By MARTY LEVINE
A new Intercultural Competency Program will be offered at Pitt to train faculty and staff about “how there might be more beneath the surface than people think when they are talking to people from other places and other backgrounds” — especially working with and teaching them, says Kati Von Lehman, assistant director of outreach and assessment in the Office of International Services, who formulated the new program.
Three levels of training will be offered through the Faculty and Staff Development Program, which opened for fall class registration on Sept. 30.
REGISTRATION OPEN
Registration for the Faculty and Staff Development Program (FSDP) is now open for fall 2025. The workshops are presented in various modes — in-person, hybrid and remote — to accommodate various working environments of the University community. There is a supervisor support chat series, Healthy U offerings, programs on workplace knowledge and skills and five certificate programs.
New topics under Healthy U include the Center for Creativity’s Cards from Nature; Financial Wellness; Help for the Holidays: Tips for Finding Balance and Meaning; and Self Talk: Discovering Your Inner Coach.
New technology-related classes include AI Literacy & Writing in the Workplace; ChatGPT Sandbox; and Data Literacy for the Workplace 101.
“It’s providing life skills for faculty and staff,” says Von Lehman, but of course “they can use it at Pitt. We’ve had departments contact us because they were struggling to communicate with people from other countries as they were struggling with gender role” expectations in their own cultures versus the U.S.
“It’s always been important,” she adds, with thousands of international students here, as well as those in class and on staff who have recently immigrated here. “Other cultures are not just nationalities,” she points out, “but religions, generations, professions. … When you are struggling to relate to somebody, it might not be them deliberately not understanding you — it might be something deeper that makes it harder for them to connect with you.”
The University Center for International Studies has long had a global competency certificate but that was focused more narrowly, she says.
The new focus includes developing relationships with people who have come to this country, understanding each other’s cultural stories and working across cultures. Starting this spring, it will add a training on best practices for teaching international students.
The new Intercultural Competency Program also will help faculty and staff learn about Pitt resources to help with all of the above.
The basic certificate program, “Intercultural Ally,” requires participants to take two main courses, “Intercultural Competency Basics” and “Working Across Cultures,” then to choose four electives among at least six offerings, which will include everything from “Cross-Cultural Communication” and “Cultural Stories” to “Life of an International Visitor” and “Understanding the Visa Menu.”
The Intercultural Competency Program will also offer an in-person “Cohort Program” (at a cost of $100 for meals and materials) of the Ally certificate. Von Lehman says her office has already tried this once, earlier in 2025: “In the cohort in spring were people from across campus, from different places and different cultures, and they shared their experiences with people in the room. It really did create a sense of belonging in the group.”
Completing the Ally certificate gives you membership in an Ally Teams group that offers new ways to connect online with other allies as well as new intercultural resources and invitations to related events. The Ally Teams group tends to build a community, she says.
Two other levels of certification are also available: “Advocate” and “Ambassador.”
The Intercultural Advocate program requires participants to complete the Intercultural Development Inventory, which is a 28-year-old assessment tool online, and choose among a variety of courses or experiences. The latter includes coordinating a cultural professional development session for their department or participating in a cross-cultural simulation. Completion of this certificate offers $150 for professional development.
The Intercultural Ambassador program requires the highest level of experiences from participants, which may include teaching a section of “Introduction to U.S. and Pitt Culture,” teaching or participating in a study abroad experience, or even helping to run a workshop in the Intercultural Competency Program itself. It comes with $300 for professional development for graduates.
All certificate levels come with signage that graduates can place on their office to alert others of their ability to connect interculturally on this newfound level.
Learning cross-cultural communication, says Von Lehman, is particularly important, since individual cultures can foster more or less direct speaking, and more hierarchical or more egalitarian relations among groups.
She likes to do trainings, she says, by sharing her own experiences — such as hearing from a Chinese woman that her face was tired at the end of the day from speaking with Americans, since Americans use so many facial expressions at such an exaggerated level, by comparison.
Among world cultures there are low-context communicators and high-context communicators, Von Lehman explains — and U. S. residents are “the lowest context culture in the world” because of so many different peoples here. “We expect people not to know anything about what we are talking about unless we explain it,” complete with lots of facial expressions, she says.
“A lot of staff participated in these different opportunities” for intercultural learning in the past, von Lehman adds. “I would love to see more faculty members participate in these sessions and get more out of this experience.”
Marty Levine is a staff writer for the University Times. Reach him at martyl@pitt.edu or 412-758-4859.
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