Investigating Supports, Barrier and Cultural Navigations During Transitions as International Faculty Members

The growth of international graduates in U.S. higher education institutions has prompted a growing presence of international faculty in U.S. higher education, especially in the fields of STEM, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. International faculty members are expected to take on responsibilities on many aspects of teaching, research, service, mentoring, advising, and globalization in U.S. institutions. Despite their success in teaching, research, service expectations, and contribution toward globalization, many international faculty members struggle with mental health, imposter syndrome, isolation, invisibility to the system and yet being used as a token, then immigration challenges, and they are also torn between two worlds (their home countries and the US) compared to the U.S.-born faculty. They also lack structural, navigational, and mentorship support throughout their career. Our own experiences of navigating US higher academia without much support have been our primary motivation to explore this topic. Additionally, a lack of research in the area of international faculty development makes this topic worth exploring. This auto-ethnographic qualitative work grounded within the scope of transnationalism utilizes a cultural wealth framework and aims to identify the barriers and challenges faced by international faculty members and also recognizes productive ways to address those gaps in terms of designing resources for international Ph.D. students and faculty members as the needs for international faculty members look different than the home-grown ones. In this work, we tried to unpack the barriers and navigational challenges faced by us in general and during our critical transitional points in career. We finally shed some light on the ways international faculty members can be supported during different career stages of our lives (for example, their transition points from graduate student to advanced researcher and/or junior faculty members and finally helping them to transition into mid-career faculty positions like an associate professor and helping them move onwards full professor or administrative positions) based on our own first-hand experiences. The goal of this autoethnography is to include the cultural and linguistic assets and unique world views that international faculty members bring and finding ways to leverage them while promoting professional development, mentorship supports, and preserving their mental health.