Summer School - Develop Your Intercultural Competences to Perform More Effectively Across Cultures, 15 - 19 July 2019, Utrecht University, Netherlands

Develop your Intercultural Competences to Perform more Effectively Across Cultures

This summer the Utrecht University offers you a challenging course on developing your intercultural competences. These competences are becoming more and more crucial nowadays.

As we all know, performing well in one’s own familiar context or culture doesn’t automatically equal studying or working effectively in an international context and/or in a diverse team. Even though we live and work in an increasingly globalized world, in which we seems to look, sound and think more and more alike, we are faced with deep layers of cultural differences. Navigating these differences and being able to cross bridges requires developing these four intercultural competences: intercultural sensitivity, intercultural communication, building commitment and managing uncertainty. 

In this theoretical and highly interactive course you learn how to become more effective by building commitment to cross these differences. In the first place it’s about becoming aware of cultural perspectives and differences. In addition, you learn how to position yourselves in these intercultural dynamics. Also we emphasize on the importance of communicating effectively in an international context whereby many different stakeholders are involved. In this course we approach the concept of intercultural communication not only as communication between people with different nationalities, but also as the interaction between people that may differ in many other, sub-cultural ways, e.g. origin, education, gender, age, sexual orientation. Half way during the course you will bring these competences into practise during the fieldwork exercise outside the Campus.

Course director

Jackie van der Kroft and Peter-Ben Smit

Lecturers

Jackie van der Kroft and Nicole Kienhuis

Target audience

The course is aimed towards Master students and professionals with a Master degree in any field who are (interested in) working internationally and/or within a multicultural environment. Note that good verbal and written command of the English language is required.

Course aim

Having finished this course you will be able to perform more effectively in different (international) contexts and/or diverse teams by having developed your intercultural competences.
More specifically, after the course trainees:
• Have discovered different frameworks to understand the concept of culture
• Are aware of their own (cultural) identity and how this has an influence on how they perceive others
• Learned different approaches in dealing with (cultural) differences
• Are aware of the complexity of intercultural communication and discover different communication frameworks; 
• Know about the effects of their cultural background and personal characteristics on communication;
• Are able to signal and describe how cultural misinterpretations can arise (intercultural sensitivity);
• Learned about and are able to vary in communication styles according to the cultural communicative context, e.g. give and receive feedback in a culturally sensitive way (intercultural communication);
• Know about the importance of investing in relationships and networks and developing win-win solutions (building commitment) 
• Are aware of the potential of cultural diversity to innovation and learning (managing uncertainty)

Study load

Per day you will have 5,5 obligatory contact hours (2½ hours in the morning & 3 hours in the afternoon). Also about 25 - 30 hours of self-study will be required, including filling in the online assessment tool (Intercultural Readiness Check©) and the intake form. The course will culminate in the fourth day by bringing ‘Intercultural competences into practice’ as fieldwork will be conducted outside the Campus. Missing part of the program will leads to not receiving your certificate nor ECTS.

Costs

Housing through Utrecht Summer School

€ 450 for students (course + course materials and without housing) / professionals pay an additional fee of € 500

Scholarships

Utrecht Summer School does not offer scholarships for this course.

 

For more information click "LINK TO ORIGINAL" below.