This past weekend, 50 students traveled to Fellowship Farm in Pottsville, Pa., to broaden their understanding of other cultures.
The Intercultural Leadership Program’s annual training retreat engaged participants in activities — like Intercultural Jeopardy — designed to develop cross-cultural awareness and promote intercultural competence.
Of the nearly 300 applicants this year, 50 students — 27 international and 23 domestic — were admitted to the program.
Second-year Master’s candidate in International Communication and ILP student leader Yulia Barnakova, who led an activity exploring intercultural negotiations, characterized the event as a “great experience” for participants, many of whom had never previously encountered the cultures involved in the activity.
For the exercise, participants were divided into two groups, each representative of a different culture, and required to simulate the completion of a commercial transaction while maintaining an awareness of cultural differences and perspectives.
Barnakova was also involved with the “privilege walk,” in which participants stood in a row and responded to questions involving issues of race, discrimination and inequality by stepping forward if they had never experienced the sort of discrimination described in the question or moving backward if they had confronted such discrimination.
“At the end, everyone would be staggered,” Barnakova recalled. “Before this activity, a lot of the people in the front would not have realized how privileged they really were.”
An increase in funding received from the Provost Diversity Fund this year enabled the session to run overnight for the first time, said Learning Instructor for International Students and ILP program coordinator Chia-Ying Pan.
Additionally, in a change from previous years, this year’s student leaders were more involved with establishing and delivering the curriculum.
According to Barnakova, ILP student leaders actively contributed to each stage of the preparation process by planning the weekend’s activities, selecting applicants, designing the program brochure and contacting accepted applicants.
The program’s curriculum had been determined largely by teaching faculty in the past, according to Rudie Altamirano, director of international student and scholar services and ILP founder.
However, he said, this year “past participants were able to impart their skills, knowledge and competency through program planning and teaching the curriculum,” adding that “students are now holding the anchor of responsibility” and that the transfer of leadership is reflective of the “ultimate dream” of ILP — the development of student leaders.
Barnakova described the ILP experience overall as an opportunity to “challenge assumptions.”
“It’s about knowing people from other parts of the world and getting their perspective,” Altamirano likewise said of the program’s objective. “You can have stereotypes about a particular part of the world or culture, but they can be dispelled.”
“[ILP] doesn’t end in two days,” Pan said. “It’s a continuation of internationalizing Penn’s campus.”
