It is widely recognized that learning interventions that help student sojourners prepare for and process their study abroad experiences can increase those students' learning gains. What if, however, students express skepticism or resistance to those learning interventions? This article offers a case study of a student-faculty partnership in re-designing and implementing a pre-, during-, and post-study abroad course sequence offered to world languages majors and minors at a relatively small private comprehensive university. We demonstrate that the student-faculty partnership led to increased buy-in from students and thus also to increased learning on their part. In proposing that student-faculty partnerships in course design can also be imagined as intercultural encounters, we argue that they can bring a unique richness and productive dialogue to designing powerful interventions for student learning abroad.