Elon faculty and students present at Workshop on Intercultural Skills Enhancement

At the 2025 Workshop on Intercultural Skills Enhancement conference at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Maureen Vandermaas-Peeler, director of the Center for Research on Global Engagement and professor of psychology, and Sandy Marshall, Center for Research on Global Engagement intercultural learning scholar and associate professor of geography, presented “UNESCO Story Circles – Train the Trainer,” with Darla Deardorff, UNESCO and Mizuho Tatebayashi from NC State University.

In this two-part session, the co-facilitators introduced the UNESCO Story Circles methodology, developed by Darla K. Deardorff, as a means for fostering cross-cultural empathy, respect and understanding through personal narratives.

Also presenting at the confernece were Danielle Lake, director of the Center for Design Thinking and Marshall, along with student Rony Dahdal and Hector Perez, on the Power & Place Collaborative. Their presentation was titled, “Localizing Global Engagement Across Intercultural and Intergenerational Divides: Stories and Strategies.” In their session they shared strategies for cultivating meaningful intercultural and intergenerational learning that have emerged from a place-based storytelling project led by The Power+Place Collaborative, a community-university partnership located in Alamance County.

Stephen Braye, professor of English, led a pre-conference workshop on “The Missing Piece: Enhancing Student Learning through Effective Re-Entry Programs.”