Speaker William Cruz told a room of about 50 students last night that if businesses don't acknowledge the various ways in which employees from different cultural backgrounds communicate, they could be in trouble.

"We assume that others perceive, judge and think the same way that we do," Cruz said. "Different cultures have different ways of communicating nonverbally."

Cruz gave his speech in the Information Sciences and Technology Building's Cybertorium yesterday in a seminar organized by the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE).

"We figured students need to learn how to interact with different cultures when they move on to the corporate world," said Eddy Chacon, liaison for the SHPE.

Cruz, who has made presentations at NASA, Kodak and Harvard, gave examples of how people from different cultures communicate the same ideas in different ways.

He added that people tend to make judgments about others' intelligence based solely on their accents, relating a story about a black man who didn't get a job for pronouncing the word "ask" as "axe" during an interview.

"We all have accents. Look at New England accents versus a southern accent," he said. "We do not punish those people for those accents."

He said that different cultures also have different perceptions of how much body contact is acceptable among friends.

"Guys, be prepared: If you ever have to do business in Saudi Arabia, he may hold your hand, okay?" Cruz said.

He showed two different pictures of President George W. Bush holding hands with then Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah to illustrate his point.

In the first picture, taken early in Bush's presidency, Bush seemed to have had an uncomfortable expression on his face.

But in the second picture, taken two years later, Bush was clearly more comfortable with the hand-holding.

Ashley Pistelli (senior-bioengineering) attended the seminar with some friends and said she noticed this in her own life.

"We have a friend who's Saudi Arabian and he does that," she said. "We never understood why."