Approval of Previous Minutes —

Meeting minutes from Oct. 2, 2023. Motion to approve by Sunita Gandhi. Seconded by Megan Greene. Motion passed unanimously.

Unfinished Business —

1. Updates from Charlie Bankart, International Affairs
   1. Eron Memaj, Director of International Support Services, will be leaving KU. Lynne Vanahill will be serving in that role as Interim Director. KUIA has been discussing internally and with Human Resources about the future structure of the office and its alignment with Jayhawks Rising. The challenge is combining two centers of activity: immigration/student engagement and international recruitment/admissions. A question arising is whether these aspects of the student experience should be handled within one office or as an outcome of several offices with strong connections.
2. Review possible changes to the committee charges.
   1. Following discussion of the charges at the last committee meeting, specifically regarding the lack of actionable items within the list, co-chairs Wyatt Haywood and Elena Semyonova-Smith met with Caty Movich from the Governance Office to draft new charges. The focus was to make the charges more consumable and actionable. Repetitive elements were combined or removed, and some specific charges were moved to standing if they were ongoing. The draft was sent to committee members for their review prior to this meeting.
   2. Specific Charge #2: What does “monitoring events and global challenges” look like? For example, given what is currently occurring in Israel and the Gaza Strip, what can the committee do? Can we be helpful as allies or advocates in the process of the central administration’s response?
      1. This seems like a central challenge facing the committee in terms of what is within our power. It seems we can meet with people and offices and make suggestions.
         1. This charge was primarily an outcome of the pandemic. It was intended to bring attention to the unique impact of the pandemic on international students. The charge was then broadened to include other global issues.
      2. Has there been a statement from the Chancellor’s or Provost’s Office regarding the current conflict?
         1. KUIA collaborated with DEIB on a statement centering community care and respectful engagement.
         2. KUIA is constantly in contact with students behind the scenes, in this case Palestinian and Israeli students. It is important to protect and respect people’s privacy. There is significant risk to certain identity groups across university campuses, amidst universities being asked to take a side and make a statement. These statements are not necessarily going to solve anything and must represent a massive diversity of perspectives. The major challenge is: what is the institution’s role?
      3. So, as a committee, are we monitoring events and issues in real time, or are we supposed to monitor KU’s response? And if the latter, what is the goal? Should this charge be retired? Is it feasible? In its new, broader scope, should it be shifted to a standing charge?
         1. It motivates committee members to stay up to date on global events. We can modify the charge to specifically include monitoring of KU’s response.
         2. A Governance committee could be helpful in advocating for responses that are critical to the wellbeing of those within the KU international community who are affected. The Governance voice brings a unique perspective and gravity.
         3. The University Senate President has regular meetings with the Provost, and the IA Committee can elevate issues to the President.
      4. Another element of this charge is how the university can support students who are being economically impacted by global events, such as waiving or reducing fees, tuition, etc.
   3. The committee agreed that across all the charges, the language “international students” should be replaced with the “KU international community” to include international staff and faculty.
   4. Specific Charge #3b: There was a charge to implement/review exit interviews from KUIA/ISS. Are these interviews happening?
      1. Charlie is unsure whether KU has international exit interviews. There are various scheduled student surveys that are required by the federal government, so perhaps the charge is referencing data from those. We would have to get permission from KU to implement exit surveys and KU is concerned about survey fatigue. Charlie noted that it is valuable for a Governance body to survey international students, as they may share a different perspective with an office that has not directly served them.
      2. Caty investigated the history of the charge and found that this was a recommendation from the FY2023 IA Committee.
      3. The committee discussed the importance of avoiding duplication of survey questions, which is an important benefit to AIRE reviewing surveys.
      4. The committee agreed to remove this charge.
   5. Next steps
      1. Wyatt, Elena, and Caty will finalize edits to the charges and send them to the committee for an email vote. Following this, Caty will facilitate sending the charges to SenEx and University Senate for their approvals.

New Business —

1. Wyatt reviewed the action items that the committee should focus on over the next few meetings. He suggested inviting Melissa Birch to the next meeting to share the work of the Institute of International and Global Engagement, which was created out of the ACE Internationalization Lab. He suggested that committee members review the FY2023 survey results and the FY2024 Jayhawks Rising Executive Summary, which are all on Teams.