BUILDING AN INTERCULTURAL COMPETENT COMMUNITY IN AN ACADEMIC SETTING – COLLEGE OF HUMAN SCIENCES AT OKLAHOMA STATE UNIVERSITY

The United States population is becoming more diverse. More than ever, college students should be prepared to face a multicultural environment. The people they will be interacting with in their professional careers includes not only people from different nationalities but people from different gender, age, race, ethnicity, religion, economic status, sexual orientation, county of origin, language, physical an/mental ability, etc. The Office of Extension & Engagement in the College of Human Sciences at Oklahoma State University (OSU) is aware of this challenge and it is designing and delivering a variety of strategies to increase Intercultural Competence among not only students but also faculty and staff members, aiming to increase their intercultural competence, defined as the ability to work effectively in a multicultural environment. This strategy includes the opening of a Multicultural & Community Engagement office; assessing intercultural competence using the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI), and design-deliver short and long term training focused in the objective of increasing intercultural competence. Students, faculty and staff members will be encouraged to take the (IDI) instrument as the first part of the strategy. After the group results emerge the office of Multicultural & Community Engagement will design and deliver a variety of training according to the participants’ intercultural competence. The goal is to build and intercultural competent community where the members accept cultural differences, as described by Milton Bennett and Michael Hammer.