Hello all!

I am very excited and extremely humbled to serve as our ICIS chair-elect. This is only my second year with ICIS, but I knew this was my tribe from the first meeting I attended, in Vancouver at TESOL 2015. The warmth and professionalism of our previous chair, Amy Chastain, and then incoming chair, Heidi Faust, motivated me to join ICIS. It also inspired me to collaborate with Heidi and another ICIS member, Jane Dunphy, on a proposal that we presented at the 2015 Society for Intercultural Education, Training, and Research conference. You can read more about this presentation in our March 2016 ICIS newsletter here.

TESOL 2016 in Baltimore only deepened my respect for ICIS members, as well as my awareness of how critically needed our work as intercultural educators is. The presentations I attended continually highlighted the need for greater intercultural awareness and competence among our colleagues and communities. I have no doubt that the synergy that we produce through our collaborations will enable all of us to continue to grow both personally and professionally. This was made even clearer from our ICIS business meeting in Baltimore. I was able to accompany Lynn Diaz-Rico on the Australian aboriginal didgeridoo, as she led us in singing a First Nation Serrano song. Our intention was to give voice to and honor cultures and people who are too often silenced. We created a common space between worlds. A brief video of this moment can be viewed here.

A central theme that arose from our last ICIS meeting was cultural synergy, which denotes a mutual effort from all participants to learn about, understand, and appreciate each other's cultures and interpretations of their learning experience (Jin & Cortazzi, 2001). My goal for my tenure as an ICIS leader is to help facilitate cultural synergy among our colleagues in TESOL, as well as explore ways we can spark cultural synergy within our work as educators and leaders in our communities.

I am very thankful to all of our past and current ICIS leadership, especially Current Chair Maxi-Ann Campbell, for their support and model example. I look forward to working with all of my ICIS colleagues in the years to come!

Sincerely,

Ramin Yazdanpanah

ICIS Chair-Elect

References

Jin, L., & Cortazzi, M. (2001). Cultural synergy: A theoretical orientation. Retrieved 10/8, 2014, from Cultural synergy: a theoretical orientation.

Fun fact about Ramin? Here you go: Ramin plays in a flamenco trio and it is a whole lot of fun. Check it out here. He can also play the didgeridoo. It enables him to share an aspect of himself with others, as well as introduce people to aboriginal culture. It also makes him feel really good.