An Intercultural Aide’s job is to help students make successful social, cultural and academic transitions into MSU, but some students have finished an entire school year without meeting their ICA.
Some residence halls have one ICA assigned to two floors and others have one ICA for every three floors. This makes it difficult for ICAs to interact with every student on their assigned floors.
“This year I don’t even know if I have an ICA — I assume that I do,” jazz studies sophomore William Wang said.
Last year, Wang said there was always an opportunity to talk to someone outside of his friend group if he needed help.
“The way my ICA last year worked, he was almost like a therapist, someone to talk to about anything,” Wang said. “He always had his door open. This year there isn’t the same amount of opportunities as last year, just because I do not know my ICA.”
Supply chain management senior Jiarun Xing was an ICA in McDonel Hall last year and said he was assigned to 200 students.
Although the ICAs’ priorities are to check-in with Spartan Success Scholars and freshmen, some students who wanted to speak with their ICA have never seen them.
Xing said if an ICA is placed in a predominately freshmen dorm with a high student to ICA ratio, it can become overwhelming.
“As an ICA, we are also students, we have to focus on academia as well — we are not robots,” Xing said.
Xing said he believes having another ICA to share the duty with would make the task easier to accomplish.
“We would have more time to pay attention to each individual,” Xing said.
Hospitality business sophomore Alessia Risi said coming from Europe to America was a big transition.
“Being used to Italian colleges, this was completely different than what I expected,” Risi said.
Risi said she also had issues of never meeting her ICA last year.
“If you move in as a freshman in the dorms you probably won’t even know what an ICA is until you see the ICA,” Risi said.
However, Risi’s ICA lives on her floor this year, which enables her to interact with the ICA more than students who live on a floor without one.
“She lives on our floor so I see her all the time, but I still don’t know what she does,” Risi said.
Risi said she thinks it is better to have one ICA on every floor within the residence halls.
“It would be a lot easier because people might not know about their ICA — I think it’s a good idea to have more,” Risi said.
The Office of Cultural and Academic Transitions was unable to be reached for comment.
