Conversations about race, sexual orientation, religion, socio-economic status, and other human identifiers and qualifiers will be expanding at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville.
SIUE’s second year of Sustained Dialogue (SD) will offer additional educational opportunities, and reach more members of the University community, according to Jessica Harris, PhD, interim assistant provost and SD program advisor, and Tarsha Moore, assistant director for the Center for Student Diversity and Inclusion, and SD program coordinator.
“We were pleased with the reception of Sustained Dialogue during our pilot year (2017-18),” said Harris. “People had a chance to see that the work of transforming campus climate and relationships is possible through dialogue.”
During the pilot year, SD was offered as part of the co-curriculum through the Office of Student Affairs and as a course, via the Honors 100 Pro-Seminar. Throughout fall 2019-spring 2020, more students, faculty and staff will be able to learn about SD.
“This year (2018-19) in our co-curricular activities, student groups were divided by subjects based around social identity such as race, gender, sexual orientation, socio-economic class, mental health and ability,” said Harris. “Students chose the dialogue groups they wanted to join.”
This year, student moderators had more training. “Previously, training was for only two days,” offered Moore. “We developed a curriculum for eight weeks of training. Student moderators had a chance to learn about those big social identities and practice their moderating skills.”
For increased participation, SD’s co-curricular sessions have been extended and scheduled throughout the day. The next step is to introduce SD as a course, beginning fall 2020.
“We are going to introduce a Sustained Dialogue Education and Learning series for the entire University from 2019-20,” said Harris. “One part of the series will deal with racial identity development. The other part will deal with how one can become engaged with diversity and inclusion at SIUE and understand why it is important here.”
“We want to hone in on education,” added Moore, “to give people the skills and knowledge base to have these types of dialogues.”
“We are also working on developing a one-credit hour course on Sustained Dialogue, where students can enroll as an elective,” Harris said. “We are thinking of having two students in the classroom with a faculty member to help facilitate the dialogue.”
“The overall goal is to give students the skills to have difficult dialogues with people who are different from them,” reflected Harris, “and understand that although experiences may differ, you can still learn from one another. All of us have valuable and valid experiences. Diversity is a learning tool.”
“My hope is that these students will go on to graduate, become exceptional leaders in the community and become advocates for diversity,” concluded Moore.
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Jessica Harris, PhD, interim assistant provost and Sustained Dialogue (SD) program advisor, and Tarsha Moore, assistant director for the Center for Student Diversity and Inclusion, and advisor for Transition Programs and Outreach in the Office of Student Affairs, lead the SIUE’s SD program.