Congratulations to Dan Zhu, CIRCLE’s Assistant Director, on being awarded the Outstanding Mid-Level Professional Award during Student Life’s 2020 Kick Off event!
“Dan joined Student Life with the distinct opportunity to create a program where domestic and international students could help enhance their transitions to and engagement with diversity. If you’ve had the chance to interact with Dan, you know of her exuberance, respect, joy and commitment to the Unite UW program and the UW. She is creative, engaging, and always answers the call to be of assistance to students and staff alike.”
Congratulations Dan and thank you for all that you do!
The Undergraduate International Student Advisory Board (SAB) aims to help CIRCLE staff ensure that programs and services reflect the current needs of UW international undergraduate students. SAB will provide a space for discussion and advocacy for international student resources and support on campus.
This is a student volunteer position, where board members are responsible for advocating and representing international student concerns from their communities. It would also be a great opportunity to get involved on campus, expanding personal and professional development, and networking with fellow international huskies. In addition, SAB members develop a greater understanding of the university administration and functions with regards to general funding, policy creation and implementation, and international student programs and initiatives. Most importantly, making UW a home away from home for you and others.
In order for SAB to fulfill its goal of reaching the different parts of our University, SAB welcomes applications for additional board members for the 2020-2021 school year. Please note that the time for the SAB meetings for Fall 2020 has been set, it would be every Wednesday at 9:00 pm Seattle time. This time is to accommodate students in different time zones. Prospective applicants will need to be available for the SAB meeting at this time.
CIRCLE invites undergraduate international students to apply at:
In light of the USCIS press release on autumn 2020 today, we would like to let you know that we too were taken aback by this announcement and were not anticipating these new developments. ISS and other offices on campus have forwarded questions and concerns stirred by this announcement to UW Leadership and UW Federal Relations. At this time, we do not have further updates or information, but know the UW is reviewing the announced modifications and consulting experts in the field to understand and interpret these upcoming changes. We understand that you and your family may feel anxious about these modifications and how they can impact your studies, but please be aware that these changes have not been published to the Federal Register and may not be final yet. Once we understand what these changes mean specifically for UW international students, ISS will update their COVID-19 information page and will send email updates to all currently enrolled F1 students regarding the updates.
Have your voice heard by voting in the ASUW elections! As part of the ASUW election forums, candidates were asked how they planned to support international students if they were elected. Read their responses here and check out each candidates platform. To vote on the election, click here.
After President Cauce announced that all spring quarter instruction is going to be conducted remotely, CIRCLE has received an increased number of questions from international students. If you are considering returning to your home country for spring quarter 2020, below is some important information to help you transition smoothly. To streamline this process, we pulled some questions from already existing resources. Make sure to familiarize yourself with the existing resource linked at the bottom of each section.
On-campus Housing
If you live on campus and you wish to remain in your room through the end of your agreement period:
Update your local address at MyUW and discontinue subscription deliveries
Sign up for direct deposit if you expect a refund from HFS
If you do not have direct deposit information on file and do not have a US address, your refund will be issued to the last credit or debit card used to pay your housing account
For comprehensive information regarding student visas, please visit the ISS website.
Travel Restrictions
If you went home to your home country but hope to return to the US during spring quarter:
Before you make any travel decisions, please check Travel Restrictions for Students Outside of US, and pay special attention to the 14-day quarantine rule. Generally, we would not recommend traveling during spring break for your own safety.
For more information regarding travel restrictions, please visit the ISS website.
Academics
If you are planning to take online courses from your home country, here are some things to keep in mind:
First day of instruction for spring quarter is on March 30 , with remote instruction that will continue through the end of the quarter.
Each instructor may approach remote instruction differently so make sure to clearly understand course expectations. Make sure you let the instructors know if you have unique circumstances, e.g. time differences, limited access to relevant websites.
Instructors will use the first week of the quarter to work with students to establish norms for remote instruction and to connect students with resources to support this transition, including online advising. There will be a grace period with no written assignments due in the first week.
The University recognizes the nature of some courses precludes their being offered online due to the experiential nature of the content, or lack of access to required materials. The university will be flexible with shifts in course schedules and expect to increase course offerings over the summer and fall to ensure students have access to classes required to meet major requirements.
International and domestic students participating in a retreat facilitated by Unite UW, one of the programs now housed with CIRCLE.
JUST IN TIME for November 2019, UW’s first-ever Global Month, the Division of Student Life has launched CIRCLE, the Center for International Relations and Cultural Leadership Exchange. CIRCLE helps to streamline UW’s mosaic of international student support services and amplify cross-cultural programming for domestic and international student engagement, to provide a unified “front door” for the global Husky Experience.
“UW has historically maintained a decentralized structure when it comes to international student services,” said UW Vice President for Student Life Denzil Suite. “CIRCLE is a strategic reimagining of this landscape to leverage existing resources in a more student-centered way.”
From left to right: CIRCLE Executive Director Felipe Martinez, UW Vice President for Student Life Denzil Suite, and CIRCLE Assistant Director Dan Zhu.
CIRCLE will improve international student access to support, including better connecting them with services to help navigate the complex and evolving higher education ecosystem. CIRCLE will also place emphasis on wellness programs and mental health resources. International students are a particularly high-risk population for mental health concerns associated with isolation, culture shock and lack of support systems.
The overarching mission of CIRCLE, however, extends well beyond international student support. CIRCLE aims to holistically expand horizons and opportunities for domestic students as well as international students.
“Whether a student is from Seattle, Seoul, Yakima or Guatemala, they all see the importance of establishing global competencies and connections for their personal growth and their professional trajectory,” said CIRCLE Executive Director Felipe Martinez.
CIRCLE, along with Unite UW and FIUTS, is located at Schmitz Hall 250 in a newly-renovated space.
“Programming provided by CIRCLE, as well as our partners Unite UW and FIUTS, helps students expand their sense of belonging to encompass a global community. This has clear and lasting benefits to their academic success, well-being and overall Husky Experience,” Martinez said, referencing two cross-cultural engagement organizations at UW that CIRCLE now houses together.
Finding community on a large campus can be a challenge for many students. Hannah Doyle, a student from West Richland, Washington, said, “Unite UW truly made UW feel like a smaller community for me. Now, I always see friendly faces as I walk between classes, and I always have people to study and grab food with.”
Hannah Doyle, a domestic student from West Richland, Washington, has been an active participant in UW’s international/domestic student engagement programs like Unite UW.
For international students, the challenge of finding friends and building community is even more complex, and is often compounded by the struggles and stressors that come with being far away from family, friends and familiar networks of support.
“I perceived the academic competition to be my biggest challenge before coming to college, but actually for me it was finding a community within our massive campus that became a focal point of all my issues,” said Baljaa Tovuudorj, a UW student from Mongolia. “All college students leave a part of themselves behind, whether it be their home, friends, pets or family, and for international students, all of the above. Not having a support system really hindered my ability to excel.”
Tovuudorj advocates for the importance of establishing CIRCLE to coordinate and amplify cross-cultural engagement at UW. He said everything changed for him when he decided to take a risk and get involved in these university programs.
Baljaa Tovuudorj, a UW student from Mongolia, shares with UW staff how his participation in UW’s international/domestic student engagement programming has transformed his Husky Experience.
“It’s important to meaningfully engage with people who are different from you because it is an opportunity to learn more about yourself and your own culture,” he said. “It is a sort of metacognitive experience of self-discovery and improvement. Also, it is just a more fun way to look at life in general, the feeling of being able to connect with a stranger from a place you can’t even pronounce is very liberating.”
In addition to bolstering the collaboration and impact of existing programs, CIRCLE serves to provide students with a “global living room” – a physical space in Schmitz Hall 250 that supports internationally-minded student organizations, facilitates guest lectures and extra-curricular educational opportunities, and provides a home base for a new international/domestic student ambassador program.
“By centering student needs that we’ve heard loud and clear for years, we have really established something extraordinary here,” Martinez said. “In the words of one of our students, ‘It’s a home away from home, a portal to the world.’”
