Director of International Programs Job Description

A Director of International Programs runs the campus office that moves people across borders in both directions. Outbound, that means the study abroad portfolio: semester exchanges with partner universities, faculty-led courses that travel for a few weeks, and contracts with third-party program providers. Inbound, it means the international students and visiting scholars who need immigration documents, orientation and advising from the day they are admitted until the day they leave. Some campuses call the same job International Education Director, and larger universities may split it between a study abroad director and a director of international student and scholar services who both report to a senior international officer.

Campus size shapes the work. The Bureau of Labor Statistics notes that education administrators' duties depend on the size of their college or university, with small schools running small staffs that take on many different responsibilities. At a small college the director may personally advise every student going abroad, sign travel documents and run orientation. At a large university the same title can mean managing a team of advisers, a budget built on program fees, and partnerships on several continents.

Immigration compliance carries the legal weight. F-1 students are tracked in SEVIS, the system run by the Student and Exchange Visitor Program at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and a designated school official (DSO) issues the Form I-20 and keeps each record current. J-1 exchange visitors work with the responsible officer of the institution's exchange visitor program, who issues the Form DS-2019. A director may hold one or both designations and owns the office's procedures for enrollment reporting, school transfers and Optional Practical Training recommendations. The director also sets the internal checks: who reviews each record, how deadlines are tracked, and when a case goes to campus counsel.

Study abroad has its own risk side. Before a program is approved, the office reviews State Department travel advisories, local health care, housing, and the on-site partner's emergency plan. The director arranges insurance that covers medical evacuation, keeps an after-hours phone line, and decides when a program is suspended. When a student is hurt, arrested or caught in unrest at 3 a.m. campus time, the call often comes to this office.

The rest is money and relationships. The director negotiates exchange agreements so that seats and tuition stay balanced, sets program fees with the business office, administers study abroad scholarships, and reports participation figures to campus leadership and to the national Open Doors survey. On campus, the job includes building programs that bring international and domestic students together, from conversation partners to residence hall events, and persuading faculty that a course abroad is worth the planning it takes.

BLS says postsecondary education administrators typically need a master's degree, though a bachelor's degree may be sufficient at small colleges and universities. For this job, useful fields include international education, higher education administration, intercultural communication, area studies or a modern language. BLS also reports that employers typically prefer candidates with several years of experience in a college administrative setting.

As a rough guide, a director brings five to eight years in international education. A typical path starts as a study abroad adviser or an international student adviser, moves to assistant or associate director, and then to running the office. O*NET files adviser titles such as Study Abroad Advisor and International Student Counselor under educational, guidance and career counselors, while director-level college office titles such as Student Services Director sit with postsecondary education administrators. The step up is largely a shift from casework to budgets, staff and policy.

The technical core is F-1 and J-1 regulation. A strong candidate can walk through Optional Practical Training and STEM OPT timelines, explain the difference between a Form I-20 and a Form DS-2019, handle a travel signature or a reduced course load request, and say exactly what a terminated SEVIS record means for a student. Time served as a DSO or alternate responsible officer is direct preparation for owning compliance.

Study abroad experience matters just as much: credit transfer and course equivalency, provider evaluation, program budgets, pre-departure orientation, and incident response. The Forum on Education Abroad awards the Professional Certification in Education Abroad, which confirms a person's ability to apply the Forum's Standards of Good Practice; its FAQ lists senior international officers among the people the program is intended for. The Forum also runs a six-week online program that serves as a cohort-based pathway to the certification.

Management skills round out the profile:

• Budgeting for fee-funded programs, scholarships and partner travel
• Hiring, training and supervising advisers and compliance staff
• Negotiating memoranda of understanding and exchange agreements with overseas universities
• Reporting enrollment and participation data to campus leaders and national surveys
• Running a crisis call calmly, with legal counsel, insurers and families on the line

Day to day, the office works in SEVIS, a study abroad application platform, an immigration case-management system and the student information system. Second-language ability helps in partner negotiations and in advising, and time spent living or studying abroad gives a director firsthand sense of what students face. Writing matters too: the director drafts the policy memos, emergency protocols and student guidance that the whole office relies on.

BLS projects employment of postsecondary education administrators, the occupation that includes this job, to grow 2 percent from 2025 to 2035, slower than the average for all occupations, with about 14,500 openings a year on average across the whole occupation. That projection covers admissions, registrar and student affairs leaders as well; BLS does not report international programs directors separately.

Enrollment data frame the nearer-term picture. Open Doors 2025, released by the Institute of International Education (IIE) on Nov. 17, 2025, counted 1,177,766 international students at U.S. colleges and universities in 2024/25, 6% of the total U.S. higher education population, with India the top-sending country at 363,019 students. The same report found that new international students in fall 2024 fell by 7%. IIE's Fall 2025 Snapshot, drawn from more than 825 institutions, showed a sharper drop: new international enrollments fell 17% in fall 2025, and 57% of institutions reported a decrease. Among institutions with declines in new enrollments, 96% cited visa application concerns and 68% cited travel restrictions.

Federal policy matters as well. On July 17, 2026, DHS published a final rule replacing duration of status with a fixed period of admission for F students and J exchange visitors, with a Sept. 15, 2026 effective date. On Sept. 14, 2026, the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts postponed that effective date and preliminarily enjoined DHS from implementing the rule in Presidents' Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration v. DHS. USCIS says it is proceeding under the previous regulatory provisions, and that if the order is lifted, DHS will take measures to implement the final rule. For a director, that means keeping two sets of guidance ready: the rules in force and the rules that would apply if the court order changes.

Recruiting remained a priority in the Fall 2025 Snapshot: 84% of institutions called international student recruitment a priority, and 78% said financial support for those efforts was the same or higher than the previous year. IIE also noted that more institutions are prioritizing international students already in the United States: half reported undergraduate outreach at U.S. high schools. IIE followed with a Spring 2026 Snapshot of 585 institutions on recruitment patterns for 2026/27, and it scheduled the Open Doors 2026 release, with data on 2025/26 international enrollment, for Nov. 16, 2026.

On the outbound side, Open Doors 2025 reported that 298,180 U.S. students studied abroad for academic credit in 2023/24, an increase of 6% from the prior year, with Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom and France the leading destinations.

In practice, the job pairs program management with policy work: reading a Federal Register notice, briefing a provost on enrollment exposure, and shifting recruitment toward new markets. From this seat, next steps can include senior international officer, assistant or associate vice provost for global affairs, dean of international education at a larger campus, or leadership roles with study abroad provider organizations and exchange agencies.

Dear Search Committee,

Please accept my application for the Director of International Programs role at Lakeview College. For the past six years I have worked in the Office of Global Engagement at Harbor State University, first as an international student adviser and, since 2023, as associate director responsible for both our study abroad portfolio and our F-1 compliance team.

As principal designated school official, I rebuilt our SEVIS review process after an internal audit found that registration holds and reporting deadlines lived in three different spreadsheets. I moved everything into a single case-management queue, wrote a desk manual for every recurring SEVIS action, and set a weekly peer check for terminations and transfers. The next audit closed with no findings, and advisers now spend their time on students rather than on chasing dates.

On the study abroad side, I manage relationships with our exchange partners in Spain, Japan and Ghana and with two program providers. Last year I worked with the business office to restructure fees for our faculty-led summer programs so that a student receiving need-based aid could go without taking on new loans. I also wrote our first after-hours emergency protocol and ran two tabletop exercises with campus police, counsel and the dean of students. When a student broke her ankle in Kyoto, the protocol worked as written.

What draws me to Lakeview is your plan to grow both directions of exchange at once. A small office doing that well needs one person who can sign an I-20 correctly, defend a program budget to the provost, and sit with a nervous family before departure. I have done all three and would welcome the chance to do them for your students.

Thank you for your consideration. I would be glad to talk about how I would approach your first year of partnership renewals.

Sincerely, Marisol Ortega