Hello ICISers!

I am excited to share some updates with you. We have had a busy year, and are now gearing up for some great upcoming events! In this newsletter, we'll highlight some of our collaborative efforts to stretch beyond TESOL in building relationships with other organizations, including the Society for Intercultural Education, Training and Research (SIETAR) as well as the International Association for Languages and Intercultural Communication (IALIC). Both of these organizations offer excellent opportunities to expand your intercultural communication networks.

Also, we are happy to highlight that we have worked hard to bring some of the best in intercultural communication expertise to our interest section, not only through our newsletter contributions, but also in some upcoming presentations. We are very happy to highlight that Janet Bennett, of the Intercultural Communication Institute, will join us for an academic session at the TESOL convention this year. We've also collaborated on two InterSections for the conference this year: one with SRIS, related to linguistic diversity, and another with SPLIS, related to accents and the politics and pedagogy of responding to them. Also, based on requests from our open meeting in 2015, we have scheduled a webinar with Darla Deardorff related to assessing intercultural competence in the classroom. The webinar is open for registration now, and will occur in March. It is free to members, so be sure to sign up!

We've also been busy planning some special events for the upcoming convention. Be sure to check the schedule for our ICIS Open Mic event! We hope you will come by and share a song or story that highlights your language, culture, or experiences in TESOL. In addition to the many excellent presentation proposals we were able to accept this year, I'd also like to mention the new TESOL Diversity Forum, which will also offer some great panels and discussions that may be of interest to many of you.

I look forward to seeing you at the open meeting at the convention! For those of you who will connect with us virtually, please be sure to email your suggestions, resources, and ideas for the upcoming year to the listserv!

Wishing you all a happy 2016~

Heidi Faust

ICIS Chair