Our Approach

By participating in Semester in Dialogue, students:

• Explore pressing public issues through interdisciplinary approaches
• Engage in active, discussion-based learning rather than lectures
• Are encouraged to think critically
• Develop understanding through dialogues with a network of intriguing, experienced, and accomplished speaker/facilitators
• Receive intensive mentoring from program facilitators
• Work in a small class setting with students from diverse backgrounds
• Focus on improving communication skills
• Participate in project design and topic selection

Semester Focus
Each semester offers a different focal topic. The specific themes of the course emerge through consultations by program facilitators with community advisors. Semester topics have included urban, health, environmental, food, housing, and community arts.

Courses Offered
The Fall and Spring 15-credit curriculum consists of three simultaneous courses, DIAL 390, 391, and 392. The summer program runs in May and June, consisting of a 10-credit curriculum DIAL 390 and 391. Semester in Dialogue courses contribute to WQB requirements as both writing and breadth/social science credits.

Who Should Apply?
We seek a broad range of students interested in interdisciplinary experiential learning and in connecting their education to the world outside the university. Admission criteria emphasize motivation, community engagement, and work/volunteer accomplishments in addition to academic achievement. Every semester, up to twenty students from diverse departments and faculties are selected for each program.

Dialogue and Learning

Dialogue is an effective educational tool, involving collaborative listening and learning to discover meaning among diverse participants. While adversarial, position-based discussions typically characterize debates about complex issues, dialogue leads to better-quality outcomes by offering helpful ways for participants to relate to one another. Dialogue-based processes build deep relationships through free expression of views and respectful exploration of differences. Opportunities for positive action emerge through mutual understanding around sources of agreement and disagreement. Dialogue allows for open and content-rich conversations by providing students with a range of experiences that effectively link academia and community. Students dramatically improve in their ability to “read the room,” perceiving issues percolating beneath the surface of conversations and interpreting underlying themes, issues, and personalities.

Semester Components
Dialogue-based curriculum employs a number of practical strategies. Courses begin with a first-day exercise in which the students design their introductions and produce biographies of each other. Faculty and Fellows at Simon Fraser’s Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue conduct focused sessions about dialogue to enrich students’ understanding of how to talk together. Participation in formal dialogues at the Centre provides real-world examples of dialogue in action, shaping students’ understanding of dialogue processes.
The program’s most effective learning experiences emerge from class sessions with guests. During these dialogues, students have the opportunity to engage deeply with diverse community members. A debrief follows each session, allowing students to probe how the conversation proceeded, what aspects worked well, and what we might have done differently to improve interactions and build trust.

Students also conduct individual and group projects on a regular basis, prepare a number of written assignments, and give oral presentations. Feedback on assignments is intense, requiring rewriting and revision of coursework to provide the maximum possible input to students. Students meet individually with faculty each week for mentoring and discussions concerning their progress and challenges.

Typical Week

The design of each Semester in Dialogue is guided by the semester’s topic. As a result, the weekly schedule can vary between semesters, and even change as a semester progresses. However, all weeks are structured around core activities.

Click here to see what a typical week in the program looks like.

Students can expect to divide their time between:

Workshops
There are focused, hands-on, interactive sessions that build dialogue and communications skills. You’ll write and revise, speak to a group and engage with supportive feedback, debrief projects, and have the opportunity to experiment with using curiousity-driven dialogue methods to explore professional opportunities.

Individual Projects
Each student produces a 3000-word manuscript or equivalent in other media, including but not limited to painting, sculpture, video, audio, multimedia, dance, or other modes. This work should relate to the semester’s topic, and be suitable for submission to major public outlets such as newspapers, magazines, book publishers, documentary film festivals, television or radio stations, art galleries, or other appropriate venues. The project process includes submitting a proposal and making progress presentations to the class.

Group Projects
Students explore an issue related to the semester topic in small groups or as a full class. This work includes preparing a series of oral presentations, a short written report, and a public dialogue at the end of semester to present the class’ work to the community. These are not the typical role-playing exercises found in most university classrooms; projects are expected to potentially have impact in the world outside of class.

Mentorship with Faculty
Weekly one-on-one meetings with faculty provide individual mentoring and support  group work. These meetings allow students to discuss larger issues in their lives and explore personal and professional goals.

Class Dialogues with Thought Leaders
Class dialogues allow students to engage with leaders from various sectors —government, not-for-profit, academic, business, industry, and the media. Students gain insights through these dialogues into how the world works, learn to read the room around them, and gain valuable information and networks around their semester’s topic.

A debrief session follows each class dialogue, during which we reflect together about that morning’s topic and process.

Fieldtrips
Dialogue classes frequently visit sites in the GVRD to gain hands-on knowledge about local initiatives and meet community members whose work relates to the semester’s topic.

Location

The Undergraduate Semester in Dialogue is located at SFU Vancouver's Harbour Centre building in downtown Vancouver, 515 West Hastings Street (between Seymour and Richards).

Public Transit
Major public transit lines, the SeaBus, SkyTrain and West Coast Express terminate at Waterfront Station, located in the historic CP Rail Station on Cordova Street, opposite the SFU Vancouver campus. Transit schedules can be found at Translink. The campus is also within easy walking distance of all street buses with a terminus in downtown Vancouver.

Bike
There are numerous bike racks available at the Vancouver campus as well as nearby bicycle compounds. For a full list of options, please click here.

Parking
Nearby parking lots include the one beneath the Harbour Centre complex, 400 West Cordova Street and 443 Seymour Street. Some lots offer reduced evening rates with valid SFU identification. Click here for a parking map of downtown Vancouver.