Students being un-or under-prepared with the sociotechnical skillsets to approach community-engaged engineering courses can be detrimental to both student motivation and community outcomes. At X University (X), community-engaged engineering courses have been offered as stand-alones, leading several instructors to identify student lack of preparedness as a concern for relationships with community partners and effective course design. Although X had offered a Humanitarian Engineering (HE) Minor for a decade, there appeared to be a critical knowledge gap and instructors across multiple departments gathered to address this concern. Students seeking the HE minor are required to participate in at least one community-engaged engineering course. Therefore, the initial step towards providing the structure for students gain relevant community-engagement skills and knowledge was to reassess the learning objectives of the HE Minor. The resulting list was edited and refined through discussion amongst faculty teaching HE courses and was then reviewed by additional faculty and staff at X and external collaborators within the HE landscape. The resultant learning objectives served as the basis for collaboratively identifying the mission, vision, and student outcomes that would guide the restructuring of the HE minor. An introductory Humanitarian Engineering course was developed and incorporated focusing on sociotechnical skills and fostering student self-awareness regarding their positionality in colonial contexts and power dynamics as it related to community-engaged design work. Transferable learnings from this experience are how to a) collectively identify the vision and student outcomes for a program that spans departments and institutions and b) structure a scaffolded minor program to support student development as community-engaged practitioners. The next steps are to assess student outcomes using the intercultural development inventory (IDI) as students progress through the HE

The noticeable shift in interior design practice toward understanding issues of emotional and cultural intelligence offers opportunities for educational programs to provide direct impact through increasing the levels of emotional and cultural intelligence of emerging interior design practitioners (interior design students). The use of intercultural competence (ICC) as part of critical professional training in many fields aligns to the abovementioned idea, as ICC seeks to understand how professionals functionalize their understandings of cultural differences into policies and solutions that are appropriate for their professional setting. With this understanding of ICC, researchers seek to understand how course-level curriculum interventions affect the ICC levels of emerging interior design practitioners. The present paper is a case study of a curricular intervention to increase interior design students’ intercultural competency. The research design utilizes the proprietary Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) survey as the pre- and post-test to measure ICC changes in an undergraduate, theory-based lecture course. The intervention engaged students in learning experiences related to community spaces, social justice, global issues of design, and sustainability, with the intent to improve ICC levels. While a preliminary review of the data indicated no change in the collective cohort’s ICC levels, a chi-square analysis of data revealed a meaningful change in the individual students. Specifically, the interventions (1) gave students a deeper understanding and insight of their culture and cultural norms over others; and (2) allowed for significant individual changes along the IDI continuum. The results imply a connection between course-level curriculum interventions and ICC levels, which indicates the ability to change students’ ICC through strategic academic intervention and work.

Emphasis on intercultural competency (IC) as a learning outcome drives student engagement in diverse environments, encouraging intercultural effectiveness in communication and collaboration. This study assessed if participation in a short-term instructor-led horse industry study abroad in Ireland increased the IC of students from 3 universities. IC areas of interest were curiosity, empathy, and cultural worldview. A mixed model design was used to assess progress toward these competencies. Quantitative data was collected using the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI): a statistically reliable and cross-culturally valid measure of an individual's actual Developmental Orientation (DO) and Perceived Orientation (PO) intercultural profile. The PO is where the individual thinks they are on the continuum, while the DO is where they actually are based on responses to the items. The stages along the IDIR continuum are Denial (D; misses difference); Polarization (P; judges difference); Minimization (M; de-emphasizes difference); Acceptance (Ac; deeply comprehends difference) and Adaptation (Ad; bridges across difference). The IDIR was administered pre- and post-travel. Qualitative data was collected from blogs and end of course digital story assignments, both utilizing guiding questions to stimulate student reflection.

The opportunity addressed in this research is to create an effective leadership capacity-building experience equipping young adults (18-24 years old) to practice justice, equity, reconciliation, and perseverance while positively impacting society in Lebanon and Oregon. iLEAP: An Intercultural Leadership Pilgrimage for Young Adults, is the result. My research has revealed that young adults want a learning environment that supports the cultivation of positive self-identity, meaningful connection with others, and agency. They want to develop cross-cultural friendships and collaborations and want to be equipped for effectively working with difference. Additionally, they want to cultivate visioning skills that lead to discerning and implementing practical, transformational projects which incarnate the gospel values of justice, equity, reconciliation, and perseverance in their context. Simultaneously, they believe that mental health challenges may create a barrier to them successfully doing so. Thus, integrating trauma resiliency skills will also be highlighted.

Teacher preparation programs must provide diversity-focused coursework to pre-service teachers to meet the needs of an increasingly diverse student population in secondary education. Education research promotes that focused efforts in developing skills, attitudes, and knowledge lead to targeted internal and external outcomes in an individual’s intercultural competence. The Intercultural Development Inventory® evaluates intercultural competence as an individual’s capacity to appropriately adapt to cultural differences and commonalities. Evaluation of intercultural competence development, as assessed by the IDI®, guided this mixed methods study. Document analysis of select participants’ written reflections and IDI scores provided insight into the effectiveness of developing intercultural competence in pre-service agricultural education teachers. The research was framed in Deardorff’s (2006) process model of intercultural competence, Bennett’s (1986) development model of intercultural sensitivity (DMIS), and Hammer’s (2003) Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI). Intercultural competence is credited with helping individuals navigate cultural differences and commonalities and will strengthen teachers' impact when teaching diverse learners and establishing diverse and inclusive learning environments. Findings indicated minimal intercultural competence development after completing diversity-focused course components.