Advocating for ISEP on your Campus

If you feel your ISEP experience had a positive impact on your life, spread the message among your peers and campus administrators. You can give presentations in classes, residence halls, student organizations and clubs. Ask your home ISEP Coordinator about opportunities for you to present your experience through ISEP to campus faculty, academic deans, or even your university president. Make the presentation as formal or informal as you like; the important thing is to share your ISEP experience of a lifetime and enhance your presentation skills for your résumé.

Tips to Get Started

• Classroom visits. Speak with your home ISEP Coordinator about scheduling visits with classrooms for foreign languages, international studies, or introductory courses for first-year students. Discuss how ISEP works on your campus and the role of your ISEP Coordinator. Explain why you chose to study abroad with ISEP. Talk about your host university, living arrangements, daily life, and friends. Convey a few memorable stories to illustrate how ISEP can be the experience of a lifetime.
• Advocate to Faculty and Administrators. Ask about opportunities to speak at faculty meetings or request an individual meeting with your campus provost, dean, or president. This can be another opportunity to enhance your presentation skills and let the people who support study abroad on your campus know that their efforts have made a difference.
• Prepare visual aids. Work with your home ISEP Coordinator to customize the ISEP Student Presentation PowerPoint for campus presentations. Share photos of your semester abroad through slideshows or albums, or use the ISEP Photo Slideshow to offer prospective students a glimpse of life abroad. Students can take copies of the ISEP Student Catalog to keep.
• Collaborate and celebrate. Join your advocacy efforts with other ISEP Ambassadors during the worldwide celebration of International Education Week in mid-November. This is a perfect time to articulate the value of your ISEP experience in conjunction with your campus’s internationalization efforts.

Demonstrated skills for your résumé

• Public speaking
• Oral and visual communication skills
• Organization and project management
• Demonstrating initiative and leadership
• Negotiation, diplomacy and advocacy skills
• Networking with peers and administrators

“I welcomed my host ISEP Coordinator to my home university and led presentations with her at the local secondary schools about my experience as an ISEP exchange student. Especially at one school, I presented about ISEP in front of all the students, teachers, and the principal in the school's auditorium.”
Insuk Seok — ISEP Ambassador from Ajou University, Korea