A Commitment to Communicate

Agnes He strives to improve connections across cultures through the Center for Multilingual and Intercultural Communication

By Ellen Cooke

Professor Agnes He was inspired in part by her own experience to establish a center to help people from different cultures communicate more effectively.

Agnes He is a lifelong language lover and learner. As a Chinese immigrant who came to the United States at 21, the long-time Stony Brook educator has lived, breathed, studied and taught the effect communication has on, as she puts it, “basically everything and everyone.” It has been her focus in her role as a professor of applied linguistics in the Department of Asian and Asian American Studies (and most recently, as the chair of the department). He is particularly interested in studying individuals whose native language is from another country; colleagues and collaborators trying to fully understand each other’s unique cultural backgrounds and perspectives; and scholars working to address some of the world’s biggest challenges in an increasingly global, multilingual and intercultural environment.

It’s the latter, particularly, that inspired He to establish the Center for Multilingual and Intercultural Communication (MIC) in May 2014, with support from the College of Arts & Sciences and the University Senate. He said, “We started the MIC with a very simple belief, which is that the power to change the world for the better lies in our own capacity and commitment to communicate with each other more effectively and more equitably.”

He, who arrived at Stony Brook in 1996 as a postdoctoral student, said the MIC investigates multilingualism for social justice, equity, diversity and inclusiveness. It also builds databases on multilingual development and informs the public on the means and meanings of developing multilingual and multicultural repertoire. 

The center’s scope has broadened over time due to intensified globalization, new technologies that affect communication, and an increasingly immigrant-rich U.S. environment with more diverse native languages. Evolving areas of study include ethical use of AI, social justice issues as they relate to language, research on medical terminology, and cross-linguistic studies (with one current research project focused on intercultural engagement among Korean, Japanese and Chinese Americans). “Many of these issues are very important American problems, in addition to being global in scope,” He said. Ten years in, the MIC is going stronger than ever as a collaborative platform where students and educators can explore the complex and dynamic nature of communication involving participants from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds. It’s a place where scholars from the humanities and social sciences often meet face-to-face to share, talk and exchange ideas about their own work as they also explore questions of shared interest.

While He is quick to point out it’s not about her, the roots and origins of the center she’s directed for the past decade have much to do with her own personal, academic and professional passions, interests and experiences.

As a Mandarin-speaking individual with a rudimentary knowledge of French and Spanish, He knows what it’s like to grapple with speaking English as a second language. She’s seen how stereotypes develop and persevere — people tend to ‘blame’ the person in the room with the accent when there is difficulty understanding what is being discussed, she said. 

She’s also studied and taught about how languages can change and even disappear when native speakers emigrate to another country. And how language and dialect differences can pose unimaginable barriers to personal and professional relationships, shared research endeavors, technological innovations and solutions to world problems.

Throughout her life and career, she’s also had a keen interest in exploring the factors that affect language learning and socialization for immigrants, and the importance of not just speaking but listening with intent and curiosity.

Agnes He gives remarks at an October 2024 symposium.

For the Greater Good
While communication barriers and solutions are something He takes personally, she said it was really for the greater good that she put her heart and soul into establishing the MIC.

“My biography is only important in terms of understanding why we’re doing this, what’s driving this,” she stressed. “But it’s the work we’re doing now, and what we plan to do in the future, that matters.” 

The MIC began with two psychologists, two linguists and two scholars from the Department of Asian & Asian American Studies. In addition, a substantial $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation funded a study looking at communications between international teaching assistants and domestic students. He labeled this auspicious strong start as “the proof of concept, the validation that this was important work.”

“MIC is a dream come true for scholars who care about language diversity, language justice, cross-cultural competency among our students, and our own ability to be part of the larger multilingual/multicultural world,” said Shyam Sharma, an associate professor and graduate program director of The Program in Writing and Rhetoric. “This center has given me hope and inspiration that scholars cannot only advance knowledge and perspectives to ‘intellectually’ promote these critical areas, but they can also translate scholarship into community engagement initiatives in and beyond campus.”

Sarah Jourdain, associate professor and chair of the Department of Languages and Cultural Studies, shared similar sentiments. “The MIC has collaborated closely with my department with the World Language Teacher Preparation Program, which I direct, and with the Language Learning Research Center, to foster increased engagement with language learning and teaching on campus,” she said. “It has been a vibrant hub for collaboration among colleagues across departments and disciplines, particularly for grant writing, research and outreach to scholars across the globe.” 

A Milestone Year
In April 2024, the MIC marked its 10th anniversary and Suffolk County officially declared April 11 Stony Brook University MIC Day, “which was a really big deal for us,” said He. In celebration of its milestone, MIC held several well-attended events this year. It began with a faculty research forum in May with more than 250 attendees representing 200 institutions from Asia, Africa, North America, Europe and Australia.

And celebrations culminated in October with a two-day symposium that, in the spirit of multilingualism, featured a lecture by a U.K.-based Italian scholar. 

Specific research projects of note have included how young adult heritage or bilingual speakers use digital media for their social networks and information consumption; a study of communication between native and non-native speakers in the classroom; and an oral history project on women in U.S.-Asian relations.

MIC also focuses on funding both undergraduate and graduate student programs and provides many mentoring opportunities, as well as student outreach and workshops on language and rhetoric. He has a goal of creating a designated graduate degree program in the future.

Melis Tozoğlu ’24, served as an intern for MIC in 2022 and 2023, conducting interviews with scholars, editing videos and promoting events on social media, and updating the MIC website. “I believe the center is important because in our increasingly globalized world, we must each be open to understanding those different from us,” she said. “Current college students can see the topics they study being used to make real change, and in turn can foster a sense of a solid goal.”

Communication Is Everything
Overall, He firmly believes that everything is about communication. “It’s something we tend to trivialize, but whatever big problem we’re looking at — whether it’s social justice or climate — everything is about how we present ourselves, how we present our positions, dispositions, affinities, connections with other people, and how it is projected and how it is perceived. Very, very often, the projection is not the same as the perception, which is, I would submit, the cause of so many miseries in this world.

“And that’s not even talking about how language connects with power – how you project yourself, what speech rights and opportunities and obligations one has. This all has a lot to do with how we construct who we are and how we position other people,” she said. 

When it comes to the success of the MIC, He added: “I think for a center like this to take off, you need three things. You need to have a social, cultural reality — the multilingualism there — which we do. You also need to have a faculty expertise, which we do. And you need someone who’s crazy like me, who wants to get this done!”

To learn more about the MIC, visit stonybrook.edu/mic