At our March event we’ll play the game (suitable for all ages), discuss how to use the game in classroom or training situations (we can watch portions of the instructional DVD), and learn more about cultures of Africa. We’ll also have a live video chat with Dr. Emmanuel Ngomsi, the creator of Yan-Koloba!

Here’s a short video introducing Yan-Koloba and Dr. Emmanuel Ngomsi:

This is going to be a fun event – don’t miss it!

When :: Tuesday, March 16, 2010 from 6-8pm

What :: Yan-Koloba – A Teamwork Game Rooted in Africa

Where :: The Visiting International Faculty Program (VIF) in Chapel Hill, NC

Directions :: The Visiting International Faculty Program office is at 201 Sage Road in Chapel Hill – just down the street from the Border’s bookstore you can see from 15-501. There is free parking in front of the building. Please enter through the main doors.

Questions? Email us :: sietarnc [@] gmail [dot] com

The theme of the 2010 conference is Living and Working in an Intercultural World.

Why should you attend the Tenth Annual SIETAR-USA conference? The SIETAR-USA membership goals provide the focus for the annual conference. As a participant you can benefit in the following ways:

Business Opportunities. Grow your career. “Get the word around” about what you do, perhaps even find a job (it’s amazing how often this happens at the conferences). This past April 2009 conference at Cary, N.C. included participants from across the U.S. and from England, France, India, Germany, Canada, Brazil, Iran, British Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico.

Networking. Connect with intercultural professionals from around the USA and from around the world. Professional networking is in at the forefront of the SIETAR-USA conference with long coffee breaks, group lunches, and relaxed evening activities.

Professional Development. Expand your skills, knowledge and resources. Be part of the action and join in the on-going effort to explore future directions for intercultural relations in the three areas represented in SIETAR: education, training and research.

Giving Back. Grow the profession. Volunteer to serve the Society by joining committees associated with the conference, becoming a SIETAR- USA volunteer or mentoring aspiring colleagues.

The SIETAR-USA 2010 conference is being held in Spokane, WA from April 14-17, 2010.

Interested? Visit the conference website for more details and to take advantage of the early-bird registration rate.

If you’re on Facebook, why notbecome a fan of SIETAR-USA? It’s a great way to connect with other interculturalists, even if you don’t attend the conference!

See you in Spokane!

Here are the details:

When :: Tuesday, January 26, 2010 from 6-8pm

Where :: The Visiting International Faculty Program (VIF) in Chapel Hill, NC

Directions :: The Visiting International Faculty Program office is at 201 Sage Road in Chapel Hill – just down the street from the Border’s bookstore you can see from 15-501. There is free parking in front of the building. Please enter through the main doors.

Questions? Email us :: sietarnc [@] gmail [dot] com

Note :: Is there something from our Resource Library that you’ve had your eye on? If so, send us an email and we’ll bring it to the meeting. All SIETAR-NC members can check out materials from our extensive Resource Library.

About Michael Hoppe:

Michael is a Senior Faculty member at the Center for Creative Leadership in Greensboro, NC. He trains custom program offerings to clients worldwide as well as the Center’s flagship program, the Leadership Development Program (LDP)® and other open-enrollment programs. As part of the Center’s Global Leadership Group, he researches and designs modules on effective cross-cultural leadership and other cross-cultural issues for use in the Center’s client-specific offerings. He lived and worked in Germany, Greece, Italy, and The Netherlands.

His publications have appeared in numerous journals and books. Recently, he contributed the chapter on cross-cultural leadership development to the Center’s Handbook of Leadership Development (2004) entitled “Cross-Cultural Issues in the Development of Leaders.” Also, as a Co-Country Investigator for GLOBE, a worldwide project on global leadership and behavior effectiveness, he wrote the book chapter on “Leadership in the U.S.A.: The Leader as Cultural Hero,” published in 2007.

Michael holds a M.S. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Munich, Germany, a M.S. in Educational Psychology and Statistics from the State University of New York at Albany, and a Ph.D. in Adult Education and Institutional Studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Mrs. Oznur Hatip and Mrs. Nihal Cakmakci were wonderful cultural cooking guides. They took photos of our cooking class – take a look!

P.S. Our next event will be on Tuesday, Jan. 26 from 6-8pm at the Visiting International Faculty Program. Our speaker will be Dr. Michael Hoppe from the Center for Creative Leadership. You won’t want to miss this event! More information to follow.

Until then, Happy Holidays!

Here are the details:

What :: Turkish Cooking Class

When :: Saturday, November 14 @ 12:30pm

Where :: Divan Cultural Center, Cary, NC
1393 SE MAYNARD Rd.
Cary, NC 27511

Please RSVP by Friday, Nov. 13!

Note – The Divan Center charges a $10 materials fee per person for this class. SIETAR-NC is pleased to offer members a discounted rate of $8 per person.

Questions? Ready to RSVP? Email us :: sietarnc [@] gmail [dot] com

More information about our October event:

What :: CultureActive 

Who :: Dr. Tim Flood, Assistant Professor of Communication, UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School

When :: Tuesday, October 20, 6-8pm

Where :: The Board Room, 3rd floor of the Kenan Institute at the Kenan-Flagler Business School at UNC-CH

>>Maps and Directions

The Kenan Institute is the smaller building next to the Business School’s main McColl Building. Parking is free in the parking garage on Kenan Drive after 5pm.  Take either the breezeway from the deck’s 6th level or the stairs across from the deck’s 3rd-level exit up to the main plaza level–with the fountain on your right, the Kenan Institute is the building on your left, portico marked “Kenan Institute.”

Questions? Email us :: sietarnc [@] gmail [dot] com

Special thanks to UNC-CIBER  (Center for International Business, Education and Research) and the Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise for hosting and co-sponsoring this event!

Join us for a viewing of 2 Million Minutes, a documentary by Robert A. Compton (watch the trailer)!

Here’s the information for our first SIETAR-NC event of 2009-10:

What :: 2 Million Minutes (movie, 54 minutes)

When :: Friday, September 11, 7 p.m.

Where :: The Visiting International Faculty Program (VIF) in Chapel Hill, NC

Directions :: The Visiting International Faculty Program office is on Sage Road, just down the street from the Border’s bookstore you can see from 15-501. There is free parking in front of the building. Please enter through the main doors.

Questions? Email us :: sietarnc [@] gmail [dot] com

About 2 Million Minutes -

Regardless of nationality, as soon as a student completes the 8th grade, the clock starts ticking. From that very moment the child has approximately -

…Two Million Minutes until high school graduation…Two Million Minutes to build their intellectual foundation…Two Million Minutes to prepare for college and ultimately career…Two Million Minutes to go from a teenager to an adult

How a student spends their Two Million Minutes – in class, at home studying, playing sports, working, sleeping, socializing or just goofing off — will affect their economic prospects for the rest of their lives.

How do most American high school students spend this time? What about students in the rest of the world? How do family, friends and society influence a student’s choices for time allocation? What implications do their choices have on their future and on a country’s economic future?

This film takes a deeper look at how the three superpowers of the 21st Century – China, India and the United States – are preparing their students for the future. As we follow two students – a boy and a girl – from each of these countries, we compose a global snapshot of education, from the viewpoint of kids preparing for their future. Read more…

Here are the links to the videos Patti showed during her talk:

Rize Movie Trailer

Slingshot Hiphop

Educational Uses of Second Life

And here’s Patti’s blog.

Thanks to the Robertson Scholars Collaboration Fund for making these events possible.

Event #1: Workshop –
New Experiential Tools for Exploring Diversity and Intercultural Issues

• Date/Time: Sunday, April 5 from 1:00-2:30p.m.
• Location: John Hope Franklin Center (Duke University), Room 240
• Map & directions

Light refreshments from the Mediterranean Deli will be provided for workshop participants.

***This event is free but space is limited. Please RSVP by Friday, April 3 to: info “at” sietarnc “dot” org  

Workshop Description:

We learn best by first having a “hot” experience that knocks us off balance, then making meaning of it second. And yet we often teach in exactly the opposite order, providing models and meaning, then asking if those fit the experiences we have had. This highly interactive workshop will approach training from the learner’s perspective, will embrace surprise at the “edges” where learning really occurs, and will explore ways to achieve diversity and intercultural learning through experiential processes. We will:

•    Utilize unique experiential training tools to explore concepts like dominant culture
•    Move from intellectual learning to embodied learning
•    Explore how to teach core intercultural and diversity concepts through experiential and nontraditional processes

Bring both hemispheres of your brain and wear comfortable clothing.

Event # 2: Public Talk –
Hip-Hop, Manga, Facebook, Twitter, Second Life, and Myth: intercultural tools for a new century

• Date/Time: Sunday, April 5 from 3:00-4:00p.m.
• Location: John Hope Franklin Center (Duke University), Room 240
• Map & directions

Please RSVP by Friday, April 3 to: info “at” sietarnc “dot” org

Dessert reception from the Mediterranean Deli will follow.

Description:

Patti Digh worries that the field of intercultural communication is largely irrelevant to the challenges of the 21st century. She asks: Are we using old tools and models to grapple with intercultural realities vastly changed because of the new “mongrel, global Me,” increased cultural “sampling,” the leveling effect of technology, and the transparency of social media? In fact, are these challenges revolutionizing our very concepts of culture? And are we keeping up?

What are the radically new tools we need to deal with these challenges? Patti believes they include Hip-Hop, Manga, Facebook, Twitter, Second Life, and myth, all rooted in one local simplicity: STORY. As Jerome Bruner has said, human beings are hard-wired for story. We know that. But the ways in which we are transmitting and learning from story are changing rapidly. And many of us are not keeping up. Some of us even disparage these new forms of learning, communicating, and building relationship across cultures.

This address will delve into the primacy of story, how central it is to intercultural learning and practice, and how new forms of story and new technologies can be important tools for interculturalists.

About Patti Digh

Patti Digh is a storyteller, author and facilitator. Digh’s first book, Global Literacies: Lessons on Business Leadership and National Cultures (Simon & Schuster, 2000), was named a Fortune magazine “best business book” for the year 2000. Her second book was The Global Diversity Desk Reference (Wiley, 2003), and her most recent book is the widely acclaimed Life is a Verb: 37 Days to Wake Up, Be Mindful, and Live Intentionally (Globe Pequot Press, 2008). Life is a Verb is focused on the power of story and is one of five finalists for the prestigious “Books for a Better Life” award,” to be awarded in February 2009. She and David Robinson are co-founders of The Circle Project, an innovative consulting firm focused on providing experiential learning experiences to help communities and organizations navigate differences.