The ICE Project

by Travis Rocha

For my intercultural communications class, I’ve been assigned a semester-long research project. It’s called the Intercultural Experience Project or “ICE Project” for short. The assignment requires a minimum of 20 hours be spent interacting with another culture, exchanging ideas and perspectives.

Students have volunteered at refugee camps, tutored ESL peers and had plenty of other interesting experiences for this assignment. I was extremely interested in visiting a refugee camp, but since I don’t have a car I wasn’t sure how I’d make that work. Instead, I’ve elected to speak with my Mexican grandmother about her journey immigrating to America. She was the first of her family to leave Mexico and she set the example for all of her extended family to follow. She is a strong and impressive woman. I’m very excited to learn, in great detail, exactly the experiences she went through from her early life up until the culture clash as a Mexican immigrant in America.

I’m so grateful that the class isn’t just studying theories all day. I believe alternative learning through opportunities such as these are just as, if not more so beneficial to one’s education. Christopher Newport enables its professors to create engaging curriculums that challenge the student to go beyond the classroom. I’m so appreciative of all the effort that is put into the courses I take here; it’s clear that nothing is ever phoned in and all assignments have a clear and constructive purpose.