IECC was created in 1992 by three professors from St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, USA. Professor Bruce Roberts, Professor Howard Thorsheim, and computer specialist Craig Rice struggled to find partner classrooms for their e-mail projects. While they were pleased with the success of their initial e-mail partnership efforts with the two Japanese schools, they were eager to expand their partnerships to include classrooms in other countries.

Realizing that their difficulty finding partner classes abroad for e-mail exchanges must not be unique, in October, 1993, they created an electronic mailing list specifically aimed at helping teachers "connect" with their colleagues in other countries for classroom e-mail exchanges.

Although their primary intent was to assist college and university faculty in building classroom e-mail partnerships, they were pleasantly surprised to also see a great deal of interest at the K-12 level. In its first week, the International E-Mail Classroom Connections mailing list received over 200 subscription requests from the United States, Canada, Saudi Arabia, Finland, the Netherlands, Mexico, Italy, and Australia. In the same one-week period, they distributed over 50 postings from teachers in search of partner classrooms.

Initially the mailing list "International E-Mail Classroom Connections," but the founders soon realized that the word "international" did not accurately represent the intercultural nature of the links people were making within the United States: rural schools linking up with city schools and Chicago suburban schools connecting with schools in the southwestern U.S., for example.

In March, 1994, in response to tremendous growth and a recognition of the multiple purposes for which the mailing list was being used, they renamed the IECC mailing list "Intercultural E-Mail Classroom Connections" and split it into three components: IECC, IECC-PROJECTS, and IECC-DISCUSSION. In January, 1995 they added a branch of the IECC focused on higher-ed (IECC-HE) and in April, 1995 one devoted to student-generated surveys (IECC-SURVEYS). Finally, in February, 1999 they added IECC-INTERGEN, an component that helps teachers and classes make intergenerational connections with volunteers aged 50 and over.