• Roanoke Higher Education Center
• Other Learning Opportunities

About the Program

Competency is an organizational-level outcome that can only be created by offering individuals the opportunity to learn and practice the knowledge and skills needed to support short-term and long-term work towards an organization’s intercultural strategy.

In this two-part series participants will gain the knowledge and skills needed to effectively think, assess, and act to enhance their organization’s commitments to diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) through intercultural expertise. Through a blend of presentations and interactive workshops participants will learn frameworks for promoting interpersonal, group, and organizational commitments to DEIB. Session 1 focuses on key knowledge, attitudes, and practices for intercultural interactions both internally and externally. In Session 2 participants will learn to integrate new knowledge into everyday practice in ways that demonstrate intercultural expertise interpersonally, among diverse teams of co-workers, and to contribute to their organization’s long-term strategy related to DEIB.

 

More about each session:

Session 1: Foundations of Intercultural Communication In this session, we will provide the foundational knowledge and language in contemporary diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) work. Additionally, participants engage in interactive discussion and activity that enables reflection on their own identity, characteristics, and attitudes to consider how these factors impact their interactions, organizations, and broader social dynamics.

Session 2: Intercultural Communication at Work: In this session, we will engage participants in discussions regarding the ways in which issues related to DEI impact intercultural communication and therefore workplace performance. This session will be highly interactive and draw on and expand the concepts introduced in Session 1. Session 1 is a prerequisite for Session 2.

 

Learning Outcomes for this series:

• Define three paradigms of diversity change leaders, identify their own response to each paradigm, and the benefits and limits of each.
• Understand and act on distinctions between interpersonal intentions, organizational policies and practices, and societal/structural systems and norms.
• Cultivate skills of culturally competent leaders (i.e., identify why intercultural interactions have different consequences for different people).
• Develop skills in empathy and the practice of recognizing the limits of our own self-awareness.
• Increase skill in recognizing implicit, unconscious, and unintentional biases that impact personal and professional intercultural interactions.
• Encourage and reward leadership that is biased for equity and diversity.
• Recognize institutional factors that reflect, reject, and influence communication flow among individuals.
• Identify assumptions that influence behavior and impact engagement with the wide variety of stakeholders.

About the Trainers:

Christian Matheis, PhD

Christian Matheis is visiting assistant professor of Community and Justice Studies in the Department of Justice and Policy Studies at Guilford College in Greensboro, NC.

Matheis specializes in scholarship and practice that bridge social and political philosophy, ethics, public policy, and direct-action organizing. In particular, his work emphasizes how both philosophy of liberation and practical strategies enacted in liberatory movements can play a key role in addressing contemporary ethical, political, and economic problems. His research and teaching concentrations include topics such as solidarity, refugees, feminism, race, indigeneity, power and policy, and global justice. In addition to his regular teaching and research, he provides training in areas of human relations facilitation, intergroup dialogue, grassroots direct-action organizing, and on other topics. Christian Matheis is visiting assistant professor of Community and Justice Studies in the Department of Justice and Policy Studies at Guilford College in Greensboro, NC. Matheis specializes in scholarship and practice that bridge social and political philosophy, ethics, public policy, and direct-action organizing. His research and teaching concentrations include topics such as solidarity, refugees, feminism, race, indigeneity, power and policy, and global justice. Matheis is co-editor of Migration Policy and Practice: Interventions and Solutions (2016), and Transformation: Toward a People’s Democracy (2021).

Eli C.S. Jamison, PhD

Associate Professor of the Practice, Department of Management, Pamplin College of Business at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, VA.

Eli Jamison is an Associate Professor of Management Practice in the Virginia Tech Pamplin College of Business. Jamison is a practitioner-scholar focused on questions at the intersection of power, social responsibility, and policy in the service of socially just outcomes from the classroom to the corporate. Her research and teaching focuses on critical considerations of the policy and other structural conditions that enable and disable the possibilities for more impactful leadership leading to a more equitable global society. Her research has focused on immigrant labor, refugee integration, and the pedagogy of student team leadership and development. Prior to Virginia Tech, she served Radford University for 12 years in multiple capacities including Director of the Leadership Development Center and Director of the Master of Business Administration Program. 

Eli has over twenty-five years of experience across public, private, nonprofit and governmental sector organizations in the fields of higher education instruction, educational administration, leadership training, and organizational development consulting. Currently, Eli is in her second term as a Trustee and is Chair of the Roanoke City School Board. 

Student Support

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How to Apply

Enroll for September series