Academic Courses
The Intergroup Dialogue Program offers a variety of academic courses. The one that the majority of our students take is the SOC/WGS 230 course, Intergroup Dialogue, which was the first course offered through the Intergroup Dialogue Program. There are several sections of this course offered each semester with different content foci, including, but not limited to, topics of gender, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, and a women’s dialogue on race and gender. Through collaboration with various departments and offices on campus, other sections of the SOC/WGS 230 course may be offered in the near future.
In addition to this course, the Intergroup Dialogue Program has added an upper-division course through the School of Education that is open to enrollment to students in any Syracuse University college. This course, Dialogue in Action – CFE/EDU 300, is offered for the first time this Spring 2012. This section will focus on the intersectional nature of social class, particularly as it relates to education and educational opportunity, and is aptly titled, Dialogue in Action: Class Matters. This upper-division course has been added to the program’s offerings based on repeated student request for additional opportunities to engage in important conversations using dialogue. Students may enroll in this course directly through MySlice. Additional sections and thus different areas of focus for this course are anticipated.
The last two summers during Summer Session II, local high school students have had the opportunity to take Media in Social Context: Identities, Critique, and Creativity, EDU 100, at the college-level and for credit. This course helps to prepare high school students for college enrollment and for the critical thinking about social contexts necessary for success in college.
The faculty director of the Intergroup Dialogue Program, Gretchen Lopez, PhD, teaches a graduate-level course, Inequality and Intergroup Relations, CFE/EDU 640, that addresses the pedagogy and theoretical grounding of intergroup dialogue courses, as well as their historical beginnings. This course is typically offered each Spring.