Welcome to our St. Francis College International newsletter, we have some very exciting updates to share with you – read on to learn more!

SFC Continues to Successfully Recruit Worldwide

In all of the relationships we build our goal remains constant, to continue to contribute to the internationalization of our campus and to further diversify our student body. Our team pursues this goal by actively nurturing the relationships we’ve built with our global partners, meeting them and the students they serve as often as can be. This shared virtual world has allowed to us to be more interconnected and interdependent than we have been in decades; allowing us to travel from continent to continent and from country to country in a matter of seconds. From the month of February and until now we have entered an aggressive recruitment cycle - we have had the opportunity to engage with agents from different parts of the globe from South America to Asia, and from there to Central America and the Caribbean. Each week and with each meeting we have learned about students and the excitement with which they are envisioning their futures abroad.

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​​Students Returning to the USA

December marked the beginning of what has now become a trend – students are looking forward to coming back to the U.S! As the world is coming together to combat the Coronavirus we have seen more and more students interested in coming to our shores once again. We are proud to say that thanks to our efforts and the efforts of our agent partners we have now sent acceptance letters for the Fall 2021 and Spring 2022 terms to students from Serbia, China, Botswana, and India just to name a few!

Partners across the globe have let us know that they’ve seen an increase of students in their pipelines who are thrilled to once again apply to schools in the Big Apple. Since the beginning of the global pandemic we have been preparing our campus and revamping our programming to enhance the academic experience of new international students and we gladly welcome them to our global SFC community!

Important SFC Health Updates

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, St. Francis College is requiring insurance for all international students. Students must be covered by their own Personal Medical Insurance (PMI) plan if they are coming to New York for the Fall 2021 Semester. For those international students coming to New York in the Fall who will not have health insurance, it is strongly recommended that they apply for a PMI plan with an insurance company we have partnered with called Cultural Insurance Services International (CISI). CISI offers a quality insurance policy with broad and affordable coverage for international students. Students planning on coming to New York and remaining on the insurance plan from their home country are allowed to do so, but proof of insurance coverage will be required in order to allow students to participate in classes.

St. Francis College also strongly encourages all incoming students to get vaccinated against COVID-19 as soon as possible in preparation for the Fall 2021 Semester. Our goal for the Fall 2021 semester will be to have as many members of the campus community vaccinated as possible, enabling the return of in-person campus activity and reducing the risk of COVID-19 within our community. With the recent increase in vaccine production and eligibility in New York, students who are unable to access the COVID-19 vaccine prior to arrival in the U.S. should be able to get vaccinated in New York without any problem. To the extent possible, the College will assist international students who could not be vaccinated in their home countries through our partnership with Brooklyn Hospital Center .

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Enriching Programming

We are confident that we are seeing this uptick in the number of applicants via our global partners because we have continued to develop thought-provoking programming at SFC International. In our last newsletter, we introduced you to our “SFC Human Rights Lecture Series”, where industry leaders join members of our College in conversations surrounding human rights and the ways in which our students can have an impact no matter which programs they are a part of. In the month of March, Aniket Shah , Senior Fellow at Columbia’s Center for Sustainable Investment & Adjunct Professor of Sustainability, Finance, and International Development brought us an engaging presentation where he showed us how global finance, sustainability, and human rights are interrelated as well as why these will need to converge for a brighter, fairer, future. We rounded out our lectures last month as we welcomed Paul O’Brien , Executive Director of Amnesty International USA and author of the new book “Power Switch: How we Reverse Extreme Inequality”. This lecture was moderated by none other than our school president, Dr. Miguel Martinez-Saenz, and together they guided our students through the critical questions of power, what it means, and how our students can learn ways they can tip the scales of equality and equity.

​​Looking Ahead

St. Francis College continues to actively create an environment to welcome a diverse, culturally aware, inclusive, and internationalized student population while thoughtfully engaging our current students. After seeing the positive impacts of our lecture series this past semester, we have decided to add a fellowship program to expand our human rights initiative. Our distinguished fellows are a diverse group of thought leaders who will extend these conversations into our classrooms covering the following topics:

• Human Rights in New York City: Fighting for Human Justice
• Challenges to Human Rights and Democracy in Latin America
• Human Rights, Sustainability and Global Finance
• International Human Rights Law
• Human Trafficking, Gender and Social Impact
• Human Rights Activism, Advocacy, and Change

To learn more about how this meaningful program will encourage our students to see themselves as active agents of social change read our press release here.

A Time for Celebration Just days ago, members of the St. Francis College Class of 2020 and their counterparts from 2021 participated in consecutive graduation ceremonies at the Ford Amphitheater at Brooklyn’s very own Coney Island Boardwalk. On May 20, 2021, we held the first in-person commencement exercises since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. We were thrilled to join other institutions nation-wide who both recognized and honored the hard work of their students in thoughtful graduation ceremonies. A New State of the Art Campus Building for SFC Looking further ahead to 2022, I am excited share with you that St. Francis College will soon have a new home! Our enriching new academic curriculum will soon exist within the walls of the historic Wheeler Building , where all members of our College community will be able to collaborate and share ideas in a facility tailored specifically for these ever-important needs. In our official announcement President Miguel Martinez-Saenz wrote, "This is a historic moment to completely re-envision our campus and meet the needs of our community, and we are thrilled to continue offering a first-rate, affordable education in a modern, flexible and welcoming learning space." We invite you, your team members, peers, and the students and families in your pipeline to read through our announcement and take a virtual tour of our space as I am sure they will be just as thrilled as we are about "SFC Forward" , our bold vision for SFC’s future.

Reflections: A Fall 2020 Recap

Our mission at St. Francis College is to ensure every international student is destined for success and each SFC student has a chance for meaningful global engagement through transformational college experiences at home and abroad. These experiences are set in place to prepare them for the 21st Century global society and workplace. It is because we have the privilege of working with these brave, intelligent, resilient young people that we create programs and opportunities that are customized to their needs. This year has undoubtedly presented challenges for all members of educational institutions worldwide. Below you will find reflections on some of the ways in which our community joined together before and during the Fall 2020 semester on behalf of the international students we serve.

In early spring, as we learned more about the novel Coronavirus and as countries began to shutter, we knew our incoming freshmen students faced unique concerns about starting their education at St. Francis College (SFC) in Fall 2020. That was the reason why SFC created the Summer Jumpstart Program just for them. Summer Jumpstart was designed to introduce our incoming students to life at St. Francis College, get them trained on the technology needed for learning and communication, allowed them to earn college credits that "jumpstarted” their academic career, and informed them about our plans for education in the fall. In addition, the Jumpstart program offered a wide range of online academic, student, and learning support services to ensure they were as prepared as possible for their first semester when it began in September.

During the summer we also organized “Learning Communities” in which our international students had a number of their classes integrated with other first-year internationals. To ensure our program was as comprehensive as possible, these classes were taught by some of our most experienced faculty, many who had international backgrounds themselves. As soon as the fall semester began, the Terrier to Terrier Emergency Fund was set into motion to help those students who expressed financial need including a grant St. Francis College was awarded by the Petrie Foundation which further helped us aid our international students in this uncertain time.

@sfcnyinternational

Before the semester began, our social media channels were created to effectively develop comprehensive relationships in different parts of the world and to serve as interactive tools to communicate our strategic initiatives with both incoming and international students. We decided that these channels would not only be a way to keep them informed in real time as policies changed, but functioned as a way to highlight our current student achievements and listened to their concerns, as well as a way to showcase the student experience for our partners and the families they serve. We have an ever-evolving approach to how we connect with all who visit our page yet our focus remains the same, to feature our international student offerings in action.

From the spring months and until now, SFC International has met with students either virtually or via phone at every step of the way, ensuring that both they and their families have the peace of mind that comes with clear, confident communication. During these past months we have held several 60 - 90 minute informational sessions for both our incoming and current international students where we continuously updated students on school policies, on their options for continuing their SFC journeys, and have guided them on all-things immigration, as needed. We have also effectively completed one-on-one call campaigns where we have called students individually to field their questions and listen to their concerns -- this is just one more example of our famous “SFC personal touch”; our aim is to always invest in, and meet our, students wherever they may be.

September marked the beginning of a new chapter for many at our College. While many of our Freshmen were starting with us virtually from their home countries as part of our First Year Together Learning Communities initiative, Amnesty International USA's (AIUSA) 15-member Board of Directors elected Reza Fakhari, Ph.D., St. Francis College's Vice President for Internationalization and Strategic Initiatives, as its Chair. In that capacity, he leads strategy and oversight of the nation's largest grassroots human rights group. Relatedly, we are very excited to announce the creation of a new student club at SFC, the Amnesty International Chapter. Our chapter will focus on building a strong team of student leaders that will develop their skills to mobilize our diverse SFC community into a strong and respectful environment. Across the globe we have seen that young people have been key agents of social change; students are at the heart of that activism. We decided to start this AIUSA Chapter at SFC because we believe that first and foremost it aligns with our Franciscan mission of serving our global communities and are happy to announce that this first cohort of student-leaders are all international students from different parts of the globe.

Despite hardship, our faculty and administrators have remained resilient, resourceful and creative; our students have as well. After only two years of being a member of the SFC community, Brenda Awuor, an international student from Kenya, has much to be proud of. From the onset she was a highly engaged student involved in student activities, such as the International Student Advisory Council, working as a student assistant with the Office of Special Events and participating in our Wall Street Bound program, to successfully pursuing two degrees at the same time. Despite the demands of her academic engagements, Brenda was also able to take on a high profile internship and, today, we are proud to share that she has just been offered a full time position at IHS Market Company, as a part of the Application Support Team for the Cross-Assets Services. She will start in January, right after her graduation this winter and there are no words that can describe the excitement of her most recent achievement.

Yes, this fall semester has looked different than it has in years past, on that we can all agree. It is because we at St. Francis College believe that we are stronger together that we wanted to instill a sense of community within our first-year students. Together, we can excel through innovation and successfully cultivating academic relationships that cross borders and are strong enough to give our students the confidence they need to make it past the challenges that come their way. Today, we are proud to say that approximately 10% of our student population is comprised of international students hailing from over 72 countries across the globe. We remain true to our goal -- to celebrate international experiences and cross-cultural exchanges worldwide and highlight the importance of global learning, exchange of perspectives, while enhancing the educational experience for each of our students.