Introducing LINC
Welcome to the Language and Intercultural Learning Center
This fall, the Language Resource Center has relaunched as the Language and Intercultural Learning Center, or LINC. The center has adopted a new, complementary focus on intercultural competence and intercultural learning, while maintaining a strong commitment to our language students. The center is still part of the Dept. of World Languages and Cultures. What’s new is that we will provide students – as well as faculty and staff – learning opportunities to support individual development of intercultural competence. We invite you to explore intercultural learning this year with LINC.
Intercultural Learning LINC facilities intercultural learning opportunities and curates resources for students, faculty, and staff.
Online Assessment The IDI is a tool newly available to campus which can serve as a foundational entry point into intercultural learning.
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As LINC launches this year, we plan to support the Valpo community through:
- Facilitating impactful opportunities supporting the intercultural development of Valpo students, faculty, and staff (see below),
- Providing engaging resources and spaces for individual reflection about intercultural development,
- Promoting community conversations and healthy dialogue about intercultural topics, and
- Maintaining our traditional support for language students including tutoring, student-led language interest groups, and language-focused programming
Specific intercultural learning opportunities will include:
- An intercultural inventory called the IDI®, an online assessment that measures intercultural competence. Now available to campus through the center, the Intercultural Development Inventory® serves as a new vehicle for individual development and as a springboard to advance campus conversations surrounding intercultural practices.
- Short term discussion and learning groups specific to faculty and staff. For example, the center hosted a summer group for faculty and staff who read and discussed the book Caste, the Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson. This fall, we will offer groups for individuals who have completed the IDI assessment and want to further their intercultural competence with the support of colleagues and peers. There are other short term groups also in development.
- Programming with an intercultural focus, such as the Matters of Language Conversation Series, and other ways of engaging students with intercultural topics. New engagement displays will be integrated into the LINC’s space, prompting small moments of individual reflection that will hopefully lead to informal conversation and healthy dialogue.
- A new, distinctive program for faculty and staff who want to develop their intercultural competence (coming this spring).
- Campus collaborations on special events such as Las Posadas, scheduled for December 3, prior to the Tree Lighting event, spring screenings of films with an intercultural perspective, and more.
- Other opportunities in development will be announced as the year progresses.
LINC does not replace or replicate the excellent offerings that various campus units already provide. Rather, the center partners and collaborates with other offices and academic units to promote conversation and encourage reflective practices surrounding intercultural competence. Explore our plans for this year, including new campus connections. Expand above to read more.
Intercultural competence is a person’s capacity to effectively and appropriately interact with people across cultural differences – differences in language, nationality, faith tradition, ethnicity, gender, identities, cultural heritage, and so on. Intercultural engagement involves navigating across differences with greater levels of complexity, and can be developed over time and with focused effort.
Intercultural learning refers to the actions an individual explicitly takes in order to build their own intercultural competence. This includes developing one’s ability to adjust perspective and adapt speech and behavior when interacting with other people across differences, while remaining authentic to one’s own values and beliefs.
Intercultural learning is purposeful, developmental, and challenging. This learning process is unique to each individual who intentionally commits to furthering their intercultural competence. Developing intercultural competence requires time, commitment, practice, and engagement with others who are different from you in multiple ways. Over time, you can increase your capacity to navigate interactions and experience cultures and individuals with greater levels of complexity.
At LINC, intercultural competence has a specific definition that is relevant in a variety of settings – both global and local, personal and professional. In short, intercultural competence is a person’s ability to effectively and appropriately interact with people across cultural differences – differences in language, nationality, faith tradition, ethnicity, gender, identities, cultural heritage, and so on. Expand above to read more.