Progress towards CPT for Everyone at Princeton

Thanks for standing with us in April this year for Princeton international students' career development opportunities. We're back with our progress in the past six months and our next step palns.

Dear allies of CPT for Everyone in Princeton,

We’re sending this newsletter to update you on our progress in advocating accessible Curricular Practical Training (CPT) and other equal career development opportunities for Princeton international students.

We are a group of international graduate students and allies at Princeton University, NJ, USA. In April 2022, we initiated a petition related to international graduate student career developments at Princeton University. Within only one month, we received 206 name signatures from students, staff, faculty, and alumni in support of our advocates. We appreciate your voice very much! Nevertheless, we all know that real change doesn’t occur immediately and needs more work and cooperation at every level of the institution. Along with the petition, we also have been working on raising awareness of the issue at the university level and across many departments, with tremendous help from many organizations and people. Our main actions and achievements include:

• We called for more actions in the Princeton student population through the petition and action toolbox, with help of Princeton graduate student united (PGSU) and 6 international student associations/groups at Princeton.

• On April 19th, we advocated our needs via open conversation with Christopher L. Eisgruber, President of Princeton University, and Cole M. Crittenden, Deputy Dean and Acting Dean of the Graduate School. We also gave out ~20 information handouts to other students, postdocs, and university administrators at the event. Even though President Eisgruber who has no specialty nor experience in immigration, strongly disagreed with our demands, Dr. Crittenden assured us after the public conversation that he would organize at least one meeting with the Deans of Graduate Students (DGS) in all departments specifically on CPT courses for international students.

• We advocated our needs via Princeton graduate student government (GSG) to the graduate school.

• We have been hosting focus sessions for individual fellow students to help them try to acquire their CPT permits within their own departments.

• With generous funding and support from TigerWell initative and GradFUTURES, we organized the international student learning cohort/research fellows to study the impact of immigrant-related problems on the mental health of international graduate students in general and to produce university policy suggestions. For more details and updates about this project, please stay tuned for our next monthly newsletter in January.

As organizers, we’ve also learned a lot during our activism. We’re excited about our next steps and we invite you to join us to:

• Follow up with the Graduate School if they have fulfilled their promise that they would work on raising awareness in DGS in every department about CPT and how much work they plan to do to help departments set up CPT courses.

• Follow up with GSG to advocate for our needs: setting up CPT courses for every department at Princeton University.

• Reach out to us (pucpt@substack.com) if you need help getting a CPT permit as an international student. We’re always happy to help you, using the knowledge learned from our own and other fellow students’ experiences. We believe that everyone’s voice should be heard.

• Share your personal story with us about your experience getting CPT within your department at Princeton or, how you advocate/help CPT courses within your department as a student, administrator, or faculty.

• Join us as co-organizers or volunteers to continue our advocacy and pass on the institutional memory.

We hope our advocacy for CPT can encourage the voices of international students who comprise ~50% population of Princeton university and raise awareness at the university administrator level that our voices and needs should be included more and better. We also invite students, organizers, and allies at all other institutions in the US to start conversations about supporting international students at your home institution and share your experience with us.

If you’re still interested in hearing us, please subscribe to our newsletter, share it with your fellow students, staff, and faculty at Princeton or other institutions, and write to us at pucpt@substack.com.