Making Cross-Cultural Communication Meaningful

     On Friday, October 28 I attended an Ohio Academic Advising Association Regional Seminar in Columbus, Ohio titled Making Cross-Cultural Communication Meaningful:  A Holistic Approach to Advising a Diverse Population.  The keynote speaker for the conference was Kimberly Brazwell, the coordinator for Diversity and Study Abroad Programs at Columbus State Community College.  She started off by saying that there is no “cookie-cutter” approach to dealing with students that are not like you.  She talked about four layers of diversity- personality, internal dimensions (i.e. age, race, ethnicity, physical ability, gender, and sexual orientation), external dimensions (i.e. geographic location, marital status, appearance, work experience, educational background, religion, recreational habits, and income), and organizational dimensions (i.e. management status, work location, seniority, division/department, and career field).  She also said that real diversity work comes from processing your own identity.  She challenged us all to consider our story and/or the lens in which we view others.  She also cautioned us to consider our basic assumptions about others who are not like us.  She said that we cannot assume that a student identifies in a particular way.  Rather, we need to let students tell us how they identify themselves.  The speaker talked about developing trust with students, saying that trust level influences how much someone will share.  She told us that we are already “doing” cross-cultural communication.  The real question, she said, is how well are we doing it?  She talked about how we need to be aware of “who” are lens includes and “who” it leaves out.  As academic advisors she asked us to consider how the lens of faith, race, gender, sexual orientation, etc. impact the students we work with and our advising.  She asked us to also consider our biases and apprehensions.  She challenged us to throw out the “rubric” and to treat each student as an individual with multiple identities.  This seminar was really helpful as a "connector" to what I have learned thus far as part of my Immersion Project.