. Broadly, we explored the university as a composite of prose, numerical, and visual narratives.
  • The course also introduced students to ethnographic methods. The bulk of this class was devoted to students’ own ethnographic projects on a Syracuse University “Scholarship in Action” endeavor although it was possible to carry out research on other areas if students presented a good case for doing so. A wide variety of social practices and learning processes were expected to become part of what students researched.
Type of Resource
text
Permalink
http://hdl.handle.net/2142/16344

Owning Collections

Diversity on Campus/Equity and Access PRIMARY
This collection examines ways in which the U.S. university and the American college experience are affected by diversity, and difference. In particular, these student projects examine experiences of diversity on campus, including important contemporary social, cultural, and political debates on equity and access to university resources.