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Hello Intercultural Communication Interest Section Members!
We are excited to serve as your new coeditors for the
Intercultural Communication Interest Section (ICIS) newsletter. We would
like to thank Sharon Tjaden-Glass and Andrea Lypka for their efforts as
outgoing newsletter coeditors and for mentoring us during the
transition. We sincerely appreciate their guidance, which greatly helped
to flatten our learning curve as incoming coeditors. Sharon and Andrea
have transitioned to the role of ICIS community managers of social media
platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter. They
will keep you up to date on all ICIS activities. Please take a look to
stay informed.
As a life-long process, intercultural learning applies to
everyone, experts and novices alike. In this issue of the newsletter, we
explore intercultural learning through two perspectives. Our first
piece introduces ICIS readers to Purdue University’s clearinghouse,
which holds both scholarly and practitioner-based resources for
interculturalists. Dr. Kris Atcheson-Clair’s creative essay provides an
introduction to the HubICL, a digital space for all who are interested
in exchanging knowledge and insights about intercultural competence
within a teaching/learning context.
Our second piece explores intercultural learning from a
student’s perspective. Ms. Silvia Norte Mercade, an undergraduate
student from Barcelona, shares her initial surprise at new cultural
practices during her recent semester at a US university. To make sense
of her culture shock, Ms. Norte Mercade explains how her understanding
of ethnocentrism and ethnorelativism nudged her forward on her journey
toward intercultural competence.
As the interest section for intercultural communication and
learning, we believe that a diverse set of voices will enrich our work
and our lives. We welcome you to join us as you are able. There are
several ways to share and to connect. Once a month, we have informal
“coffee hour,” which is an opportunity to get to know ICIS members and
connect for work or research possibilities. The coffee hours will be
Wednesday or Thursday at the end of each month. Please stay tuned in to
our social media channels for exact times and topics.
Also, we would like you to “Meet Your ICIS Leadership Team”
through a brief set of bios. We are looking forward to working together
with the TESOL ICIS community to explore together the art and science of
intercultural learning. Please feel free to contact us with comments,
suggestions, or questions.
Finally, we would like to send out a call
for submissions in our fall newsletter. Share with the ICIS
community about your insights, issues, or experiences regarding
intercultural learning, teaching intercultural competence, or cultural
exchange in the online setting. The deadline is Wednesday, 30 September
2020. Please email your submissions to newsletter.icis.tesol@gmail.com.
We hope you enjoy this edition of InterCom! We look forward to hearing from you!
Yours truly,
Leslie Bohon
Josephine Prado
ICIS Newsletter Coeditors | 