When Kyungseo Han was asked to delete a photo of a girlwearing a spaghetti-strap tank top from her camera because officials at a Model United Nations debate in Singapore deemed it inappropriate, she knew she’d have to go abroad to get a degree in communications.

Han’s desire to study communications under greater press freedom brought her to the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, where she is currently a sophomore television, radio and film major.

“I found that the U.S. is more adaptable to studying communications. They’re more open and there’s more freedom,” said Han, who is originally from South Korea.

Last year, Han and 39 other students were part of the largest number of international undergraduatesat Newhouse in recent years, according to enrollment statistics from the Slutzker Center for International Services. This number is likely to continue to grow as recruiting efforts increase in Asia, Europe and South America, said Rosanna Grassi, associate dean at Newhouse.

But Newhouse, ranked among the top communications schools in the country, poses distinct challenges to international students through particular emphases on language, interactive group work and media awareness.

“If I’m a math major, that’s a universal language. I can solve problems with people across the world using numbers and symbols that we’ll all understand,” Grassi said. “But communications is not that way. It’s language-based.”

For this reason, admissions staff members request prospective Newhouse students score a 100 on the Test of English as a Foreign Language, or a 7.5 on the International English Language Testing System. These standards are the highest among the colleges within SU. Most other colleges at SU require a score of 80 on the TOEFL and 6.5 on the IELTS, according to SU’s website.

But ways around these standards exist. For internal transfers within colleges, the same rules apply to international students as domestic — a minimum of 30 credits at SU and a GPA acceptable for a particular semester, Grassi said. But few international students enter Newhouse this way, she said, estimating that of the group of students admitted to transfer into Newhouse in any given semester, about 10 percent are international students.

Once at Newhouse, international students are held to the same high standards as domestic students, said Joan Deppa, a Newhouse professor who teaches a required grammar course to freshmen and transfer students.

The rules of standard American English challenge many students, both domestic and international, Deppa said. Although she acknowledged the difficulty of mastering a foreign language, Deppa said English fluency is a valuable skill for students and important to their success.

“I have some sympathy for it, but that does not mean we excuse it or hold them to a lower standard,” she said. “That’s not doing them a favor.”

Spelling and grammar are important because their misuse detracts from a student’s “credibility as a communicator,” said Brad Gorham, chair of the communications department at Newhouse.

Gorham said he grades written assignments in great detail and without regard for a student’s background in English.

Although some grammatical slip-ups – like the misuse of collective nouns – will sometimes identify an international student’s work, Gorham said he doesn’t generally see international students struggle more than domestic students.

“I have had many international students who write beautiful papers and many domestic students who write awful papers,” he said.

Gorham and Deppa said they encourage struggling students, both international and domestic, to take advantage of available resources such as the Writing Center, peers, and the new grammar and writing coach at Newhouse.

In addition, many international students develop effective compensation strategies to deal with language challenges, such as recording lectures or arranging study groups, said Margo Sampson, language coordinator for SU’s English for Speakers of Other Languages program.

More than language challenges, international students must also overcome cultural differences. One of these, said Grassi, is Newhouse’s focus on interactive learning, a class structure that is different from the lecture-style classes many international students are used to.

This was the case for Han, the television, radio and film major, who said she finds Asian students to be culturally more introverted and inclined toward individual work, making group projects particularly difficult.

For Han, a difficulty in expressing herself in English is even more frustrating in group settings. Consequently, she said she contributed very little to a group video project her freshman year. But in the semesters since, she said, teamwork has become easier for her as she’s adapted to this interactive teaching style.

Xiaoyang Liao, a sophomore advertising and economics major from China, said she often wonders and worries her American teammates consider her a detriment to group projects. These situations occur often in Newhouse classes, Liao said. In one advertising class alone, she said, she had two separate team assignments.

In a similar way, a fear of judgment of her background or English ability makes Liao reluctant to speak during class, which she said is not typically an option in her Newhouse classes.

Cultural differences create other challenges as well, Han said. References to American television shows, actors and current events in an introductory communications course last year were often lost on Han, who said she spent a lot of time looking up these examples on Google.

Adding to these academic challenges is the pressure many international students feel to succeed, said Pat Burak, director of the Slutzker Center. This pressure is often rooted in familial responsibility, she said, explaining that students are often conscious of the sacrifices their families make to send them to college in the United States.

In addition, education carries a greater importance in some other cultures, Burak said.

“Education in a lot of countries is very highly valued,” she said. “Here in the U.S. – I hate to say this – but it’s not as highly valued. It’s an expectation that everyone goes to college.”

This value for education led Liao, who is from China, to “pursue a better and higher level of education” in the United States, she said, even though her parents’ first condition in sending her to SU was that she return to China upon graduation.

Pursuing a communications degree at Newhouse as an international student is difficult, Liao said, and her classes become tougher every semester.

She transferred into Newhouse at the end of last year, and has often felt overwhelmed in the eight Newhouse classes she has enrolled in this academic year, especially when she thinks about the amount of work to be done at the start of each semester.

But as long as she works hard, Liao said she is confident in her abilities and continuing improvement.

Said Liao: “I feel like I’m well-prepared for the Newhouse challenge.”

Published on March 5, 2013 at 12:14 am