Students Document IC3 Learning

Imagine college students from a superpower and a developing country learning from the same curriculum to promote just and sustainable changes in their countries and the world. This vision is what the Inter-Cultural Communicative Competence program strives to achieve.

The Inter-Cultural Communicative Competence program, or IC3, "draws together students across cultural and political lines to implement a learning strategy for fair and just development." The IC3 program is a partnering of Eastern Mennonite University in the United States, Universidad Politechnica de Nicaragua, Payap University in Thailand, the Imam Khomeini Education and Research Institute in Iran, and An Giang Universitas in Vietnam. Students from these universities learn together by a shared foreign film series, opportunities to study abroad, and shared curriculum. This year, the IC3 emphasis is among students in the United States, Iran, and Vietnam. Every week, interested students from the three universities view the same film and engage in online dialogue on the IC3 forum. This is manifested at EMU by the foreign film series, shown every Sunday night at 6:30 p.m. in the science center. Professors also work together to coordinate coursework and objectives to provide a common community of learning for the students participating in IC3. This takes place at EMU in the History of Asia and History of the Middle East classes led by Dan Wessner.

An important component of IC3 will be a cross cultural experience led by Dan Wessner to Vietnam and Iran this summer. One major difference between this experience and a standard EMU cross cultural lies in the amount of preparation undertaken by the students. This year Wessner taught the History of Asia and History of the Middle East with a special focus on preparing students who may be interested in the Vietnam/Iran cross cultural. They will also engage in more extensive post-trip work than most cross culturals. EMU students will spend approximately a month in Iran and Vietnam meeting and being hosted by the students they have been dialoging with. When they return to the United States, the EMU students will have a chance to host their Vietnamese and Iranian friends during the Summer Peacebuilding Institute.

To promote the IC3 program Jon Helfers and Jon Styer are producing a documentary about the Vietnam/Iran cross cultural. Their documentary will trace the stories of students from EMU as they prepare for, participate in, and return from the cross cultural. Commented Jon Styer, "The initial interviews will be about the students' current perception of people from Vietnam and Iran, possibly stereotypes, hopefully when they come back they will have a different perspective." One of their main goals in the documentary is to expand not only their worldview, but also the worldview of their potential audience. "Hopefully students will watch the documentary and learn about the cultures and want to meet the people," said Jon Helfers. Though they are excited about the opportunity to engage in this cross cultural documentary, they are under no illusions about its difficulty. "How receptive people are to cameras may be a hurdle," said Styer, "different cultures and religions have different reactions to being videotaped."