The Mission of the Center for Languages & Intercultural Communication
The Center for Languages & Intercultural Communication focuses on developing Rice students’ communicative, interactional, and intercultural abilities and knowledge in non-native and heritage languages. Thus, CLIC seeks to provide a broad and critical educational experience that promotes multilingualism and helps students become culturally competent and interact successfully, appropriately, and respectfully with people from different countries and sociocultural backgrounds.
CLIC fulfills its mission by:
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Adopting student-centered teaching approaches that include guided discovery and real-world language use,
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Designing innovative and research-based teaching materials,
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Fostering critical thinking about linguistic features, language use, and sociocultural norms,
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Providing linguistic and culturally contextualized opportunities for students to use the target language outside the classroom (e.g. interactions with advanced and native speakers of the target language, service learning, practicums, etc.),
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Celebrating the peoples and cultures associated with the languages we teach through cultural events,
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Offering six-week, faculty-led study abroad programs in the summer,
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Providing peer mentoring opportunities in the target languages,
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Creating and strengthening partnerships with local and international NGOs, universities, schools, and other entities,
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Keeping faculty up to date with current theory on pedagogy through internal and external training, and
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Offering teacher training to local language instructors as a way to collaborate with the teaching community.
