In conversation with Franks Feng

Hello everyone, and welcome to the ‘Go Glocal’ podcast series. I'm your host Ellen Wang from Leeds University Business School. So, before we start on today's episode, I would like to have a quick recap. In the first ever episode, I invited Yasmin Akram, a final year home student who shared her story of some of the challenges she faced during the global pandemic, as well as how she optimised the opportunities around her to secure herself graduate job. This was followed by an episode with Adam Kassab, who's been working and living in Japan for almost two decades. Then, on the last episode we had Mursal Hedayat, who is a very successful entrepreneur that established her business based on the power of language. They have all shared how they resonated with the term ‘glocalization’ and in today's episode, I'm going to continue talking about the importance of ‘glocalisation’ but from the perspective of international students. So, I have invited Franks Feng, who is the International Students Officer at Leeds University Union, so welcome Franks, thank you very much for joining me today.

Hi Ellen, thanks for having me here.

Ellen – Great to have you, thank you very much for your time and joining me. So, today we're obviously following the same topic of ‘glocalisation’ which is to think globally add act locally. But first of all, can you please introduce yourself, so we know who you are and your background.

Franks – Hi everyone, I’m Franks Feng and I’m your first International Officer at Leeds University Student Union. I’m in my placement year and my major is social policy and sociology. I feel there’s a great pressure to be the first International Officer but I’m quite unlucky to start in the pandemic year. During this year I’m trying my best to work with other officers together to improve out intercultural awareness on campus, to let students of all backgrounds to better understand each other.

Ellen - That sounds great, thanks. So, I'm really interested in this role because you mentioned this is the first position within Leeds University Student Union right, so can you just tell me a little bit more about the role, and how this position came about?

Franks – In the past we didn’t have an international officer, but you know every year we have more and more international students coming to study in the UK. Especially after brexit, the local community will also need more students from all backgrounds to try to contribute our diverse level of community and embrace the cultural difference. So, my role, the responsibility is to represent our international student voice. However, I need to work closely with other officers such as the Education Officer, the Welfare Officer, and the Activities Officer, to make sure they fully consider the international students perspective. I also try to meet with teaching staff and students around the campus to make sure I understand their feeling. Usually, it seems most of the student population is home students, which makes it harder for our staff and students to fully understand what our international students are looking for. And this is why I spend a lot of my time trying to do research, and trying to work with Senior Management Team to come up with a long term plan to implement our international strategy.

Ellen – That’s great, thank you for that. It sounds like you’re gathering the voices of international students and you’re a representative of that, and it sounds like that is a really busy job, so good luck and congratulations for landing that position, and being the first Officer as well. So, earlier you talked about being lucky but also unlucky to start during the pandemic, so my question really is what do you think are the main challenges for international students during the pandemic period?

Franks – So this year the pandemic, our international students, they are facing more challenges compared with home students. So, the global pandemic is kind of bringing lots of trouble to everyone, but in terms of international students, they are facing a lack of opportunities and to actually study on Leeds University campus to experience to cultural differences and make friends with other people. They also need to get used to study under the time difference, and make sure their online platform can work pretty well whenever they join a lecture. So, the interaction between the lecturer and the student is a main challenge for them. On the other hand, they are also facing the challenge, such as mental health issues for international students who are currently in Leeds, as they find it hard to have face-to-face communication with others because of the current lockdown situation. And they just feel they are pressured to stay at home all day. And I just try to keep in touch with our students and make sure I can pass their feedback to our university team and make sure we come up with more creative activities or come up with more support to do as best as we can. Because we can’t guarantee that this years’ experience is the same as last year. And also, the pandemic yar, our intl students tried pretty hard to get involved in many opportunities, for example in the normal time, you walk around the campus, you can see there is posters for an activity, or you can see in different schools and faculties there are different people promoting different activities in the union building. As well, we used to have lots of festivals and student activity on campus but now you just can’t see it. And it’s really hard for our students to know what is happening right now. So, our students find it quite hard to get a job or volunteering opportunity, its going to be quite a challenge for them.

Ellen - Thank you for sharing those challenges, and absolutely you know, I noted down that some of the practical challenges that you mentioned, for example time differences and of course a lack of opportunity, a lack of networking opportunities for students that build that rapport given the distance. And of course, you know from a teaching and education perspective, there's a huge impact on the students as well. Now, the topic of our podcast is around ‘glocalization’ so the concepts are really, you know, I'm really passionate about, and trying to promote is really about raising awareness for students to think globally and act locally. So, how important do you think that this concept might be either on your individual level and also on a student cohort at all please?

Franks – So for me, my personal feelings, I’m quite lucky. During my first two university years I experienced a lot more university life. And this year, I get feedback from both our home and international students, they said they don’t feel like they belong to university, as most of their classes are conducted online, and they just wait for the online lecture, and then they finish homework, and that’s it. They don’t feel like they are a part of the university. And some of the international students they said that even if they currently live in Leeds, and they try to visit other cities as well to try and explore the culture, they just feel like they are travelling, they don’t feel like they are actually students here. So, I feel like because of the pandemic, it has stopped the opportunities for our student group to feel part of something big and hard for them to contribute to local development, they don’t have a chance to understand what is happening locally. Like for me, I don’t know what is happening in Headingley, in Hyde Park, I’ve never been to Headingley and it’s my third year here, maybe I just go to the City Centre and stay on campus, whereas home students they probably, most of them live in Headingley or in Hyde Park area, and they just understand more about the local region compared with our international students. And the home students are more likely to know what activities are happening from the City Council, like a movie festival, or whether there is any cultural event happening or any traditional, like bonfire night, but for international students, sometimes we need to wait until the University promotes these events and then we realise, oh these events are happening. It its really hard for our international students especially this year to feel they are a part of the local community.

Ellen - Great thank you. Again, I appreciate that, I think being part of the community, being part of the University campus is really important. So, I guess my next question is what do you think as a university that we could do to support these challenges, to support international students going forward? As I think the trending is that, you know, we are probably going to adapt our life post-pandemic period, right, into a hybrid lifestyle, so what do you think is a university we can do to support these challenges?

Franks – For me I think our university can fully use the online platform to conduct a better education service first. So, we used to have lots of large lectures, however students don’t get chance to talk or ask questions in the lecture, and I feel like in the future we can even keep the huge lecture online. But for the smaller seminar sessions, we can provide a smaller face to face session to provide a higher quality discussion and debate. Or the engineering school workshop to our students, to make sure they can fully enjoy and experience this kind of small class discussion with students from other backgrounds, to help them get more time to know more about each other, rather than just treating themselves as a stranger the whole semester. And obviously after the pandemic, our university will have more activities and opportunities for our students to feel a sense of belonging. So far at this stage, I feel that as a university, we should give more chances for our students to talk to our management directly. So, a few months ago, our Vice Chancellor had a live event with our students to answer the questions from our students directly, which went pretty well, and our students felt like their voices were being heard. And another similar event is going to happen in the next few months as well. I feel like our teaching staff, they should also find some time to not just conduct teaching all the time, they can try to have more time to understand their students’ feelings through this online platform. They don’t have to find a certain place in the classroom and because it’s an online platform its easier for them to do that. And in terms of the local community, I feel like we can try to talk with some organisations such as some charities, some volunteer organisation, like we have the Hyde Park Picture House classic cinema in the Hyde Park area, we can also invite our local council to talk to our students about how they’re feeling under the pandemic, and one lesson we learned from the pandemic, and I think this can really help our students understand what we have in Leeds, and what it would be like after the pandemic finishes. So, this can help them feel positive, they know they are being taken care of, they know their voice is being heard, and they know what kind of opportunity they can join in with after the pandemic or they can look forward to joining after the pandemic. So, I think this can be a good starting point from our university. And also, the different faculties, they should try to talk to each other and have better communication. Because students from different faculties definitely face some different issues. For example, some faculties still have some of the small, face-to-face class discussions while some of them overall just changed to online. so, it’s really good for our teaching staff to get a chance to network and exchange ideas with other faculty teaching staff.

So recently, I joined the Decolonise the Curriculum Forum, we invited staff from all faculties to join, however in the normal times, the public cannot have this capacity, in consideration of the room, we need to book and the timetable our teaching staff, that they have. So I feel the pandemic, it doesn’t just bring bad things, it also beings something new that we can try to improve for the future.

Ellen - Great thank you, I absolutely agree. I think you addressed the two really important points here. First of all is that student engagement is really the most important part, which forms a part of experiential learning for students, because it isn't just about the knowledge transfer, it is about being part of the community, it’s a sense of belonging, right, so that's the first thing that you addressed. And the second thing, really, you know is about as an organisation, we are working towards the same goal, and therefore we all have to come together and really discuss what is the best solution. And also, the opportunity, every single threat that presents opportunity at the same time, so really, we really need to look at the positive side of the pandemic rather, than just the negative. So, thank you so much for sharing that. I'm now I'm going to ask a one final question, which is leading into the future. Now, I recently read one of your articles published on Times Higher Education, which is great, and in there that you mentioned you've recently had a meeting to discuss with the local council to talk about the opportunity, employment opportunities, for students after they graduate. So, can you please tell me a little bit more and how that might link to the concept that I'm trying to promote here, which is to think globally act locally please Franks.

Ellen – Thank you, Franks, I think that is really inspirational everything that you shared. I think your enthusiasm in bringing about positive change can really come through. I will wish you best of luck on all the initiatives that you're working on at the moment, Franks. It is great to hear that you are representing a collective voice on behalf of international students here at the University of Leeds. I think it's a really good point to conclude our episode today, as I always like to end it on a very positive note. So, thank you very much once again for joining me today, Franks, and also sharing your story and your amazing contribution to the international student community with us. So, over the next several episodes I hope to continue inviting guests to join me and share their thoughts on glocalization and how they are tackling some of the challenges along the way. Most importantly, I want to raise awareness and importance of think globally and act locally. If you're interested in finding out more about this topic, please subscribe to our podcast series, or if you would like to get in touch, our contact details are available in episode description. Until then, stay positive, stay safe and think glocal!