With a new academic year underway, thousands of international students and scholars are starting to call Yale their home. The Office of International Students & Scholars (OISS), which hosts events ranging from East Rock hikes to Yale Rep nights, creates networking opportunities that welcome these students, scholars, and their families to Yale.
In addition to servicing Yale’s international community, OISS staff invests time into their own professional advancement and networking opportunities. Ann Kuhlman, Director, tells us how these opportunities propelled her career and why she encourages her staff, including Maria Gutierrez, Program Manager and co-chair of FLY’s Peer to Peer luncheons, to pursue them.
Ann and Maria, how would you describe your working relationship?
Ann (A): Collaborative. Maria’s new to this field so one of my goals is to give her the tools she needs to continue to grow into this field and the work that we do. It is important to find the time to mentor younger colleagues. I assign Maria projects, all of which have their challenges, and the room to figure out on her own so to encourage initiative and decision making.
Maria (M): I feel welcome to bring up anything I want to pursue in terms of professional development. Ann’s wonderful with accommodating flexibility in my schedule. When I said I want to learn more about communications, a reason why I joined FLY’s communications team, she said absolutely. Anything that can help me grow, I think it helps the office.
A: Absolutely. That was my own experience when I started working and I think it holds true that you can’t get everything on the job. You have to look for additional opportunities outside of the immediate work assignment to gain certain skills and experiences. I was very lucky to be able to do that outside of my work environment with the support of my boss. It’s important for younger administrators to know that there’s not just one way to do things.
M: Learning how others work allows you to envision something that you can improve or bring into your own workplace. It’s important. Part of my job is to maintain relationships and nurture them.
A: That’s why FLY is such a good place to devote energy and time because, among other things, it helps the community learn more about OISS. That serves Yale, the international community, and OISS. There are real benefits to doing something at Yale but outside of your office.
Ann, have you ever held a leadership role on a committee?
A: Many. I served on a couple of boards and have chaired numerous committees. That’s where I learned, where I gained a lot of skills that I wasn’t getting in my workplace particularly in the early years of my career. I learned how to run committees, how to be a board member and lead a board, and how to do project management. I learned so many of those skills outside of my immediate workplace, but they had huge benefits to the workplace.
M: Ann is really good at encouraging people to pursue leadership roles, whatever is appropriate to where they’re going.
A: When you see the talent you have in your office, you want to share it. It both benefits the individual and the office. It benefits Yale’s reputation to have such talented people working nationally on issues that impact international students and scholars in the U.S. It benefits those organizations because they’ve got really good talent coming to them.
Ann, what steps do you take as a manager to encourage your staff to pursue professional development?
A: It’s part of an annual conversation. I start with what are you thinking of doing? For some colleagues I’ll say “It’s time you presented at a national or regional conference. Think about a topic. I’ll help you develop it.” And with our professional associations, there are various levels of engagement so a staff member’s engagement is incremental and dependent on what else is going on in their lives.
When that professional development takes away from time in the office, how do you accommodate for that?
A: My colleagues know their workloads and I don’t think their workloads suffer if they’re engaged in a professional development opportunity. I have colleagues who are serious about their work and do their work, and I don’t think they’ll come to me and ask to do something if they can’t balance it with their work. I trust them.
M: It’s a great quality to be able to trust the people who work for you. I clear the dates with Ann and I make sure that I switch duties with people. Things have to be clear because I’m part of a team. We have an office calendar where everybody writes down when they’re out. Ann monitors that there’s enough people at a given time. And if it can’t be done then, you understand that it’s due to scheduling conflicts.
Ann, what’s your advice for a manager who hesitates about their staff pursuing extra-curriculars?
A: Generally I found it to be a win-win for the office and for the individual. In the conversation about the opportunity, you have to address the question: “How do you think you would manage your workload?” Have an honest conversation about it, make sure you have a shared understanding that the work will get done. There’s always room to fit things in, and if you’re willing to listen to one another hopefully you can work it out.
Maria, what skills have you learned through FLY that you apply to your career at Yale?
M: My ability to collaborate with a wide range of people. I have different projects going on with Peer to Peer lunches, and I learned new program planning skills from my co-chair Heather. Recently FLY co-chair Mela Toro Waters led a FLY emotional intelligence charter training. We developed a list of adjectives of how we want to feel. It allowed me to ask myself: how do I want to feel at work? I want to feel inspired, empowered, heard.
Are there opportunities for FLY and OISS to collaborate together?
A: We seek volunteers and hosts for our programs. And the opportunity for individuals in other offices to hear Maria talk about what it is to work with international students and how many there are, what they do here, that’s so helpful. International students and scholars are an important part of Yale’s diverse community and a reminder that Yale has more 5,000 students and scholars from 120 different countries in our midst is an important message. No matter where you are at Yale, you’re going to have the privilege to interact with this community.
M: When FLY members participate in different opportunities through OISS, they can meet people they wouldn’t normally meet otherwise. That’s part of OISS’s mission: bring people together for positive interactions. Whenever I share trips and events with FLY, it’s because I want people to get involved in different ways that they wouldn’t otherwise.
A: Occasionally, one of the unmet expectations of our international students & scholars is that they don’t get to meet as many Americans as they might have expected. Having FLY members participate in our activities changes that.
M: Nationwide it’s an issue where people just stick to their own clusters. When you go on a bus trip and sit next to someone, you naturally start talking to them. I hope that FLY & OISS continue to collaborate.
A: I see a very rosy future.