Thorunn Bjarnadottir

Create curriculum for Intercultural Competence's Development

• Intercultural Education
• Design and facilitate workshops that help Faculty and staff develop intercultural competency
• Bring International students to a five-week intensive leadership program at U of MN.
• Oversee all operations of three programs: Culture Corps, Small World Coffee Hour, and Cross-Cultural Leadership Development Retreat.
• Supervise ten staff, including recruiting, interviewing, hiring, and training.
• Collaborate with students, staff, and faculty across disciplines to enhance international student engagement on campus.
• Provide international students with leadership and team-building skills that allow them to create a biweekly program, Small World Coffee Hour, that draws about 250 students and faculty
• Create a platform for staff, international students, and faculties to discuss world affairs.
• Partner with the Center for Teaching and Learning and the Leadership Minor to find ways to integrate international students into internationalization efforts on campus
• Create a curriculum and teach a Cross-Cultural Leadership workshop offered twice a year to provide leadership skills to students across disciplines.
• Teach workshops on communication across cultures, train the ISSS mentor students who support the new incoming international students.
• Wrote and was awarded a grant from the Academy for Educational Development to offer a five-week Women's leadership Development program to women from the Saudi Arabia peninsula
• Provide leadership skills development to 60 international students from North Africa & Latin America learning about American culture during a 5-week program.
• Assure compliance of organizations' policies, rules, and regulations
• Create and manage a $200,000 program budget.

• Created and implemented Icelandic School Teachers' Exchange Program
• Oversaw all operations of program, including logistics for traveling and accommodations in the US
• Facilitated collaborative working relationships between over 500 Icelandic school teachers and Minnesota public school teachers
• Collaborated with both groups to stimulate discussions around best practices in teaching and pedagogy
• Worked closely with school officials in Iceland and with Bruce Jilk, a Minnesota architect who later designed, Ingunnarskoli, the first open school to be built in Reykjavik, Iceland.

Designed and executed a three-week-long orientation program for 100 faculty members from the former Soviet Union. This program was designed to get them acquainted with American Culture and University Culture to prepare them for a year-long practicum at American Universities around the US.

• Created learning modules to teach Communication skills
• Developed a workshop on University hierarchy.
• Created a workshop on student-centered learning
• Designed a workshop on American Culture

• Provided Cross-Cultural adjustment training to 100 faculty members from the former Soviet Union to help enhance a year-long academic and professional development experience at American Universities
• Administered the program, oversaw the day-to-day operation, managed the budget, handled all logistics, and taught classes on cultural adjustment.
• Provided support to 25 International School Administrators pursuing an Ed.D degree from the University of Minnesota while working abroad
• Developed and implemented communication strategies between faculty and international administrators, organized classrooms, and handled all other program logistics
• International Program and Collaboration

• Editor of Vera Magazine of the Woman's Alliance, Reykjavik Iceland
• Stringer Reporter for, for “Pressan” a Weekly alternative newspaper, in Iceland.

• For “Dagskra” I advised on production of news and feature stories for a popular current affairs magazine show at the Icelandic Broadcast Corporations, Reykjavik Iceland.

• Take Out” an arts and culture program and “Week in Review” program, Minnesota Public Radio
• Reporter, “Session Weekly” at the Minnesota House of Representatives, St
• Paul Minnesota
• Editorial Intern, Minneapolis
• Co-editor of “World View” at the Minnesota Daily, University of Minnesota
• Editor, “International Student”, Magazine of Minnesota International Student Association, University of Minnesota.