1^st Webinar on the 24^th July 2019

Campus Diversity and Intercultural Engagement Webinar

Opening address by Ms. Tshering Choden, International Relations Officer; Project coordinator of FRIENDS Project at RTC and Ms. Leki Dem Tamang, Assistant Finance Officer; Financial Manager of FRIENDS project at RTC welcomed the participants to the 1^st IaH Webinar, and wished the participants a successful and productive session and also briefed on the agenda of the webinar.

Ms. Ayse Deniz Ozkan, Vice-director at DIR responsible for global education and partnerships and FRIENDS institutional coordinator at IAU welcomed all the participating HEIs and their contribution members for the 1^st IaH webinar and introduced the webinar topic. Ms. Ayse took us through her presentation and also shared the best practices at IAU and she also gave us the opportunity to learn about the best practices at Dimitri by Ms. Anne Marie who is a visiting guest faculty at Istanbul Aydin University. Closing address and appreciation by Ms. Tshering Choden to the participants from RTC for the webinar and also distributed a feedback survey on the webinar mainly covering the following questions:

How did the webinar meet your learning objective? How do you intend to apply what you have learned from the webinar at your University? Was the webinar relevant to your University? The general feedback on these questions was as follows: How did the webinar meet your learning objective?

Key Words: internationalisation, social interaction, diversity, local community, intercultural, intercultural engagement, cross-cultural competency, hospitable environment. Key objectives: stimulate additional engagement and diversity, create an environment for international students, realize the difference between simple exposure to diversity and real engagement, develop customized courses for international students, diversify workplace, and make the most out of the presence of international students on campus. How do you intend to apply what you learned at your University?

Key Words: international student union, culture, and custom, multicultural activities, resource person. Key objectives: encourage participation of international students in the student body, honoring and celebrating important holidays of international students through a simple social media message, treat international students as equal rightful stakeholders of the University, pilot an internalization day celebration, develop strategy for inclusive campus environment, involve international students as resource person in various departments of the University, involve the international students to teach foreign languages to local students, and create some multicultural activities where international and local students can work together.

Was the webinar relevant to your University? As collective feedback, all the participants were quite satisfied and found the webinar very much relevant to RTC and they were able to compare on the practices of RTC and IAU and also learn various new strategies to nurture campus diversity and intercultural engagement.