F-1 Student Advising for Beginners

Audience: F-1 student advisers with less than one year experience

This introductory workshop offers participants the basic knowledge, skills and resources for advising F-1 students on common immigration issues. The workshop first lays out the environment in which the Designated School Official (DSO) works—the federal regulatory and SEVIS structure, the DSO’s own institutional culture, as well as DSO influences and constraints. Using a framework of three F-1 students journeying through their academic program, participants work with the most common student immigration advising and SEVIS scenarios, such as issuing I-20s, applying for a visa, entering the US, SEVIS registration and reporting, maintaining status, employment, travel and reentry, and program extensions. Please note that this workshop does not cover processing of reinstatement, change of status, transfer of SEVIS records, or SEVIS terminations.

Workshop Objectives

• Provide participants with the theoretical and practical knowledge needed for basic F-1 immigration advising, as well as a framework for thinking through a variety of advising situations.
• Offer international student advisers, new to the profession, basic regulatory training.
• Prepare participants to accurately process the immigration forms that their students require to stay in good legal standing.