Staff profile: helping international students settle at Imperial

Christian Adams is an International Student Adviser in Imperial's Registry Office. He has also taken part in EU Erasmus+ Staff Training.

Tell us about your role?

Primarily I provide visa and immigration advice to international students coming to Imperial. Given the free movement of people within the EU, that advice is mostly for non-EU students; but we also provide support and welfare throughout the year to all international students – for example we recently arranged a trip to the Harry Potter Studios, Windsor Castle and the London Eye. We subsidise part of it, so they pay much less than they would if they were going on their own, and we have linked up with the students union to arrange minibuses for large groups of students. There’s also a family network for international students with children, and we put on events like an Easter egg hunt or trips to the zoo.

Another important part of my role is managing the administration of the Graduate Entrepreneur visa scheme at Imperial. This is a government-run scheme open to final-year non-EU students that allows Imperial to endorse up to 20 students who wish to set up a business in the UK after completing their degree. We have some notable recent successes from Imperial including alumni Alireza Tahmasebzadeh who is a member of the BLOCKS team that raised $1.6 million to develop a modular smart watches and Bo Xuan Hon a member of Motion Metrics which is developing Carv, a ski training device.

I understand you’ve travelled in the EU as part of your training – how does that work?

That’s correct; the programme is called Erasmus+ Staff Training Mobility. I travelled to the University of Karlstad in Sweden for a week last year and I recently returned from another week at the University of Göttingen in Germany. With around 20 countries represented, it’s an excellent opportunity – for both cultural and professional development. The weeks tend to be organised into difference streams, depending on your background: so there might be one for IT professionals, librarians and, in my case, international officers.

The formal element of the trip involved giving presentations and sharing best practice about how we support international students at our respective institutions. It’s very interesting as your EU counterparts bring a very difference perspective – for example with different fee structures.

There is also a social element to the programme and time built into the schedule for cultural activities such as visiting local museums and a dinner evening with food from the host country.

How has that helped in your own work?

Aside from obviously expanding your own cultural knowledge which is invaluable, you also pick up a few good ideas about how to do things differently and places I might want to visit to further my development. I’ve kept in touch with people I met in Sweden on my first visit and when you have their contact details you can easily run a question past them.

I’m also due to give a presentation at the UKCISA conference in June related to my experience on the Staff Erasmus training aimed at demystifying it for other administrative staff.

For more information visit Imperial's Erasmus+ Staff Training Mobility site

Student visa related queries can be emailed to international@imperial.ac.uk