Snapshot

Cornell Affiliations:

Office of the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education, Agriculture and Life Sciences

Overview

Opportunity Description

Intergroup dialogue is a form of communication specifically designed for people to engage with one another across social, cultural, and power differences in a critical and meaningful way. This class prepares students to live and work in a diverse world, and educates them in making choices that advance equity. Its main objectives are to: explore our human capacity and need to connect with ourselves and others; increase understanding of personal and social identities and how they inform our lives; explore the effects of social inequity at personal, interpersonal, and structural levels (including the ways in which it disrupts human connection); develop students’ skills to communicate, work, and lead effectively across difference; and strengthen individual and collective capacities to strategize for change on campus and beyond.

Through the engagement with interdisciplinary theoretical frameworks, experiential learning activities, scaffolded assignments, collaborative sustained dialogue, and critical reflection, participants in the course will focus on four areas of development throughout the semester:

  1. Human Agency & Connection
  2. Intergroup Communication
  3. Personal & Social Identity
  4. Strategic Change