Director of CILMAR
Young Hall, Suite 120
Phone: (765) 494-1711
Email: krisac@purdue.edu

Kris Acheson-Clair, PhD, is CILMAR’s director and holds a courtesy faculty appointment in the Brian Lamb School of Communication within the College of Liberal Arts. Her responsibilities include:

• overseeing the strategic planning for CILMAR
• management of Intercultural Learning Specialists and their projects
• providing intercultural research support

Although CILMAR is the brain-child of the visionary vice president of Global Parternships and Programs Michael A. Brzezinski, Kris has been largely responsible for operationalizing the CILMAR dream.

Perhaps best known in intercultural learning (ICL) circles for her article on representing the Intercultural Development Continuum as a pendulum and for her scholarly work with the Beliefs, Events, and Values Inventory, Kris has also published book chapters and journal articles on a variety of topics including the meaning of silence, emotion labor (emotional labour), and the assessment of ICL in study abroad. In 2019-2020, Kris secured nearly a million dollars in grants to fund her research and that of her collaborators. A current CV is available here.

Kris is open to collaborating with other academics—both on and off the Purdue campus—on:

• university- and college-wide initiatives
• multi-institutional projects
• and the creation of innovative learning materials.

Fun fact: Kris is a small farmer who has become accustomed to raising all her own meat and dairy. She has a milk cow which summers in Indiana and winters in sunny Georgia. No stranger to construction projects, Kris built a tractor coop for her chickens, in addition to being six (going on seven) years into a two-year renovation of her farmhouse. If you’d like to see farmer Kris in farm mode, check out the draft horse demonstrations at Prophetstown State Park, where she yearly participates with her Percherons.