MIC Related Research | Dr. Shyam Sharm

My interest in the MIC originates in both in my personal/social backgrounds as someone who grew up speaking more than half a dozen languages and straddled different cultures in South Asia and then beyond; it also comes from my academic/professional backgrounds as someone who taught language, literature, and linguistics in Nepal before switching to rhetoric and composition studies with a focus on the intersection of multilingual issues and writing in the disciplines/professions. Starting with my second master's degree and then PhD in Rhetoric and Writing Studies, multilingualism (and by extension, intercultural communication) has been an explicit focus of my scholarship, teaching, and service. Building on my doctoral dissertation, one of my current projects seeks to identify ways in which STEM disciplines can ease academic transition and enhance academic success of international students, best facilitate the learning of academic and professional communication skills among both local and foreign-born students, and improve cross-cultural communicative competency among all students. Similarly, a participatory action research project that I facilitate provides international students the opportunity to share experience and inspiration from their cross-border academic experiences. And my teaching is always informed by a desire to promote multilingual and intercultural communicative competency (and more broadly, a sense of global citizenship through greater interest and knowledge about global issues) among my students. I am excited about MIC Center because it provides me the opportunity to learn and share new ideas about how to best support the linguistically and culturally diverse student body in our university; I also see tremendous potentials/benefits for like-minded scholars to collaborate and develop new projects (and create new knowledge) about multilingual and intercultural communication.