My name is Bill Elliott, and I'm the Director of International Admissions at Eastern Illinois University. If you are reading this you are probably either an incoming student for Fall semester, or a continuing student checking in to see what is going on. Hopefully this blog will help you to understand how our office works and get to know the people involved in it's operation.
Our I.P. office serves an average of 160 international students each semester. We pride ourselves on offering exceptional service, and go out of our way to ensure that when an intl. student arrives on our campus their main concern is worrying about their studies and not much else. It's great to work with a group of like-minded colleagues in that regard!
There are four full-time staff members in our office. We also employ two Graduate Assistants. So as not to overload this first blog post, I'll start out with an intro of our longest surviving(haha) staff member, Marilyn Thomas.
Marilyn has worked in international education for almost 25 years. If you are holding an EIU I-20 document, she likely processed it and her name is on it. I think that some students don't know how fortunate they are to have access to someone with a base of knowledge equal to what an immigration attorney has. Marilyn has it, and then some. She works primarily with transcript evaluation, scholarship account management(not placement) and students with "unique" questions.
This summer has been a typical one for our office. Every spring we all talk about how much time off we will take and how restful the summer will be. After a fall and spring semester that is as hectic as usual, it's a nice dream to have. The reality though is that summer isn't usually very restful. By the time we take care of projects and prep for the fall intake, we're pretty much right back to full speed.
That'll do for today...more to follow.
Bill
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