This web site is a platform for conversation about pressing social issues. It does this in two ways: It is the home of the blog for students enrolled in “Race and Ethnic Relations” (SOC 119) and “Intro to Sociology” (SOC 001), courses taught by Sam Richards at Penn State University. As well, it is the main registration site for students and other community members participating in the World in Conversation Project dialogues.
SOC 119 – “Race and Ethnic Relations in America”
SOC 119 is a class of 725 students that has been offered at University Park since 1991. The class consists of two 75-minute lecture periods and one 50-minute small group dialogue weekly. Dr. Sam Richards delivers the lectures, while undergraduate students who were formally enrolled in the course facilitate the discussion groups. Dr. Laurie Mulvey and a staff of facilitator trainers supervise their facilitation skill building. Among the assignments for the course is to contribute comments to the World in Conversation Project blog.
World In Conversation Project
The World in Conversation Project explores the relationships between people of different cultural and ancestral groups through small group dialogues. The two main components of the Project are SOC 119, the foundational class, and the peer-facilitated campus-wide conversations that grow out of that class.
Trained undergraduates (former SOC 119 discussion group facilitators) lead dialogues with 7-8 of their peers in which they explore the participants’ personal stories, views, biases and roles in pressing social issues. Using a version of the Socratic Method, the facilitators seek to create an ideologically neutral environment for this purpose. The conversations are extremely popular with participants (85 percent rate them as valuable and worthwhile) and the number offered each year has grown from 135 dialogues in 2002/2003 to over 1,200 in the 2010/2011 Academic Year.
