Throughout the summer, it has been my pleasure to enjoy working with two wonderful undergraduate students, Miranda Pecoraro and Renan Paulino.  Each contributed in meaningful ways to our ongoing research projects that are examining student views on the promising practices for teaching linguistically and culturally diverse post-secondary international students.

Miranda Pecoraro is a third-year Social Work student from Windsor, Ontario who is in our Outstanding Scholars program.  She has been working with me for the past three semesters. The Outstanding Scholars program “provides an exceptional and supportive undergraduate learning experience for high-achieving students, emphasizing depth and breadth of research-based academic inquiry, strong and ongoing faculty/student mentorship, effective communication of research achievement, and achievement of external recognition of academic excellence.”  Check out this video where Outstanding Scholar students explain the OS program in their own words.

Renan Paulino is a third-year Education student from Brazil who joined us as part of the Mitacs Globalink Research Internship program, which places undergraduate students at Canadian universities from a wide variety of countries (e.g., Brazil, China, European Union, Germany, India, Israel, Mexico, UK, US) to engage in faculty-led research projects.  The focus of the Mitacs program is to create awareness of the leading research being done at Canadian universities and to enhance linkages between top international students and Canadian university faculty members. Here is a video on the Mitacs Canada Globalink Research Internship program. Interestingly, this is Renan’s second international exchange in Canada (the first was in St. Johns, Newfoundland while he was a high school exchange student), and he is considering returning for graduate education in the near future…hopefully with us!

Undergraduate research is one of the “high-impact practices,” originally identified by George Kuh (2008), that can be life-changing.  They “demand considerable time and effort, facilitate learning outside of the classroom, require meaningful interactions with faculty and students, encourage collaboration with diverse others, and provide frequent and substantial feedback.”  Students who participate in high-impact practices experience a more complete university student experience. Those that engage in undergraduate research frequently develop strong relationships with student peers and faculty members.

Our students participated in writing projects that led to a peer-reviewed published book chapter and research poster, and a journal article in press on the topic of “Variability by Individual Student Characteristics of Student Satisfaction with Promising International Student Teaching Practices.”  They also developed a workshop on this topic for our upcoming University of Windsor GATAcademy.  Further, they are facilitating an international student-learning community project that is continuing to investigate the difference in student opinions between STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) and non-STEM students on this topic. 

They really take my breath away!

I cannot wait to welcome more undergraduate students into our research group!

Clayton Smith

References:

Kuh, G. D. (2008).  High-impact practices: What they are, who has access to them, and why they matter.  Washington, DC: Association of American Colleges and Universities.

Smith, C., Zhou, G., Potter, M., & Wang, D. (2019).  Connecting best practices for teaching linguistically and culturally diverse international students with international student satisfaction and student perceptions of learning.  In James, W. B., & Cobonoglu, C. (Eds.), Advances in Global Education and Research Volume 3, (252-265).  Sarasota, FL: Association of North America Higher Education International.  https://scholar.uwindsor.ca/educationpub/24/

Smith, C., Zhou, G., Potter, M., & Wang, D. (2019).  Connecting best practices for teaching linguistically and culturally diverse international students with international student satisfaction and student perceptions of learning. Poster presented at the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education Conference, Winnipeg, MB.