How would you describe your students/student body?

Central Michigan University tries to instill a community-minded mentality in our students, and volunteerism and service is a large part of our student experience.  The students embrace it; really thrive in it.  They volunteer, they get active, they study abroad and even take school breaks to volunteer.  

Additionally, while we’re a rural school, we strive for diversity.  We draw from Detroit and Chicago, as well as Canada, due to our geographical location.

Many of our international students choose business and engineering programs.  However, we have a good population of international students studying music and broadcasting, mainly due to faculty relationships.  We don’t see large numbers of international representation, but we don’t necessarily consider that a bad thing.  At CMU, international students aren’t just a number, they are a person, a relationship.  We help them study both English and degree-specific-academics.  

What is CMU’s identifying characteristic(s)?

We are a caring community.  Care is actually a big word around here.  It starts from top down. Not only does it relate back to the volunteerism, but the administration pushes to look at the needs of people: students, each other, staff, etc.  Anyone on campus can even fill out what we call a Care Report, which is reviewed by a multi-disciplinary team made up of folks from student affairs, athletics, counselors, police, residential life representatives and more.  The team reviews the report and reaches out to the student to see how the university can help.

We are also striving to take the best care of our international students. Campus services are adapting to meet the needs of the international students, our university president is very genuine and speaks for lots of different voices represented on campus.  We try to provide the most welcoming and best environment for the students to succeed while they are here – we not only care about their language skills but also academics, mental health, campus involvement and just overall comfort.

Notable qualities/amenities?

Our campus offers some great amenities like a wonderful library and a student activity center.  We’ve got lots of opportunities to stay active and engaged with students, the community, etc.  Additionally, academically, we offer a writing center, presentation center, success coaches and advisors.  Overall, we’re very well staffed.  

CMU offers students lots of clubs, including an international student organization that’s high profile and provides lots of programing for all students. Our professors are very interested in international students and try to integrate them into the course work, when appropriate. 

What iTEP tests/products do you use?

iTEP Academic, which we’ve used six times so far.  We normally add about 150 international students each year to our campus, but due to COVID-19, we’ve only admitted 13 for the fall 2020 semester.  Thanks to iTEP and the online testing capabilities, we were able to admit the additional six students, evaluate their language skills and place them in the needed classes.  We’ve historically worked with just paper exams, so the iTEP Academic test is quite literally a game-changer, especially in a pandemic.

How do you use iTEP testing?

We use the iTEP test as basically an English placement exam.  We also use them for students to test out of English to go into the university, but we function in a somewhat unique way.  Our applicants can apply and be accepted to the university without already proving English proficiency.  If they haven’t proved English proficiency, then we provide it as a placement exam.

Basically, depending on a student’s English language skills, we offer a sort of bridge program. For example, a student could take the iTEP English language proficiency test, and depending on score, test out of all but one class.  Or prove proficiency but demonstrate a need for further instruction in one area, such as writing.  Elsewhere, many programs require students to prove English skills before applying to the school or program.  Here, they can take English classes and program/degree classes concurrently, depending on test scores.

We also look at scores in different subject area (sub-scores) rather than just the overall, to decide how to help a student succeed.  As a placement test, it’s different than just an admissions test.