Intercultural Competence Council

Asta Reiff, Faculty Lead, HS EAL

AISC promotes and develops the intercultural competence of all employees to further the Mission by communicating and working effectively with people from different cultural backgrounds. To this aim, the Intercultural Competence (IC) Council was created under the Strategic Pathway of Talent and Intercultural Competence of the Futures Plan.

This Strategic Pathway has identified three major goals that the IC Council looks to meet within the next three years (2022–2025):

• To define and socialize Intercultural Competence within the context of AISC while offering multiple entry points for all employees;

• To create and prototype sustainable programs that equip all employees to understand and practice intercultural competence; and

• To refine and embed programs that equip all employees to understand and practice intercultural competence.

The Council was assembled in the fall of 2022 with an open invitation to all AISC employees interested in this work. We are an avid group of eight Council Members representing a wealth of professional interests—from leadership and faculty to administrative support—with varied cultural and linguistic backgrounds, and tenure at AISC.

Being a completely new group, we took our time getting to know each other. And most importantly, we took the time to learn together about the vast field of intercultural competence, starting from building a shared understanding of the terminology and the meaning behind it, all the way to researching and learning about how other institutions define intercultural competence. By December 2022, the Council had drafted a definition of intercultural competence within the context of AISC. Our next steps are to socialize this working definition with the AISC community and revise it based on the feedback that we will receive.

Draft Definition (2022-2023)

At AISC, Intercultural Competence is the knowledge, skills and behaviors to work harmoniously across cultures to achieve effective outcomes.

The Intercultural Competence Council includes Elliot Fijman, Gautami Ramachandhran, Serge Nicolai, Walter Basnight, Angeline Mohan, Vigneshwari C., Joelle Basnight, and Asta Reiff.