Dr. Madelyn Flammia is a Professor of English at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, Florida. Her research interests include international technical communication, global citizenship, and virtual teams. She is the co-author of Virtual Teams in Higher Education: A Handbook for Students and Teachers and the co-editor of Teaching and Training for Global Engineering: Perspectives on Culture and Professional Communication Practices. She has given presentations on intercultural communication and on global virtual teams at professional conferences and for corporate audiences. She received the 2017 Society for Technical Communication Jay R. Gould Award for Excellence in Teaching Technical Communication.
Dr. Houman A. Sadri is a professor of International Relations, the Coordinator of the Model U.N. Program, and a U.S. Government consultant. He is the author of 4 books (including Intercultural Communication with Madelyn Flammia), 70 articles, 15 book chapters, and about100 conference papers. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) is one Sadri’s research areas, for which, he has presented and published many articles. Sadri’s projects are funded by U.S. State Department, U.S. Fulbright Association, International Studies Association, American Political Science Association to name a few. He is often interviewed by national and international media.
The presenters will begin by discussing the challenges associated with intercultural ethics. Then they will go on to talk about related social justice issues and the challenge of incorporating these issues in our internationalization efforts. Next they will examine the way that many current efforts toward internationalization of the curriculum in U.S. colleges and universities may be heavily influenced by a Western perspective that does not adequately address ethical and social justice issues. Finally, the presenters will offer suggestions for addressing these challenges drawn both from relevant scholarship and from their own experience working to internationalize the curriculum.
Specifically, the presentation will cover these points:
- Challenges inherent in intercultural ethics
- Universal and Relative Approaches to ethical issues
- Contextual Relativism
- Social justice issues in internationalization
- Western and Non-Western perspectives
- Methods for overcoming a Western bias
- Strategies for ethical internationalization efforts
The presenters will conclude by offering strategies for engaging in ethical internationalization efforts by drawing on scholarly research and on their own experience.
