ADDRESSING CHALLENGES VIA UNIVERSITY-COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT ACTIVITIES AMONG INTERNATIONAL UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS OF PRIVATE UNIVERSITY: A CASE STUDY

Abstract

University-community engagement is a good learning outcome for students’ knowledge enrichment as it exposes the students in community issues. Experiences gained through the fieldwork will help the students in preparing themselves for future careers especially in revitalizing their civic consciousness of the society around them. In regard to this, university’s students should embrace the opportunities given by the institution. However, the often neglected community in the university-community would be the international students, as the host community. Not only having constraints to adapt with different socio-cultural practices, they are seen as the minority group of people who participate in university-community engagement activities. This paper attempt to explain the challenges of university-community engagement activity participation among international undergraduate students of a private university in Malaysia. Five international undergraduate students participated in this study where data analysis was performed using a qualitative approach. In general, this study reveals that among international undergraduate students, all respondents agreed that university-community engagement activities are a responsibility by a human being in helping the society. Due to the fact that these international students came from different socio-cultural practices, it creates challenges which discourage them from participating in university-community engagement activities. Therefore, this study tries to discover the challenges and provide strategies to overcome this problem to help the university in producing multi-talented students once they graduated from the university.