The verdict is in for the President's Dream Colloquium initiative SFU President Andrew President Andrew Petter created in 2011 to bring leading thinkers to the university and provide an annual forum for intensive interdisciplinary exchange amongst faculty and students:

It’s a huge success.

Virtually without exception, students participating in the inaugural 2012 series on the Emergence and Complexity of Life for credit towards their degrees and the current series on Justice Beyond National Boundaries say they love the experience.

And colloquium seminars, which are open to the entire SFU community, have been consistently filled to capacity – several times requiring a larger venue to meet the demand.

The initiative “has been a great experience for graduate students, who are hearing groundbreaking ideas directly from some of the top minds in the world,” says Wade Parkhouse, dean of the Faculty of Graduate Studies, which oversees the program.

Students say the related courses are “the best they have experienced at SFU,” says Parkhouse, and the interdisciplinary forums have “received a tremendous response from faculty members as well.”

As many as 20 graduate and senior undergraduate students from any discipline can receive credit for participating in the colloquiums, including seminar discussions of assigned readings prior to attending talks by the colloquium speakers.

The colloquiums are “a great opportunity to participate in an environment of interdisciplinary collaboration that we rarely get as graduate students,” says participant Dan Hilbich, an electronics-engineering master’s student.

“It's kind of like field school without having to leave the classroom,” says behavioral neuroscience senior undergrad, Lucas Brown, of his colloquium experience.

“We get a chance to learn in a completely different environment, tackle monstrous real-world issues, and have remarkable discussions with bright people from all sorts of seemingly unrelated disciplines.”

There are three lectures left on the spring 2013 colloquium schedule. For more, visit: www.sfu.ca/grad.