Project Director: Dr. Natalie Dollar, Cascades Hall 227,
541-322-3140, ndollar@osucascades.edu

Project Overview

The Community Dialogue Project (CDP) was initiated March 2003. The goals of the project are: (1) to study dialogue as a means of building community across a variety of contexts, and (2) to provide Central Oregonians with resources and educational opportunities to explore dialogue as a way of being and interacting with others.

Dialogue is a temporary accomplishment, a communication quality and space difficult to sustain. Most USAmericans rely on argument, debate, negotiation, and discussion when interacting with others, communication means we have learned through our social networks and educational system. Nevertheless, the antagonistic, tensional nature of these ways of communicating have left us wanting more. Fortunately for us, practitioners and scholars have rediscovered dialogue and are exploring our ability to engage dialogue as an alternative way of interacting (Anderson, Baxter & Cissna, 2004; Barge & Little, 2001; Kellet & Dalton, 2001; Pearce & Littlejohn, 1997; Saunders, 1999).

In its current form the project includes classes that can be taken for credit toward an undergraduate degree, free community workshops, community and scholarly presentations, and scholarly research. Examples of current research include:

Dollar, N.J. (January 9, 2008). Creating Non-polarized Scenes for Engaging Contested Topics. Presented at the OSU-Cascades Lunchtime Lecture series.

Dollar, N.J. (December 6, 2006). Creating Places and Spaces for Community Dialogue. Presented at the Cascades Research Roundtable Series.

Dollar, N.J. (February, 2007). Community Dialogue Workshop as Civil Society: "Getting Below the Sound Bite" to the Betwixt and Between. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Western States Communication Association, Language and Social Interaction Division.

If you are interested in bringing dialogue into your community group or organization, please contact Dr. Natalie Dollar, Project Director, ndollar@osucascades.edu

Community Dialogue Workshop (CDW)

Since March 2003 Dr. Natalie Dollar has offered annual, free 10-week community dialogue workshops focusing on significant community issues. The initial workshop, War and Peace: A Dialogue, addressed student and community concerns about the Iraq War. The second workshop, The Dynamics of Democracy, focused on various aspects of democracy as experienced in our community. The third workshop, Is Our Community Divided? What are the Issues?, allowed participants to define their weekly dialogue topics, and our most recent workshop concentrated on Exploring Social Class in our community. For the fifth annual workshop, we will explore a four- to five-week dialogue series.

The workshops are unique in that participants include credit-seeking students, community members and a diverse range of OSU-Cascades faculty. The workshops are free for community members and non-credit-seeking students. Relationship development and raised awareness about the benefits of teaching others about dialogue--community dialogue, interpersonal dialogue, and intercultural dialogue--are typical participant outcomes.

Fifth Community Dialogue Workshop -- Coming Winter 2008

Topic, Dates, and Location(s)

Topic, dates and locations will be determined by OSU-Cascades students in consultation with Dr. Natalie Dollar during the first half of winter term, 2008. These students, enrolled in both COMM 408: Community Dialogue Workshop and COMM 418: Interpersonal Communication Theory & Research, will spend the first month of the term reading, discussing and engaging the idea of community dialogue as an area of communication theory and research in preparation for selecting a meaningful community topic for this year's Community Dialogue Workshop.

If possible, we will offer at least some, if not all, of this year's workshop off-campus.

Please check this web page, beginning February 2008, for topic and location updates.

Workshop Description

The workshop will provide a safe, structured environment for learning about dialogue as a means of exploring highly contested community issues.

Workshop participants will include non-credit seeking community members and OSU-Cascades credit-seeking students. Non-credit seeking participation is free and no registration is required. Credit-seeking students must register for COMM 408: Community Dialogue Workshop (1 credit) and COMM 418: Interpersonal Communication Theory and Research (3 credits).