1) Training Undergraduate Students

First of all, schools, in particular large public Research-1 Institutes, need to better disclose to incoming freshmen that graduate assistants/instructors rather than “real professors” often teach introductory classes. As 32% percent of all doctoral students in the U.S. come from international backgrounds, there is a good chance that undergraduate students will encounter international teaching assistants. At freshman and departmental orientations, students need to be taught how to deal with people from different countries as well as what to do if they have problems with their teaching styles. Communication is a two-way street: if students want to be treated with respect by the IGA/IGSI, they need to show respect to them as well.

Yet just telling these students to tolerate differences will help neither them nor the IGA/IGSI. First, new students must adjust to a new reality which they might not have faced in high school, that of having “ethnolinguisitc minority speakers in positions of authority” (Rubin 1997, 150). If possible, the school should invite IGA/IGSI to freshman orientations and have them share their experience with undergraduate students, give examples of bad IGA-student relationships, or produce a skit of offensive attitudes or remarks that should not be tolerated in the classroom. Otherwise, students who lack multicultural or overseas experiences may not realize that they may be patronizing or ridiculing IGA/IGSI.

As with other U.S. universities, the University of Connecticut offers a First Year Experience (FYE) class to teach fundamental academic skills or life strategies to incoming freshmen. This year the FYE teaching staff incorporated articles on how to deal with IGA/IGSI, especially on how students should not make a quick linguistic stereotyping of their IGA/IGSI; the staff also experimented with focus groups. Although the teaching staff are still in the process of assessing the differences between the focus groups and other undergraduate students in terms of their relationships to IGA/IGSI, this kind of effort and training are the right steps toward providing students with information that they can also utilize in everyday social settings in today's multicultural America.

In addition, undergraduates should be taught exactly where to register a complaint when they encounter problems with IGA/IGSI as well as with graduate assistants in general. Is it the dean's office, the department, a particular designated professor, or a TA management office? Freshmen who are new to the confusing and occasionally contradictory school bureaucracy may not come up with a better idea on how to deal with a situation than sending an open letter to a campus newspaper.

2) Creating a One-Stop Shop Program

In addition to a customary teaching assistant orientation, a school should establish a permanent one-stop shop program designed especially for international teaching assistants (often called ITAP, or international teaching assistant programs) separate from general graduate assistant programs. Many public universities have established a resource and support center for IGA/IGSI; yet a particular program's authority to enforce strict GA standards varies from institution to institution, with their actual enforcement ranging from advisory to mandatory. In some cases where ITAP exist only formally, they may be ineffective in training international students, which may result in the numerous complaints from frustrated undergraduate students that prompt legislators like Grande to intervene in university affairs. Because of budget concerns, some universities do not even offer an independent program for international students.

If either of these situations is the case, then establishing even an ad-hoc departmental committee that meets when problems arise would reduce the burden on faculty members while serving the students in need. IGA/IGSI would make an appointment with a committee consisting of an international faculty or a faculty with overseas experience, their academic advisors, a GA management staff member or university specialist who deals with the pedagogical aspect of graduate student teacher training, an upperclass undergraduate student who has had several IGA/IGSI in the past, and, if necessary, a resident clinically licensed social worker or psychologist who is trained in cross-cultural communications. An ESL (English as a Second Language) instructor/professor may be useful as well. If the department cannot provide a faculty member who fits the multicultural description, a faculty member in a similar discipline (e.g. sociology, history, or economics) would suffice. Such a committee should not be considered as an official hearing process involving sanctions, but rather as an informal brainstorming session to improve IGA/IGSI's teaching skills while lessening cultural misunderstanding. Finally, the existence of such a committee should be publicized during international student orientations, graduate student and departmental orientations, as well as in departmental graduate student handbooks and on university and departmental web sites. In fostering a cultural awareness among new IGA/IGSI, it is most important to emphasize that seeking assistance is considered acceptable in the U.S.

3) Hosting Interdepartmental Brown Bags/Workshops for IGA/IGSI

Different from the one-stop shop committee, the brown bag meeting is designed to teach IGA/IGSI how to incorporate their unique non-American experiences into teaching political science or its sister disciplines in social sciences. Collaboration with some sister disciplines is desirable to increase the number of students who participate so as to make the meetings successful. These informal discussions should be led by international faculty members or senior IGA/IGSI who have some teaching experience. It is relatively easy to incorporate non-American or non-Western experiences into Comparative Politics and International Relations. For example, I use my McDonald's experience (i.e., that I had never had a McDonald's hamburger until I went to Tokyo at age 18) in teaching modernization and Westernization as well as Westoxication. For average non-Westerners, eating a McDonald's hamburger, listening to Mariah Carey, and wearing Levis' jeans are all construed as proud signs of progress, however misguided that may be. Incredibly, when I first had my McDonald's, I felt I had become somebody important and I bragged about it to my hometown friends for days. Incorporating personal experiences and testimonies should be encouraged as long as they are academic-or research-related, such as providing first-hand accounts of the collapse of the Berlin Wall or the aftermath of Tiananmen Square, experiencing the diverse meanings of wearing an Islamic headscarf, etc. It would be beneficial if experienced international faculty members could share with IGA/IGSI their tricks on how to incorporate their experiences and different vantage points into other subfields, such as Political Theory, and Public Administration—subfields that are, at a quick glance, more difficult to incorporate non-U.S. or non-Western perspectives into than Comparative Politics or IR.

4) Ensuring Fairness in IGA/IGSI Evaluations

In general, undergraduate students form impressions that IGA/IGSI are less approachable, less articulate, and less enthusiastic than their American counterparts (Rubin 1997). These sentiments are consistent with the pattern in which students in predominantly White colleges perceive and evaluate Black professors (Hendrix 1998). Whether these impressions are fairly accurate reflections of reality is a different matter. Numerous studies indicate that these perceptions, or, more precisely, that developing such perceptions, are susceptible to factors that are not directly related to the IGA/IGSI's English proficiency or pedagogical skills; nationality, ethnicity, and even physical attractiveness determine the state of ingroupness or outgroupness of speakers and affect students' forming perception of IGA/IGSI's English proficiency, sociolinguistic stereotypes, and overall competency (Smith et al. 1992; Munro and Derwing 1995). In other words, when students perceive the IGA/IGSI to be more foreign, they feel they hear heavier accents than speakers actually have (Rubin 1997). Because of these preconceptions, many IGA/IGSI start from a negative point rather than from zero, as their American counterparts do, in students' evaluations and GA/GSI-student relationships. Under such circumstances, a standard practice of distributing teaching assignments among the GA/GSI simply based on students' ratings seems unfair to some IGS and IGSI who may have superb pedagogical skills and warm personalities that go unnoticed by undergraduate students. To ensure fairness it is essential that faculty members who are in charge of graduate evaluations take turns and physically visit classrooms and evaluate all GA/GSI rather than relying on student evaluations that may be tainted by race/socio-linguistic biases and stereotypes. At the same time, it is important to raise awareness among faculty members and graduate students that such intangible and exogenous factors may affect the way they perceive their IGA/IGSI and international job candidates at their first meetings.

1) Take Time to Introduce Yourself and Make Yourself Approachable

This is only common sense, but often IGA/IGSI forget to take this part of the process seriously. Undergraduate students (especially first semester students) who lack previous exposure to non-native-English speaking instructors (other than foreign language instructors) do not know quite what to expect from “foreigners.” Many of these students consider you a foreigner with a funny accent and a funny unpronounceable name with whom they may not be able to identify. Although they may not mean to offend, many may not be able to locate your country of origin on a world map (or worse, may never have heard of it). They may think you just came to the United States a couple of days ago in time for the new semester and have no understanding of the American academic system, the school's mission statement, their busy social life, or that having a mischievous dog can be an excuse for not submitting an assignment on time in America.

First, you need to let your undergraduate students know your background, your academic history, your knowledge about the university, etc., not all at once but gradually throughout the semester. Make certain they know that you are aware of what is going on across campus. Reading a student newspaper is useful in keeping up-to-date on student life in general at your school. Learn the American art of small talk, including keeping a stock of jokes. Before each class, take time to discuss political affairs in general or even your private life or sports to make yourself more approachable. Because of my considerable knowledge about college basketball at a place where it is a semi-religion (the University of Connecticut) and my practical use of basketball terms to conduct classroom instruction (e.g. “shot-clock violation” for students who cannot stop talking, and “point guards” for discussion group leaders), students perceive me not as an unapproachable alien but as just another nutty Connecticut basketball fan who cannot help connecting everything with basketball and who even draws life lessons from basketball games. It is your responsibility to have students understand you are not a foreigner first but an average guy who knows a lot about political science.

2) Don't Take Yourself Too Seriously

Even after you have successfully introduced yourself to your undergraduate students and persuaded them that you are not an alien, you will still end up having a bad day or two. Undergraduate students may laugh in your face at your funny pronunciation of jargon or grammatical errors. I always tell the unfortunate IGA/IGSI who have experienced these problems not to get offended, as you cannot survive in academia without having a thick skin. (In short, if you do not have one, then grow one.) Just ignore the comments, or, if you are rather inquisitive, ask the students what you just said or how you pronounced it. Laugh with them and learn from them. For example, your students may prejudge and tacitly assume you are academically inept and voice their concerns or register complaints just to upset you or to have fun at your expense. Again, do not get offended. Have a sense of humor.

Four years ago, I had a notoriously disruptive 45-year-old non-traditional student in my Introduction to Political Theory course who criticized me in class: “I don't think you know much about political theory.” Being only a second semester instructor then and having long been aware that I was not a direct descendant of Socrates, I did not feel particularly offended, nor did I have an urge to shout back. Rather, I said: “Yeah, that's what I worry about every day.” Students who are used to a barrage of my self-deprecating jokes immediately started laughing—including the 45-year-old student. Occasionally, he still tried my patience; however, I never took it personally and always made a joke out of it. Because of my handling of this student, I received an excellent evaluation from my students, who thanked me for keeping peace in class.

3) It Is Never Too Late to Learn Something New

You may be a 40-year-old visiting scholar from abroad on a GA payroll or you may have years of teaching experience in your home country, but there is always something new to learn. After all, you are playing by new rules. Do not assume it is too late to improve your teaching, language, or pronunciation skills. Many schools have special supplemental English classes for IGA/IGSI for a modest fee or pedagogy classes/workshops for GA/GSI in general. Take advantage of them as often as you can. If you think you are too old to study the ABCs again with young IGA/IGSI, then take a private or semi-private lesson with an ESL tutor for accent modification (in my area this costs somewhere between $35 and $50 per hour). Even if you speak near-perfect English or have lived for years in other English-speaking countries, modifying your accent to the American style will help your students understand you more easily. If you speak English perfectly, then adding some local flavor (e.g. a Boston accent in New England) will make you even more approachable to students. If your school does not have ESL classes or tutors, then look for one at a nearby community college. If you live in a remote town where there are no ESL teachers or community colleges, then go online. Look for a program in which the telephone as well as the computer is used as a means of instruction and evaluation.

4) Be a Role Model

Perhaps you may not have a universal appeal to students because of how you look, speak, or even dress. Do not be discouraged. There is another great way to connect with your students: be a role model. There are always some students in your class who will look up to you regardless of your nationality, color, gender, or other ascriptive characteristics, just because of who and what you are. Allow your students to get to know you.

I always tell my students they can be anything they want if they work hard. I tell them that even though people often assume students from Japan are wealthy, I, in fact, came from an economically disadvantaged background. My undergraduate advisor at my first school in Japan told me not to even think about going to graduate school because I did not have the money. In addition, English is not my first language. I have become a minority and developed a Duboisean double-consciousness, so that I now understand how overt and covert prejudices and racial discrimination affect one's self-esteem and confidence.

Away from home with nothing to fall back on, I always had to be the player, cheerleader, and coach at the same time to handle ups and downs in my life. I always feel and therefore pressure myself to work three times harder than American students to prove myself and gain recognition. But here I am, against all odds, teaching at a university in the U.S. I am an example of survival, resilience, determination, and the rewards of hard work—and so are you.

You are a survivor. You chose a hard way to pursue your goal. Because you are an example of hard work and success, your story is inspirational, especially to those students in your class who have their own dreams to pursue. Take time and reflect on your life. Show your students that you paid your dues. But remember, you are nobody in this country until you prove yourself. You might have been the best student or the best instructor in your home country, but you are now playing a new game with new rules. Earn their respect.

In the end, your efforts and struggles are all worth it. Before I first started teaching, I asked myself “what if” questions many times, even though I had had several semesters of GA experience. “Now I'm on my own. What if students don't like me? What if I am not cut out for teaching?” Fortunately, all my worries evaporated and my efforts were rewarded when one of my students in her class evaluation gave me the touching reassurance that every first-time instructor hopes to hear: “For her first semester here, she did an excellent job.” While it may not be the highest evaluation an instructor could receive, the form still hangs on the wall in my study and will remain there for as long as I teach. I have since received far more flattering evaluations from many students; yet I do not want to replace my old evaluation on the wall, because it reminds me of how I started, and makes me proud of how far I have come.