Final Paper LDR 660

Professor Loughran
By: Alex Bondar

Siena Heights University










Office of International Studies
Abstract
This paper will analyze the goals of the International Studies Office of Siena Heights
University and how the pertain to the greater mission the university as a whole. The paper
will discuss the goals of the International Studies Office as well as the problems that it faces
in order to reach these goals. It will look into the strategic marketing plan of the Office of
International Studies and discuss the business strategy of the office. There will be thorough
SWOT and PESTEL analysis conducted on the Office of International Studies in this paper.
Finally, there will be an evaluation of the results of the SWOT and PESTEL analysis, built
into the body of the paper, in accordance with how they affect the goals of the Office of
International Studies and the greater goals of Siena Heights University.
Intro
The main goal of the Office of International Studies at Siena Heights University is to
recruit international students to the university. The business strategy of the Office of
International Studies is to carry out a successful recruitment strategy for international
students through word of mouth and relationship building. The Office of International Studies
does not have its own corporate strategy as it is a department within a University. Generally
speaking it is the role of the University to carry out the corporate strategy. Thus the focus of
this paper will be on the business strategy and the strategic marketing plan of OIS. The goal
of the University is to have ten percent of its student body consist of international students.
Each year, Siena Heights University increases the amount of international students that the
Office of International Studies must recruit to the University. This paper will discuss the
goals and strategies of the Office of International Studies as well as the challenges that it
faces in order to create an international feel at the Siena Heights University campus.
Vision, Values and Ethical Principles
The Office of International Studies does not have its own mission statement. However, if
one was to describe the mission of the Office of International Studies it would be: to provide
an international aspect to the Siena Heights community, by recruiting international students
and providing them with the services that they need to become successful here and by
creating opportunities for US students to go abroad and by working internally to create an
international experience for everyone (Daniel Morris, 2014). The guiding principle for the
Office of International Studies is the mission statement of Siena Heights University, a
Catholic University founded and sponsored by the Adrian Dominican Sisters, to assist
people to become more competent, purposeful, and ethical through a teaching and learning
environment which respects the dignity of all. (Graduate student handbook, pg. 4). It is
based on this mission statement that the Office of International Studies hopes to attract
international students to come and study at Siena Heights University.
The vision statement of the Office of International Studies is: to internationalize our
campus. However, this runs into conflict with the priorities and expectations of the
institutional leadership. Siena Heights Universitys current policies and procedures neglect
the needs of most international students by overemphasizing or minimizing the differences of
trying to treat everyone differently. In order to achieve its vision, the Office of International
Studies has to maintain an attractive environment for international students. This means that
it has to provide more individualized treatment to international students versus what regular
students would receive at Siena Heights University. International students, upon arrival to
Siena Heights University will face issues that regular students will not experience. For
example, they will have language issues, accommodation issues, and transportation issues
just to name a few. Each international students case and culture is different and the Office of
International Studies cannot create a standard that fits everyone equally. Thus, the Office of
International Studies focuses on treating each international student on an individual basis
with respect and a focus on individualized attention. The main way of recruiting international
students at Siena Heights University is through word of mouth. By giving each international
student individualized attention the Office of International Studies will be able to achieve its
vision of internationalizing the campus. The Office of International Studies achieves this
through maintaining good ethical principles that include: honesty, respect and individual
dignity for all students.
SWOT Analysis
To further investigate the business strategy of the Office of International Studies, a
thorough SWOT analysis was performed on the office. The SWOT analysis provided a
detailed breakdown of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats facing the Office
of International Studies. For the most part, the SWOT analysis will deal with the strategic
marketing plan of the Office of International Studies for recruiting international students to
Siena Heights University.
The strengths of the Office of International Studies include: tailored customer service,
the office team, size and location of the school, flat rate tuition, and knowledge of Spanish
and Portuguese by the office staff. The number one strength of the Office of International
Studies is the tailored customer service that they are able to provide to all international
students due to the size of the university. Since Siena Heights University is a relatively small
university, the Office of International Studies is able to individually cater to the needs of all
international students on campus. Whenever an international student has a problem or needs
extra assistance they are able to receive this assistance from the Office of International
Studies. This is a big advantage for Siena Heights University because at most large
Universities the students are on their own once they get there. This size of the university also
plays an advantage when it comes to class size. Most undergraduate classes at Siena Heights
University do not exceed twenty students. This means that professors can provide the extra
attention to the international students that would not take place in a university with larger
class sizes. Also, most of the international students that come from Latin America or Europe
prefer close knit community environments. At Siena Heights University they can form deep
relationships, due to the small student body, with the other students attending the university.
Finally, another main strength for the Office of International Studies at Siena Heights
University is the flat rate tuition offered to international students. Most universities charge
higher tuition for international and out of state students. However, Siena Heights University
provides the same flat rate tuition to all students and this is a big economic advantage for the
Office of International Studies.
The main weakness of the Office of International Studies, however, is also its size and
location. Most international students find out about Siena Heights University through word of
mouth from other students that have attended here. Due to the small size of the university and
the city of Adrian, it is hard for the Office of International Studies to achieve wide brand
name recognition for Siena Heights University. This makes marketing to international
students a challenge when competing with some of the larger universities located in bigger
cities.
The main opportunity for the Office of International Studies, is that growth of the
international student body at Siena Heights University has not hit a ceiling yet. There is a lot
of room for future growth, with the right strategic marketing. The Office of International
Studies was founded just six years ago and it is still a relatively new endeavor for the
university.
Also, the Office of International Studies faces a wide variety of threats from the
external environment. Government changes and political instability play a huge role in this.
The Office of International Studies is dependent on both our government and foreign
governments in its ability to recruit international students to Siena Heights University. First
of all, the Office of International Studies needs to receive educational approval for Siena
Heights University from all countries where it is recruiting students. Any political instability
or poor relations of the foreign government with the US government affects the ability of the
office to recruit students from that country. Furthermore, once we have international students
attending Siena Heights University from a country that goes through political turmoil, it
negatively affects those international students. One example of this is Venezuela. There are
currently two students attending Siena Heights University from Venezuela. Due to the
political turmoil taking place in Venezuela these students have hard time transferring money
to pay for school from their home country. This has a big negative impact on the Office of
International Studies and it also places extra stress on the students from that country. Another
threat that Office of International Studies faces is the rising interest in community colleges on
the part of the international students. There has recently been a growing trend in community
colleges to recruit international students. This is a new challenge that all traditional
universities will face in the coming years and Siena Heights University will definitely be
affected by this trend.
PESTEL Analysis
The PESTEL analysis is a framework that categorizes and analyzes an important set
of external forces that might impinge upon a firm (Rothaermel, 2013, p57). These forces
include are political, economic, sociocultural, technological, ecological and legal. They are
external in nature and create both challenges and opportunities for the Office of International
Studies. The political factor acts mostly as a threat because changes in a students home
countrys government, unfortunately, are usually due to instability and corruption. Major
changes in government and government structure rarely happen for positive reasons.
The economic factor is probably the second most important factor for the OIS after
the political. Many currencies around the world are tied to the dollar and a wide fluctuation in
these currencies affects the students ability to pay for tuition at Siena Heights University.
Also, there is a perception around the world that the US higher education system is better.
This perception tied to the relatively low cost and flat rate tuition offered by Siena Heights
University act as a big economic advantage when the Office of International Studies is
recruiting international students to come here.
The sociocultural factor is the reliance on English as the international language of
commerce. This is one of the main reasons why receiving education in the USA is perceived
as an advantage around the world.
The technological factor is that international students now have the same amount of
access to the internet as US students do. International students can research schools online
and this is both a plus and a minus for Siena Heights University. For this reason, the Office of
International Studies is trying to increase its presence online and is stressing advertising to
international students through the use of online social networks. International students who
attend Siena Heights University can create an informal marketing campaign for Siena Heights
University about their experiences at the university on the many different social networks that
they use. The Office of International Studies was able to recruit international students to
attend Siena Heights University by using this method with a large degree of success.
The ecological factor affecting the Office of International Studies at Siena Heights
University is the internal regulations that the university places on print material. The Office
of International Studies prints a lot and if the university was to require the office to go to an
electronic data system, this would be of concern to the office. The majority of the files on
international students are kept in paper form and transferring this all online would be very
time consuming challenge that the office is not ready for at this time.
The legal factor affecting the Office of International Studies is the signing of I-20
documents to sponsor students to come study in the USA. If something were to go wrong
with the ability of the Office of International Studies to issue I-20s and sponsor international
students the whole office would be jeopardized and in trouble. The Office of International
Studies has to go through periodic audits with the department of homeland security regarding
sponsoring international students to come study in the United States.
Business Strategy
The business strategy of the Office of International Studies is simple. Its current goal
is to make ten percent of the incoming freshman class of 2014 and beyond to consist of
international students. The strategy focuses around recruitment through word of mouth and
building the word of mouth network. The use of social networks plays a huge part in this and
helps the Office of International Studies recruit new international students each year.
Also, the Office of International Office utilizes online promotion through third party
marketing. The Office of International Studies will contract to a third party marketing
company to provide us with contact information of international students who would be
interested in coming to study at Siena Heights University. In the past this has proven to not be
very effective for a few different reasons. One reason is that there is no way for the Office of
International Studies to check the integrity of the third party marketing companies who often
times provide the office with dead end contacts or fake emails. Third party marketing
companies also tend to charge a lot for their services and the payoff for these services has not
met the expectations of the Office of International Studies.
Another part of the strategic marketing plan of the Office of International Studies is
traveling to international recruitment fairs once a year every fall. This success of recruiting
students at such fairs is different year to year and depends on the turnout of interested
students and the amount of other Universities present at the fair that are directly competing
with Siena Heights University.
A further part of the business strategy of the Office of International Studies for
recruiting international students is placing emphasis on the higher value of service that the
students will receive here versus other Universities and the flat rate tuition that is offered by
Siena Heights University. Siena Heights University is very competitive from a cost point and
also provides a lot of scholarship opportunities for international students.
However, the main point of emphasis for the Office of International Studies is the
high degree of individualized service that is provided to international students at Siena
Heights University. For example, transportation is offered to students to and from the Detroit
airport and weekly grocery shopping trips are also provided to all the international students
free of charge. Rarely due international students receive this degree of service at other higher
education institutions especially if they are larger ones.
Finally, the last part of the business strategy employed by the Office of International
Studies is to form alliances and networks with foreign universities in order to promote student
exchanges between Siena Heights University and the partner Universities. For this purpose
the Office of International Studies has started a partnership with foreign Universities called
the International College and University Consortium. It is a nonprofit group of universities
aimed at promoting student and faculty exchanges in order to increase the amount of
international students at all of the partner universities. The International College and
University has its own mission statement which is to promote faculty and student exchanges
in order to enhance the education of individuals and its member institutions through exposure
to other cultures, countries, and experiences. Current ICUC membership countries include
China and the United States and there are plans in place to broaden this list of countries to
Brazil as well as other nations. The aim of this program is to increase the amount of
international students through forming long lasting partnerships with foreign Universities.
Reflection
The main goal of the Office of International Studies is to internationalize the campus
at Siena Heights University. The goals of the University as a whole do not necessarily align
with the specific goals of the Office of International Studies. For example, Siena Heights
Universitys current policies and procedures try to overemphasize or minimize the
differences of trying to treat everyone differently. However, this causes the Office of
International Studies to run into conflict with the priorities and expectations of the
institutional leadership. In order to maintain an attractive environment for international
students, these students need to receive special treatment that may not be in line with the
institutional leadership. International students need to be provided with extra services so that
they may become successful. Recruiting international students that have the ability to pay for
a US education requires the office of International studies to provide these students with extra
services that regular students may not be receiving.
Also, creating opportunities for US students to go study abroad requires extra effort
on the part of the Office of International Studies. This is due to the composition of the
current body at Siena Heights University. A large majority of our student body is made up of
student athletes. Their athletic schedules make it difficult for them to have a chance to study
abroad. Thus the OIS at Siena Heights University has to work with every student interested in
going to study abroad on an individual basis to help them find a program that would work to
benefit their degree plan and not be in conflict with their academic and athletic schedules.
This creates the need for individualized attention for student interested in studying abroad.
The knowledge received in writing this paper will impact my own professional career.
This is because I work for the Office of International Studies as a graduate assistant. My
specific role at the Office of International Studies is limited to working on the International
College and University Consortium. The interview made it more clear to me how my project
the International College and University Consortium ties in to the greater mission of Siena
Heights University and how it will help the Office of International Studies to
internationalize the campus at Siena Heights University. It was a very eye opening
opportunity, to sit down with the director of the International Studies Office and discuss in
detail how the project that I work on ties in with the goal of the University to have a more
international feel on our campus.
There were both differences and similarities that I recognized between the interview
and the assigned course readings. For the most part there are more differences than
similarities. This is due to the fact that most of the assigned course readings focus on
companies and organizations that sell specific products or services to consumers. The Office
of International Studies works to sell the education offered by Siena Heights University to
international students. The main goal of the Office of International Studies has to be in line
with the recruiting goals of Siena Heights University for each specific academic school year.
While organizations try to sell as much of their products and services as they possibly can in
order to maximize company value the Office of International Studies has a set amount of
students that they must recruit to attend Siena Heights University each year. This calls for a
strategic plan that is different from most companies and organizations trying to sell their
products or services to consumers.
The overall role of strategy in modern organizations is to increase the value of their
company for their shareholders. This means that managers of organizations wont accept any
project that destroys value of their organization. Every business project started by modern
organizations has to create value for its shareholders. In order to do so the organization has to
treat their customers, employees and community in a way that allows for the firm to create
positive value for all of its stakeholders. For the Office of International Studies this means
that they have to create an environment that is attractive for international students. The Office
of International Studies has to develop projects that will make Siena Heights more open and
welcoming to international students. Only then will the Office of International Studies be able
to achieve their vision to create a more international feel on the campus, while meeting the
minimum University requirements for the required percentage of international students
recruited to Siena Heights University at the start of each academic year.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the main focus of the Office of International Studies for recruiting
international students to Siena Heights University is based on building the word of mouth
network. By building strong relationships between the Office of International Studies and the
current international students attending the university, the office hopes to create a networking
effect that will help internationalize the campus of Siena Heights University. Thus far, this
has proved to be the most effective strategy for recruiting international students and creating
an international feel on the university campus.

References
Rothaermel, F. (2013). Strategic Management Concepts. New York: Irwin Professional Pub.
Ozturgut, O. Best Practices in Recruiting and Retaining International Students. Current
Issues in Education. (2013).
Graduate Student Handbook. Opportunity Siena Heights University. Adrian, MI