Letter From the Co-Chairs

Leslie Bohon, University of Richmond, Richmond, VA, USA

Melanie van den Hoven Visiting Professor and SAFIR Affiliate Researcher at Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi, UAE

Dear Intercultural Communication Interest Section (ICIS) members and friends,

Warm greetings to you from your new Co-Chairs! We are excited to introduce ourselves and our plans for the upcoming year.

Before we begin, however, we would be remiss if we did not demonstrate our sincere gratitude to our outgoing Chair, now Past Chair, Dr. Nichole McVeigh. Nichole led a fruitful and year of meaningful ICIS events:

• 3 Webinars, 

• 2 Lightning Talks

• 4 Coffee Hours (including a special December Solstice celebration), and 

• 3 newsletters

The role of chair offers a unique opportunity to bring fresh perspective to the interest section, and, in this spirit, Nichole weaved themes of ecology and learning differences in ELT into our events last year. Drawing on two areas close to her heart, she connected us with leaders in ecolinguistics and neurodiversity to expand our notions of inclusion from the perspective of the natural world and ways of learning effectively. Nichole leads skilfully with humor and grace. On behalf of the ICIS, we thank you, Nichole!

This Co-Chair newsletter highlights the ICIS activities at the recent Convention and our events for the upcoming year. If you were able to attend the TESOL 26 Convention in Salt Lake City, you know that your ICIS interest section was very busy. 

ICIS organized and presented several sessions coordinated with inspiring ICIS leaders and advocates in the field. Here is a summary of each event:

• From Past Lessons to Future Possibilities, an Academic Session, organized by Dr. Roxanna Senyshen, which featured IC star speakers Ryuko Kubota, Kristen Lindahl, and Joan Kang Shin. As Roxanna noted, the speakers explored “how interculturality in TESOL has evolved and what new questions and responsibilities are emerging in today’s various contexts.”

• Bridging Worlds: Culturally Responsive Communication with Families of Neurodiverse Learners, a Primary Intersection session organized by our own Dr. Nichole McVeigh (ICIS) with Jill Hakemian (SSD) from Supporting Students with Disabilities (SSD). The invited guest speakers were Fatima Aldajani, Nicole Bell, and Maria de Lourdes Gutierrez Aceves.

• Rethinking Success: Implications of Global Power Shifts for ELT, a collaboration between Program Administration with ICIS and Higher Education (as Secondary Intersections), We were lucky to host three former TESOL Presidents, Joyce Kling, Andy Curtis, and Mark Algrena. These speakers reflected on the past, present, and future of English language teaching in the contexts of intercultural communication, higher education, and program administration. ICIS team members Dr. Melanie Van den Hoven and Dr. Leslie Bohon joined colleagues from PA and HE to produce this session. 

• a networking session and an Open ICIS Meeting. Our Open Meeting enabled meeting new interested team members. This meeting, along with other networking efforts, resulted in several new and energetic joiners to our leadership team. We heartily welcome Marcella Capririo, Jen Ramos, and Kasia Helbin-Travis to the leadership team! 

We are excited to welcome new leadership team members and fresh ideas to the fold! 

Do Check out MyTESOL for description and analysis about these sessions, and our YouTube site for the videos. 

How about the upcoming year? What will we as your new Co-Chairs emphasize this year? 

We’re so glad you asked!

Our vision this year has three objectives:

     1. Continue the legacy of past and outgoing leadership: 

This means we commit to the good ways of working established by our outstanding past team members over many years. These events continue with our format of Webinars, Lightning Talks, Coffee Hours, newsletters, and monthly leadership meetings. 

     2. Strengthen mentorship within the ICIS leadership team: 

This means we wish to focus on supporting & mentoring future ICIS leaders. So far, we have kicked off this year with a new member orientation meeting in May to ensure that we teach new joiners about the MyTESOL app and other technical aspects about hosting events within TESOL. 

     3. Build bridges: 

Also, as Intercultural Communication advocates, we recognized our special role in reaching out to the international membership base.  

Our actions will include continuing outreach to TESOL members internationally. collaborate with other interest sections and actively engage with MyTESOL app to ensure our network is robust.

So far, we are off to a good start.  We have hosted several events in April, May and June: 

• April 2026: Coffee Hour on Post-Convention Knowledge Sharing, April 29

• May 2026: ICIS New leadership team member orientation, May 5

• June 2026: Webinar: A Conversation with author Sarah Hopkyns on her new release, “Decoloniality in Multilingual University Spaces” on June 2;

ICIS has several upcoming engagement opportunities for the rest of the year. Our calendar plan includes:

• Coffee Hour “Culturally Responsive Teaching in ELT for Adults” on June 25; and the post-convention newsletter

• September 2026: Webinar on mentoring and IC in English language teaching

• October 2026: Lightning Talks 1 and Newsletter

• November 2026: Coffee Hour

• December 2026: Coffee Hour “December Solstice” led by Barbara Lapornik

• January 2027: Webinar on Building Bridges and Mentoring in ELT

• February 2027: Lightning Talks 2 and Pre-Convention newsletter

• March 2027: Coffee Hour: Pre-Convention Highlights and the TESOL Convention

As always, we invite our membership to be involved in planning, envisioning, and proposing events (or leading them!). We are interested in learning what intercultural communication interests and needs you have. So please, do not be shy to make suggestions or contribute ideas. You can contact us at [email protected] and [email protected]. 

We look forward to continued interactions with you and hope to see you at the upcoming ICIS events!

We hope this post-convention edition of the InterCom Newsletter has been informative! Your newsletter Co-Editors, Patricia Moon and Jennifer Ramos, have constructed a full newsletter for you. Thank you for all the work you do to bring us meaningful content, Patricia and Jennifer!

Most sincerely,

Leslie Bohon and Melanie van den Hoven 

2026-2027 ICIS Co-Chairs

Leslie Bohon has broad experience at the university and secondary levels as an ESL/EFL professional, cross-cultural researcher, administrator, teacher & professor, program start-up and developer, curriculum developer, and professional development trainer. She currently serves as Director of English Language Learning at the University of Richmond (Virginia, USA).

Melanie van den Hoven, has been actively promoting and supporting the activities of the Intercultural Communication Interest Section of TESOL for many years. She is currently, serving as Co-Chair with Leslie Bohon. Melanie is a Visiting Professor and SAFIR Affiliate Researcher at Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi and is based in France and the United Arab Emirates.