Dubai Women’s College to integrate inter-cultural intelligence into curriculum

Dubai Women's College (DWC), a Higher Colleges of Technology (HCT) flagship institution, recently hosted the second Cultural Mapping and Navigation Accreditation Program run by Marco Blankenburgh, International Director and Beth Yoder, Consultant of KnowledgeWorkx.

Inter-Cultural Intelligence is an area of importance and much needed development, enriching the lives of the participants and giving them the tools that will help them to take this knowledge to those around them.

International leaders from multi-national corporations, NGO’s, public sector and consulting participated in this train-the-trainer course in order to lead several worthwhile initiatives.  

From his part, Dr. Howard Reed, Director of Dubai Women’s College, stated the college management decided to share this content with the faculty and staff, so that they in turn may share it with DWC students, who will be able to become part of the culturally intelligent leaders that Dubai needs to participate in a global community.

DWC aims at integrating Inter-Cultural Intelligence into their curriculum as well as design the first Inter-Cultural Intelligence course, thus giving their students greater skills.

Inter-Cultural intelligence is given great importance in the UAE, highlighted by the representation of three of the UAE’s Higher Colleges of Technology (DWC, Fujairah Women’s and Dubai Men’s College) at the event.

 “The experience and competence of the team in advising others at high levels is exceptional and has given the delegates insight into how these new tools and practices can be used at a very high level,” said Marco Blankenburgh of his team.  “We were delighted to have such an international delegation with senior leaders from Germany, Yemen, Sweden and Sudan to name a few,” he added.

 “This course was extremely valuable to me as the Director of a college that is attempting to prepare students to effectively function in a multicultural country and world,” said Dave Pelham, Director of Fujairah Women’s College.

The value of Inter-Cultural Intelligence is also demonstrated in the private sectors.  “If you want to collect the right people to the right place to achieve the right target, you have to use ICI,” commented Sameeh Nobil, Branch Manager at Credo. 

When ask of the impact this would have on their own roles, Marcus Wood, Lead International General Manager and Senior Associate stated, “Leadership development will never be the same once Inter-Cultural considerations are made.”

Participants felt this week was instrumental in helping them move forward in their roles. They cited the trainers, approach, resources and eye-opening group work, as well as the exceptional delegation as being the main reasons for such a successful event.