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Globalization means that living effectively in intercultural\nenvironments, including at home, is a professional and life necessity. Years\nback, the answer was to \u201ctake a foreign language\u201d, do study abroad, or \u201csee the\nworld\u201d, though this only applied to a small percentage of college students.\nStudents doing this are still a very small minority of all US students (about\n10 percent of graduates). A consequences is a large population lacking\nintercultural skills even though their careers and lives will be \u201cglobal\u201d\nwhether they like it or not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The immersion model of study abroad to learn interculturally\n(carried out in the local language, with homestays and direct enrollment\ndirectly in foreign universities) no longer works for many students. Decades\nago, the internet was not a \u201cthing\u201d; smartphones, social media, and Netflix did\nnot exist; a phone call home was a luxury; and there were no \u201clow cost\u201d airlines\nfor long weekend tours accompanied by \u201cselfies\u201d. The learner was on her own to come to terms\nwith the stresses of cultural differences, language learning, and new routines.\nSome did so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Universities also have changed, significantly compounding\nthe problem. They now promise protective social environments with non-negotiable\nnorms about cultural, racial, and gender diversity and permitted speech. Much\non-campus teaching lacks an emphasis on learning how to learn. Social\nobservational skills are not practiced. This protected life is called called\n\u201cthe college experience\u201d. While for\nmany, their college years involve the most diverse environment in which they\nwill have lived (and may ever live), engaging with other cultures and other\ngroups, and dealing with the confusions, discomforts, and resultant opportunities\nto learn from this is not a university priority.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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The CASA-Sevilla Program is a successful intercultural immersion program founded more than three decades ago. By about 2005, the program staff and faculty noticed decreased language learning, and a tendency to \u201cescape\u201d from intercultural interactions. Intercultural learning took a back seat ,and relations with local students, and even local host families, rarely developed. Mere immersion no longer worked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Overcoming this passivity and missing intercultural skills\nbecame the central challenge in a comprehensive effort to restructure the\nCASA-Sevilla Program. The students had to develop the ability to observe\nethnographically, document and analyze observations, and face situations in\nwhich they felt confused or ill at ease by studying and analyzing them. To\nachieve this, we restructured the program around learning how to learn about\nother cultures through sustained critical reflection in writing and orally. In\naddition to homestays and University of Seville courses, the program now\nincludes practice of linguistic and cultural observation skills and related assignments,\nengagement in community organizations, mentored and individualized learning, and\nmore fully structured and active-learning based cultural excursions\u2014 all treated\nas places to practice intercultural skills. Students, with their individual\nmentors, set and evaluate their own learning goals and accomplishments. This\nrequirement to choose what to focus on has galvanized students, produced\noriginal and nuanced work, and created a shift from use of secondary to primary\nsources in research. Formative and\nsummative evaluation of the students and the staff are a core element in the\nprogram and a source of ideas for continuous improvement. Follow-up surveys\nafter the time abroad are also now part of the system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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