Cross-Cultural Confidence: A Program Design for Accessible Intercultural Competence on Campus

Internationalization is currently one of the greatest issues facing higher education today. Colleges and universities have sought to produce graduates who are globally ready and capable of effectively navigating intercultural situations due to increasing diversity in the workplace and globalization; however, it has become apparent that efforts towards this end have not paid off as well as it was assumed they would. Now that US universities are admitting greater numbers of international students, intercultural competence and programs which build connections across cultural groups have become increasingly important on campus. This capstone seeks to fashion an accessible, effective, on-campus program for the State University of New York at Plattsburgh, which can provide a model for direct development of intercultural competence for university students. This Cross-Cultural Confidence program takes into consideration the particular needs of international and domestic students regarding intercultural contact through institutional support. Participants will learn intercultural competencies that will allow them to feel more confident when interacting with people of different cultural backgrounds and gain awareness of their own cultural point of view. This six-part, semester-length series will utilize workshops and participation in pre-existing cultural activities and events. Workshops will cover content which follows the Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity (DMIS) as a guide for learning goals and objectives, and to help students understand and progress in their intercultural sensitivity. Workshops will also make use of experiential learning techniques to encourage reflection on the learning taking place. The Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI), an assessment tool based off of the DMIS, will be used to measure participant learning and the effectiveness of the program