Candice DeBose-Tyson is one of the talented team of F-1 International Student Advisors working at UFIC in our International Student Services (ISS) department. Candice is a born and raised Gainesville resident who has been helping our F-1 Student population since Summer 2006. 

“Born a Gator”, as Candice self-describes, she attended Eastside High School. Candice started off her college career, by earning an AA at Santa Fe College. Later, she attended St. Leo University and earned her BA in Business Administration, with a Minor in Human Resources.  She went on to earn her Master’s from St. Leo in 2008, “I was able to earn my MBA while working here at the International Center.”

The first role Candice accepted working with UF was in 2003 in the Civil and Coastal Engineering Department working with payroll and personnel, “Right out of high school, I started at UF.” In 2006, Candice began working at UFIC as an insurance advisor. “I was pretty popular!” said Candice, as at the time she was processing physical insurance forms of every international student and scholar. “I would see people move their papers to try to get them in sooner,” laughs Candice, referring to her former organization system—a basket where every student had to drop their forms. “Sometimes I would come across students at Publix, and they would say, ‘Can I talk to you about my hold?’” 

For 18 years, Candice has helped advise countless students.  After being promoted to Document Preparation Specialist, Candice was responsible for half of the incoming F-1 student population, only part of the many responsibilities she has now as an Immigration Specialist.  “That would become overwhelming because, at that time, I faced a situation where the person who was doing the other half of the work, left.”   Candice “broke a record” that year, assisting an extraordinary number of new, incoming international students. To address the issue of one F-1 student advisor often handling the entire incoming student process while two others focused on current student processes. Needless to say, ISS restructured the advisor workload. “We were able to hire two additional F-1 advisors, going from four advisors to six at the time, and each advisor manages about 1/6 of the F-1 student population, covering incoming, enrolled, and outgoing students on OPT or STEM OPT. Due to the growth of the F-1 international student population, we later hired two more F-1 advisors in January 2020, now handling about 1/8 of the F-1 student population, each,” explains Martine Angrand, Director of F-1 International Student Services and Candice’s supervisor.