Copyright © 2011 Kanda Gaigo Alumni Association(KGAA). All rights reserved.
As Foreign Students Adviser I had two main roles. One role was to counsel or advise students on a one?to?one basis. “I’m living in a dorm and hate my roommate”, or “This faculty member won’t communicate with me, I have not been able to make an appointment.” In my undergraduate studies at Wake Forest University I had experienced all of those problems so my empathy for their concerns was very high.
The other role was to help student associations to design the program activities for international exchange. Programs were usually aimed at engaging local and foreign students, host families, and faculty to achieve more genuine communication across cultures whereby they could learn more about themselves and each other, thereby enriching the social, residential, and academic experiences on campus. I also helped students to get financial resources from the university and work.
In 1967, I created the Intercultural Communication Workshop, “ICW.” The aim of the ICW was to facilitate a deeper engagement between local and foreign students through which they could learn together about their own and each other’s cultures. Many foreign students study on campuses in other countries without ever having a significant relationship of friendship with a local national that may last a lifetime. The universities at that time and now should always be encouraging deeper relationships through intercultural interactions, which would enable a higher quality of educational, residential, and personal experiences among cultures on campus. Such relationships may not ever develop if there is no support for them to be facilitated with a positive effort such as an ICW. Usually deeper personal friendships developed through the ICW through respectful intercultural interactions.
My colleagues and I trained many dozens of Foreign Student Advisors all around the country to be facilitators of ICWs. Many dozens of institutions sponsored events attended by thousands of students. The National Association for Foreign Student Affairs (NAFSA) sponsored many of the training programs for ICW facilitators. NAFSA also engaged me for three years (1969-1971) as the first consultant for NAFSA in developing intercultural communication programs on campuses across America. I visited 22 different universities in those three years, ending at Stanford University.(4/9)