If your school, college, center, program or organization has an event that supports civic engagement and respectful discourse, we’d love to highlight it here. Please submit your events to ritterg@syr.edu.
This next phase of the Life Together initiative includes several events planned for the Spring 2025 semester:
- Life Together Leadership Fellows: Gretchen Ritter, vice president for civic engagement and education, in collaboration with the Maxwell School’s Program for the Advancement of Research on Conflict and Collaboration (PARCC), will lead a four-part training session for students, faculty and staff interested in developing the civic skills needed to promote democratic engagement in a diverse community. There will be four, two-hour required training sessions that focus on active listening, critical reasoning, inclusive advocacy and advancing the common good. Applications are currently open for the Life Together Leadership Fellows program and are due by Jan. 31.
- “Civic Stories” Digital Storytelling Project: The project will collect and share personal and community-driven stories in the form of short video and audio recordings and reflective writing. “Civic Stories” aims to deepen our understanding and practice of civic engagement by humanizing complex issues, promoting empathy and connection, amplifying voices from marginalized communities, challenging assumptions and stereotypes, encouraging reflective dialogue, highlighting shared goals and collective action, and building civic identity and agency.
- Life Together Online Community Conversations Modules: Building on the fall’s facilitated community conversation, and in collaboration with PARCC and the College of Professional Studies, online modules will be developed that can be used to facilitate community conversations for members of the Syracuse community who are not in residence in Syracuse. The modules can also be used by instructors in various settings, such as part of the First Year Seminar curriculum for non-residential first-year students.
- Life Together Lecture Series:The series will bring speakers to campus who will deepen campus conversation and understanding around the initiative’s four critical civic engagement skills. Four colloquiums are expected to be offered in the spring.
Further details on how the University community can participate will be shared early in the spring semester.