News

Fall 2021 OIS Operations Update

The following message was emailed to new and continuing international students on 8/26/21.

Welcome to Fall 2021. We hope you are prepared for the start of the term.

For the past 17 months, the Office of International Services (OIS) has operated fully virtually to serve your immigration, visa, and travel needs by providing guidance, issuing required documentation, and fulfilling government reporting requirements. We have learned a lot about how we serve you and how we can serve you even better in the future.

In short, we will continue to provide you with services and guidance in a fully virtual setting going forward as we are now working off-site permanently. For advising questions, you may email us anytime at [email protected], or call 667-208-7001 on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, or Friday from 9am-12pm or 1pm-4pm Eastern Time to speak with an advisor. You may submit requests via our iHopkins system, as well as review the extensive immigration information available on our website, which we work to improve every day.

Working remotely throughout the pandemic allowed us to focus on phone and email advising, and in doing so, we learned we could serve more students faster on average, regardless of their location in the world, while maintaining our high standards for providing competent, thorough guidance. By serving everyone remotely, we have established equity in service levels to students regardless of location, particularly in locations at which we did not have an office open on a full-time basis. We were able to decrease average email response times and significantly increase our individualized advising hours. Virtual advising also enables us to add additional advising call support immediately during peak times, something we could not easily do at all of our locations. And we hope you enjoy the ability to reach us from anywhere, without the need to visit a physical OIS location when it is too hot or cold or rainy or snowy outside!

We remain dedicated to providing you with the best immigration, visa, and travel guidance available anywhere, and look forward to serving you this academic year and beyond. We wish you a successful fall semester.

Sincerely,

The Office of International Services Staff