Cross-cultural knowledge and intercultural competence are highly valued qualities for 21st-century American college and university graduates, as these institutions endeavor to prepare students to live and work in an increasingly multicultural society. This task offers both a challenge and an opportunity for educators to design mechanisms to increase the global awareness and intercultural development of their student participants. The challenge is to create intentional learning experiences that avoid the pitfalls of perpetuating stereotypes and reproducing inequitable social relations. Faculty-led international travel courses provide an opportunity for program leaders to develop intercultural development curricula that are ethical, engaging, economically and environmentally sustainable, and pedagogically sound.

This study examined how participants in a faculty-led short-term global service-learning course to Belize experienced and perceived cultural difference and how that professor attended to and sought to address cultural difference and issues of power, positionality, and privilege during that program. This study followed a convergent parallel mixed method design in which I collected and analyzed qualitative and quantitative data concurrently. This combination of methods yielded a more complete understanding of the learning process and intercultural learning outcomes of the student participants, as well as the pedagogical and programmatic features that encouraged the growth of intercultural competencies in each.

The quantitative findings of this study indicated little change in the competency levels of the program's participants, whereas the qualitative data suggested that the Belize travel course students had experienced notable gains in cultural self-awareness and were better able to identify relevant cultural differences. Participants singled-out the immersive quality of the experience, the variety and multiple points of intercultural contact the program offered, relationships with the faculty leader, peers, and host community members, and the compassionate leadership of the faculty leader as critical factors in their intercultural growth. I found that emotions, cognitive dissonance, and critical reflection play key roles in the intercultural learning process.