Our Story—
A look back
World in Conversation has its roots in a Penn State Sociology class about U.S. race relations: soc 119
Dr. Sam Richards began teaching Sociology (SOC) 119 in 1991. Since then it has become the largest course on race and culture in the US. In this class, Dr. Richards had the idea to employ a team of undergraduate students to lead weekly breakout sessions. In order to realize this vision, his colleague (and wife), Dr. Laurie Mulvey, volunteered to train a small group of teaching assistants each semester. As the class and the success of the breakout sessions grew, Drs. Mulvey and Richards (Sam and Laurie) both wondered how to do more work with these skilled student facilitators once the semester was finished.
This question was answered in 2002 in the wake of student activism at Penn State.
The student community at PSU was activated following death threats to the president of Black Caucus. In the wake of the uprising on campus, two local alumni wanted to contribute to a project that could address race issues in a new way. Sam had the idea to apply the model of his Soc 119 breakout sessions to a campus-wide dialogue initiative that would encourage the entire student community to participate in this conversation. The alumni liked his idea and as a result, seed funding was given, and the Race Relations Project was born.
Six students were selected from Soc 119 to be the initial team of facilitators for the Race Relations Project.
The original six facilitators were selected to participate in this fledgling endeavor from a pool of the SOC 119 facilitators who were recognized as the most skilled in encouraging dialogue. With relatively limited experience--but immense trust in a simple vision of the power of conversation, this group followed the leadership of Sam and Laurie, successfully facilitating 135 discussions outside of the classroom that first year. They led dialogues on dorm floors, in fraternities and sororities, in meetings of student groups, as well as in a handful of university classes. It was a gutsy beginning, but positive attitudes and meaningful conversations set the foundation for a rapidly expanding project.
After the first year of pilot dialogues, the Race Relations Project adopted a methodology.
After establishing alliances with offices and colleges across campus, the Race Relations Project committed itself to using a version of the Socratic Method to encourage participants to examine issues through questions rather than conclusions, through dialogue rather than debate. That was a significant moment in defining the co-curricular relevance and unique educational mission of the dialogues.
the Race Relations Project grew. A lot.
Over the next several years, these campus dialogues grew to over one thousand per year--which was a huge leap that involved selecting and training additional facilitators, hiring a full time staff member and expanding into multiple offices to manage the increasing volume of work.
As the infrastructure and number of dialogues evolved, so did the dialogues themselves.
Although “U.S. race relations” remained the central focus, that deep and extensive examination led to the expansion of our concerns into any realm where human suffering, conflict and inequity intersect. Conversations also began to address issues related to gender and faith, local concerns related to student life (such as drinking and sexual assault), as well as a range of international issues. With this expansion came a new name--World in Conversation Project. And the changes didn’t stop there.
Videoconferencing technology enabled the first international dialogues.
While the topics of the dialogues were expanding, so too was the medium. Through chance meetings with several colleagues in Qatar, as well as a collaboration with the United Nations Development Programme, Penn State student facilitators began to facilitate conversation with their peers around the world via Skype, Google Hangout, and other video-conferencing platforms.
