The Cultivating Community series, an initiative started by President Denise Battles in spring 2017, will be hosting its third and final dialogue of the semester on Wednesday Nov. 20 from 2:30 p.m. to 3:45 p.m. in the MacVittie Ballroom. Poet, educator and strategist Adam Falkner will be the dialogue’s keynote speaker.
The purpose of the Cultivating Community series is to instigate mindful dialogue through engaged listening. Co-coordinator Meredith Harrigan said she believes this is an important step in understanding inclusivity.
Each dialogue begins with a short presentation followed by a small group discussion and concludes with a large group discussion. Each table has a trained facilitator, many of whom are students, according to Harrigan.
“Our goal is to bring students, faculty members, staff members, community members and/or administrators together at the same table to talk about important but often difficult topics,” Harrigan said in an email statement to The Lamron. “We typically have 10 tables and an attendance of approximately 60 to 70 people.”
The small and large table discussions are the heart of the sessions, as this unique opportunity allows students to speak their mind, Harrigan said.
“Afterwards is where the magic of Cultivating Community happens, which is those mixed group table dialogues where people will wrestle with some of the questions that [are] sparked, following some discussion questions that are in the program. Then the sharing out that happens, you know, amongst [and] in between the tables. So that we can really synthesize what’s coming out of those conversations so that action and movement can come from it,” Robbie Routenberg, co-coordinator, said.
The series collaborates with SUNY Brockport and has been awarded a SUNY Performance Improvement Fund grant.
Every semester, all three Cultivating Community sessions follow a theme; this semester’s theme is Campus Climate and Engagement. The narrower topic of the upcoming dialogue is “Questioning both what we will become if we take meaningful steps and what we will become if we don’t.”
Falkner will be giving the presentation at this dialogue-based around his book The Willies, in which Falkner challenges us “to consider not Who will we become if we give name to that which scares us? But rather who might we become if we do not?,” according to an email sent out to the campus community by Harrigan on Nov. 12 announcing the third dialogue.
“His visit is going to be helping us think about issues of campus engagement and climate, to align with our semester’s theme,” Routenberg said. “But really around that question of ‘how do we think about what it takes to create a positive campus climate and engagement,’ but also what happens if we don’t.”
Another aspect of the series is that students and facilitators take notes that are collected to tailor the program to students, according to Routenberg.
Routenberg went on to say that the series can also link the town and campus communities through dialogue. The May 1, 2019 dialogue particularly illustrates this connection as it attracted about 450 people to attend. The town mayor came to this dialogue to listen to student experiences, particularly minority students.
While attendance has been down since that May 1 dialogue, Harrigan said she is hopeful that engagement will increase.
“[I hope] that people who attend the dialogues will be inspired and equipped to engage in meaningful steps to help foster a supportive and inclusive campus climate,” Harrigan said.