The advisors in the Global Engagement Office care about you. We have 5 staff members supporting international students and scholars for almost 1000 international students and scholars, and every single one dedicates themselves to advocating for you on campus and as alums.
ISS Staff to define
Given our volume, here are some ways to best work with our office for non-emergencies:
Why you should check our site? We spend a lot of time updating and refining the information to be most useful to you, so that we can help you even when we aren’t in the office.
Why should you plan ahead? Because generally, most problems can be avoided with planning. If you know that you want to do CPT, start doing what you can the quarter before you plan to participate. If you know you’ll be travelling abroad, plan ahead.
Why should you go to workshops? Because we have them for you. Your immigration situation is unique, but most of the time, all the questions you want to ask, we answer during our workshops. And yes, we can tell when you didn’t go.
Why should you come to Walk-In Hours? Because this is time that we set aside to do everything we can face-to-face. We recommend coming on the early side to these. If you show up at 11:58 AM and they end at noon, there’s no way we can help you in 2 minutes. Your situation is complex and unique, we want to take the time to address that.
Being on-time is an important US value and being late - even if by a few minutes - is considered very rude. In addition, we set our appointments knowing exactly how long they take. If we start yours two minutes late, then we’ll start the next one two minutes late. If that person is five minutes late, it shifts to being even later.
Please don’t:
Contact us more than once in a 2 business day period. This means that if you call an advisor, please don’t email that advisor or another advisor (or call!)
Why? Generally, because in the time that it takes us to listen to two or three or four voicemails, read the two or three emails from you, we could have actually addressed you. This makes everything take longer. Trust us.
Shop for advising. This means please don’t come into walk in-hours and speak to one advisor one day, then come in another day and ask the same question to another advisor.
Why? The answer won’t change. We all have to follow the same rules from the government. You’re wasting your time. And you’ve got better things to do.
If you call:
Please leave a voicemail. All voicemails left at the front desk are addressed by our GEO Student Assistants. The only voicemails that are unaddressed are those that do not leave a phone number. We strongly recommend that you leave your phone number twice in the message, just for clarity.
US immigration regulations are complex and change frequently. The University strives to maintain a website that is both current and helpful, however, Santa Clara University is not responsible for students maintaining lawful immigration status; this is the responsibility of the student. Further, resources and links do not constitute endorsement by Santa Clara University.