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Each semester, the Intensive English Program (IEP) works to provide language development opportunities for students, both inside and outside of the classroom. The IEP collaborates across several academic programs within the university, creating pathways to prepare international students for success in their academic careers. Through these partnerships, the IEP aims to create and facilitate opportunities for intercultural exchange, for both international and U.S. students.

In her role as IEP Instructor and Partnerships Coordinator, Sharon Tjaden-Glass collaboratively develops these opportunities, as a way to connect faculty on campus who want to work with IEP students and other academic courses. This unique role allows partnerships to be tied explicitly to curriculum in a formalized way, while also connecting students to university academic programs.

Over the course of the past few years, close to 20-30 partnerships have been developed in a variety of areas. These partnerships range from one time course collaborations or guest faculty lectures/speakers to ongoing, semesterly interactions that sustain from year to year. Many of these partnerships are with Teacher Education or the TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) certificate program, but also within other areas such as Health and Sport Sciences, Anthropology, ASI courses and more. These partnerships rely heavily on the IEP teachers, who are flexible and willing to accommodate these collaborations in the shortened 7 week terms of IEP sessions.

Sharon commented, “international students often share how much they enjoy getting to have conversations with U.S. students, and in a different way than just in passing [around campus]. We know these kind of opportunities create bridges for intercultural engagement in a facilitated environment, and hope that helps to prepare students for their time in academic programs once they are done with IEP.” These partnerships go beyond just the classroom walls. Sharon is also working with colleagues in the Department of Teacher Education to collaboratively publish two academic papers on the topic of developing intercultural competence for teacher education students.

Examples of Current Spring 2018 Partnerships:

Course Collaborations:
HSS/SOC 384 (Food Justice) & Oral Communication 3

HSS 354 (Sports in the Global Community) & IEP activities/Oral Communication courses

HSS 354 students will join different sessions of IEP activities such as Global Game Night and World Exchange.

Project-based Collaborations:
ENG 366 (Health Literacy and Social Justice) & Reading/Vocabulary 2
Project: Creating a health-related documents for ESL speakers

Teacher Education Partnerships
EDT 438 (TESOL Practicum): Mentoring Program between IEP Instructors and TESOL practicum students.

ENG 466 (TESOL Methods): Observations of TESOL methods and pedagogy in practice through the classroom.