CIEE, known worldwide for their extensive educational exchange programs, holds a General Business License with Personal Leadership. The membership includes use of PL prepared materials, including Facilitator Guides and coaching. Jacquelyn Reeves had a chance to chat with CIEE's Elsa Maxwell, which we'll present in two parts, here and in our winter newsletter.

JR: Hello Elsa, and thank you for your time. Let’s get right to it! Tell me about your role and position at CIEE.

Elsa Maxwell: The CIEE is short for Council on International Educational Exchange, a private US-based exchange program but with an extensive network around the world.
My official title is Academic Director of Intercultural Learning. That entails overseeing the design and delivery of all intercultural curriculum of the CIEE study abroad program.

For the past 10 years  CIEE has had a strong commitment to intentionally intervening in intercultural learning. Drawing from research on studying abroad we know that sending people abroad doesn’t necessarily promote learning although the predominant assumption about immersion is that they will become interculturally competent. This research gave us the opportunity to think about how we were overseeing this learning.

This is the background of the for-credit course: Intercultural Communication and Leadership.  My job is to design, train and deliver to teachers in the IC Leadership course.

JR: You’re hiring, deciding on format, how it will be delivered…

EM: Yes. Curriculum Design, types of activities, site visits, debriefs. We follow the experiential learning model, which has been beneficial with a self-reflection piece. PL comes in here.

JR: How did you come to PL?

EM: My predecessor, [PL Senior Facilitator] Tara Harvey, who you probably already know, is a great enthusiast of PL and for her the PL provided a framework of the leadership component. We’re good at teaching IC theory and presenting intercultural frameworks but we were missing the piece on how to put this into practice or how do you use this every day. That was where PL came from with the curriculum that Tara developed.

So when I came into this position it was already established and I was introduced to it through the PLAY- LP course.

JR: What services has CIEE decided on and implemented from Personal Leadership?

EM: We have a license that gives us the right to use PL materials and which is for the most part the Vision Statement, the CMD (Critical Moment Dialogue) in both the long and short form, which is especially used for analyzing critical incidents. Those are the two key curriculars in the course.

Also this year we’ve added a piece which I believe is equally important with [PL co-founder] Barbara Schaetti. We’ve decided to incorporate coaching for me to deepen my own practice and become more familiar with the material because we firmly believe that our instructors are more effective teachers when we have also been coached and have developed a practice for ourselves.

In past years we also incorporated training like the PLAY-LP. More than ten of our staff have gone through the PLAY- LP training. Now it’s more focused on the licensing so that we can use the materials in the classroom, as most of our faculty has PL training.

JR: What about the book? Are you also using it in the program and the class? (Intercultural Communication and Leadership)

EM: We were using the book for awhile. One of the challenges that we find in academia, is how different materials are perceived. For some instructors the book is perceived as not academic enough. It’s really interesting and I think there’s a cultural aspect to this. There is some faculty where it really hits, but others where it is not perceived as academically grounded enough.
So we’re using a scholarly article*, which also sits better with some of our faculty.

JR: Very interesting. I also believe it has to be carefully frontloaded. It is a cultural challenge to find the best way to frontload for different audiences.

EM: This may be getting off track but I would be really interested as you are developing PL in Europe, but in hearing about your experiences using it in Germany… etc.
And how does it sit in Germany or other cultural contexts.

JR: Yes, this is a topic we are grappling with in trying to establish PL in Europe; setting it up with people who want hard facts, evidence and a linear style.

EM: In Prague they love the book. They have asked for multiple copies of it to use for staff development. In Cape Town the instructor takes the students to walk one of the many mountains in Cape Town and has them use that as a solo challenge PL activity.

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This ends Elsa’s interview part I. We will run the second part of Elsa’s interview in our next newsletter: Elsa will discuss use of the book and the cultural push and pull playing out with its acceptance in different groups of academics and practitioners, as well as gender roles in PL and PL’s place in the world today.

*Schaetti, Barbara F., Sheila J. Ramsey, and Gordon C. Watanabe. "From intercultural knowledge to intercultural competence: Developing an intercultural practice." MA Moodian, Contemporary leadership and intercultural competence: Understanding and utilizing cultural diversity to build successful organizations. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications (2009).