Parrott, Van Lew Publish Chapter in Book on Crisis Management in International Education

Two Graduate School and International Education employees recently published a chapter in a digital book on crisis management in international education by NAFSA: Association of International Educators.

Andrew Van Lew, graduate and international recruitment coordinator, and Sara Parrott, director of international students and scholars, published a chapter titled "Using Data to Mitigate Student Crises" in the first volume of NAFSA's Crisis Management in International Education: International Student and Scholar Services.

Their chapter explores best practices around how the U of A's Office of International Students and Scholars harnesses institutional data to provide key insights into an international student's well-being. Specifically, key metrics - notably academic and financial indicators such as grade-point-average and any unpaid balance on their student account - can be indicative of students at risk.

The U of A has created an algorithm with these and other factors that can identify potential students for proactive outreach by the ISS Office.

"Typically our programming and interventions are reactive, either driven by a student's request or an unfortunate situation that already happened," Parrott said. "We wanted to create something that helped us predict what students may benefit from proactive outreach. This has allowed us to be more active in our outreach for students who may be going through a hard time but haven't spoken up about it."

"I know Sara and I were really happy with the positive results we had implementing this project here on our campus," Van Lew said. "NAFSA is a very large international organization with thousands of members worldwide, so it's exciting to think that international educators from across the globe will be able to read about and implement similar strategies at their own institutions that we use here at the U of A."

Parrott has served in her current role since 2024 and holds more than 15 years of experience in international education across several institutions. She pioneered the at-risk student data project along with Van Lew.

Prior to Van Lew's current role, he spent five years in the Office of International Students and Scholars at the U of A, where he cocreated the office's at-risk student data project with Parrott. He has presented posters and sessions related to this topic at multiple NAFSA regional and annual conferences, one of which won best poster in its category at NAFSA's 2023 annual conference in Washington, D.C.