Workshop gives students a cultural competency boost

Marcus Breen
Photo by Jim Chiavelli

Students in Northeastern’s Dialogues of Civilizations program will be spending time this summer in Benin, Brazil, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Chile, China, Czechoslovakia, Egypt, Ghana, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, Northern Ireland, Spain, South Africa, Switzerland, Thailand and Turkey.

The common thread: They’re not the United States. And what’s commonplace American behavior may be seen in other places as odd, confusing, even insulting.

Enter the Department of Communication Studies, and the new “Cultural Competency” seminar for every Northeastern student heading abroad with Dialogues.

“There are now 25 Dialogues programs and a lot of different countries with — let’s be diplomatic here — a range of views about young Americans,” said Marcus Breen, associate professor of communication studies and the creator of the competency program.

“One of our motivations was to encourage students to be aware of their behavior and the deeply embedded nature of their behavior as Americans,” said Breen, who co-taught the 40-minute sessions with assistant professor Kumi Silva. “Some things that students or young people do that they’re unaware of — talking in a loud voice, standing very close to people, looking at people directly when talking — could be inappropriate in other cultures.

In traditional Australian culture, for example, “looking an Aboriginal person in the eye — well, you can’t do that. Knowing that sort of detail can help someone be an effective communicator,” he said.

“Cultural Competency” doesn’t walk students through every social more of every world culture; rather, Breen said, it helps plant reminders that differences exist and students should pay attention. “Think about them and take the effort to avoid what I call dramatic faux pas,” he said. “They can make it uncomfortable.”

The presentation reminds students to “recognize that you are a visitor and therefore must respect the laws, both legislative and cultural.” It also urges: “Be patient!”

Breen, an Australian who worked as a consultant in the United States, Latin America, the Caribbean and Europe as well as Australia, remembered his own small lesson in cultural mores and patience years ago when first dealing with a Silicon Valley firm. “I had an agreement to call an executive in a large tech company,” he said. “His executive secretary told me she would get back to me. I’d called her at 10 in the morning. I heard back from her at 7 at night. I had no understanding of how Americans apply concepts of time, how they prioritize their time, and how I was very low down on the list. But every culture has different measures.”

Students were required to attend (some faculty members heading on Dialogues trips attended as well), and that “was very important,” Breen said. “It meant that everybody went out knowing at least they’d been informed about what would make them more effective learners and envoys for the university.”

The new program is vital, Breen suggested, with Northeastern’s growing emphasis on international experiences for students and the university’s desire to project itself globally. But it’s also useful for students who travel within the United States, he noted. “There are profound regional differences,” said Breen. “People in the Northeast, for example, are much more direct in their speech, much more terse in their communication attitudes … This is now an area that’s being extensively studied within the communications field. And that’s a significant contribution that a department like ours can make to the education of our students.”