Student-faculty dialogue: meaningful perspective taking on campus

Abstract

ABSTRACT The student-faculty dialogue (SFD) program brings students and faculty members together for five monthly group meetings in one academic semester. Each month, students and faculty engage in meaningful conversations to share and learn about each other’s experiences on campus. Nine undergraduate students, two graduate students, and four faculty participated in this study. All participants completed a pretest before the first meeting and a posttest after the final meeting. I compared pretest and posttest results to understand participant experiences, including how their perspectives changed as a result of taking part in the five-month SFD program. I compared mean scores associated with participants’ responses to quantitative Likert scale questions about their current interpersonal communication skills. I also summarized qualitative question responses to understand how study participants’ perspectives changed as a result of engaging in dialogue together. This paper ends with implications, limitations, and recommended research directions.