First Day Introduction

Below I answer the questions about International Management and me, and I include photos.

Learning Goal One: Cultural Values and National Culture

1a. Please introduce yourself in terms of your national ancestry. 

My mother's paternal grandfather, John Connor, came to Lenexa, KS, from Ireland. My mother's mother's people had migrated once upon a time from France to Canada, from there to Kankakee, IL, and from there to a French-Canadian settlement in Concordia, KS. My dad's dad's last name was O'Laughlin, so that is irish, and my dad's mom was part Irish and part Welsh.

The photo below is my mom Genevieve (standing in the back row) and her sisters Jody, Pat, and Mary visiting their Aunt Maria in Concordia, KS, near where my grandmother grew up.

1b. On the following website, please select ONE of your ancestry countries from the pull-down menu of Hofstede's: http://geert-hofstede.com/countries.html

1c. 1c. Tell us how any of the claims about that nation's culture seems to be illustrated by someone or something in your life. 

Ireland scores a 35 out of 100, so is relatively low on uncertainty avoidance. I, for one, also "embrace creativity and am always looking for new ways to approach problems" (http://geert-hofstede.com/ireland.html). My dad always used to tell me to look at any problem from different perspectives.

I am the oldest of five children. This was Easter. Dad gave Mom and the girls a corsage for the occasion.

Learning Goal Two: Challenges of Managing Across Cultures

2. Please tell us about a time you personally experienced a challenge in managing a cross-cultural interaction.

For example, maybe a misunderstanding occurred while you were traveling overseas, interacting with a co-worker or family member, seeking customer assistance, or providing a product or a service. What happened? What made it harder?

Last year I taught English as a Second Language to international students, mostly from Saudi Arabia. I had given a vocabulary test where they needed to match words to clip art images I had found on the internet. It turned out that even the images themselves had cultural meaning, and so the students couldn't figure out which image went with which word. It seemed nearly impossible to give an exam to people in such an early stage of language learning.

So I brought in Legos the next time I taught so we had some concrete objects to begin to give names to.

Learning Goal Three: Cross-Cultural Negotiation and Communication

3. In your experience detailed in Question 2 above, what non-verbal communication feature seemed to play a role? Please explain.

For example, please consider the aspects outlined in the wikipedia article on nonverbal communcation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonverbal_communication

posture, clothes, gestures, proxemics, chronemics, haptics, etc.

Although the example of the challenge of testing verbal (words) to nonverbal pictures has some important cross-cultural implications, I would like instead to talk about Chronemics--how the students viewed time. As the wikipedia article mentions, Arab countries are typically polychronemic, which means that being late was not seen as anything to be concerned about. And even attendance was challenging to enforce, since I wasn't completely certain that my words and warnings about the school policy on attendance was a. Understood or b. Considered important. it may have been that some part of the students' difficulty in testing could be tracked back to on-time attendance challenges. 

This is a picture of me trying to learn one single word of Arabic. I was proud of my students' courage in learning such a challenging language as English!

Learning Goal Four: Role of Leadership

4. What aspect of international and/or intercultural development is relevant to your current and future goals? 

For example, maybe you want to build better relationships with co-workers from other countries. Maybe you want to expand your business to another country. Maybe you want to import a product or a practice from another part of the world. Maybe you want to write a travel guide. Maybe you want to open a restaurant that serves food from another country. 

Although I taught ESL in Nicaragua in 1978; --yes, I chose to evacuate when the shooting started-- at the University of Florida from 1979-1983; and at the University of South Alabama here in Mobile, AL, 2010-2011; currently my main international interest is in a different field. I am quite taken with yoga, and I would like to discover and develop ways to make this richly cultural art, science, and practice more accessible to citizens of Mobile, AL. That is, I am interested in the religious, spiritual, artistic, and lifestyle aspects in addition to the strength and flexibility that yoga offers.

Here is a photo published in the local paper for the opening of a new yoga cooperative in town. http://www.kulayogacommunity.org/news/press-register-article.html

I am in the foreground here, though my hair is now different: long and brown with some paler streaks in it--not red anymore. 

I look forward to getting to know you better. Welcome! 

http://www.omniglot.com/language/phrases/welcome.htm