IN 395 - Internship Seminar

This seminar aims to provide students with the theoretical tools and professional skills necessary to work effectively across cultures. By developing students’ competency at cultural analysis and interpretation, communication, problem-solving, and self-reflection, the course enables students to make the most out of their international internships and equips them to excel in future intercultural settings. Through readings and lectures, class discussions and activities, a group research project, and a final paper, the seminar will exercise students’ abilities to think critically about cultural values, attitudes, and practices and styles of communication, helping them become more adept at managing cross-cultural interactions and more effective at integrating into foreign cultural environments.

The first half of the course focuses on cross-cultural awareness: it explores how social, economic, and political contexts affect cultural attitudes and values by introducing students to theoretical tools for analyzing national and organizational cultures. Lessons encourage students to assess their own cultural profiles and levels of comfort with cultural difference and to perceive, contextualize, and adjust to norms and values shaping professional life in Italy (including those impacting professional relationships, communication, time management, and leadership style). The second half of the class focuses on intercultural competence: it examines specific skills that help in the effective navigation of cultural difference (e.g., intercultural communication, relationship building, and conflict management) and helps students assess their own aptitude with regard to these soft skills so as to can better market their intercultural competence and international internship experience.