Student Associates of the Center, will be trained as facilitators, and will participate in planning and executing events, programs and activities of the following key projects:
- Campus Dialogues Project
Students facilitate and participate in intergroup dialogue, which involves conversation with those who come from different walks of life, cultural backgrounds, social groups, and political orientations. These opportunities afford participants’ reflection on the implications of diversity in our communities and are important for participants in building relationships with people different from themselves. Structured dialogue involves deep listening with ground rules and facilitation by trained individuals to move through the experience in respectful ways and intentional focus on personal experiences.
- Dialogue Ambassadors Project
In this project students are recruited to a semester long program where they are introduced to structured intergroup dialogue, listening tools and techniques, and deliberative methods. They then become part of a team that plans and executes facilitated dialogues on and off-campus. They facilitate dialogue and/or deliberative sessions with other students (and/or community members) and help train students/community members in basics of dialogue and deliberation.
- Community Connections Project
The goal of this project is to cultivate connections among UTSA students and introduce them to practices that foster community. At the foundation for civic communication are familiarity, trust, and connectedness to community. In this project we organize and sponsor events and activities intended to bring together students in fun ways. Initial events include: Team Trivia (where students learn the value in consulting the group, and listening intently before advancing an answer); Eat-Art-Talk (where students will share a meal and engage in conversation about a stimulus –a film, art display, music, or story and learn the value of appreciating art through reflection and sharing perspectives); and the “Mile in My Shoes” exhibit (where students explore the lived experiences of others through listening to pre-recorded stories while walking in a pair of the speaker’s shoes).
- Deliberation Project
This project builds from dialogue towards decision-making. Students and community members experience tools and processes (e.g., immersive conference experience using Open Space Technology). Participants learn to move through a process to identify values and tensions, discuss alternatives, deliberate, and decide on recommendations or problem solutions for either cases or real stakes decisions.
- Future Generations Project
We focus on the training of educators and high school students in dialogue and listening techniques. This project involves partnerships with local schools/school districts with a goal to pilot-test the transferability of structured dialogue and active listening in these contexts for use in classrooms and in administrative/community meeting settings.
- Civic Technology Project
Our Civic Technology Project focuses on partnerships with local government, communities and schools to experiment with various forms of technology-assisted community input, dialogue, and decision-making. This project seeks partners in community-focused organizations to pilot-test interactive digital technologies (e.g., instant polling technology, open-source information sharing/comment, technology assisted citizen forums; technology assisted community meetings) that enables citizen participation and engagement.
