Appalachian Interchange Retreat Highlights
The Office of Community-Leadership is excited to announce a very successful weekend at the Appalachian Interchange Retreat September 30 – October 2. This program, which is one of the benefits of Appalachian’s membership in the Sustained Dialogue Institute, was an immersive 3 day off-campus event that blended content education about structural inequality, small group dialogue, relationship building activities, and action planning to create an empowering educational experience for our students.
A few highlights from our post-event survey:
- 100% of respondents* (4% agree and 76% strongly agree) said the dialogues they had during the Appalachian Interchange Retreat helped them think more about other people's experiences and how other people's experiences can be improved.
- 100% of respondents said that they engaged in dialogue, defined as "listening deeply enough to be changed by what you learned.
- “I felt very moved by all of the different perspectives I listened to. I felt like it was a very eye-opening experience."
- “As I have not had a traditional college experience, I learned about other individuals’ experiences and realized I'm not as alone in certain issues as I thought. This has opened my eyes to see how important our action planning will impact all students."
- 90% of respondents have plans use their connections and learning from the retreat to work with others from the weekend to take action together on issues affecting the campus or community.
- 100% of respondents (62% agree and the other 38% strongly agree) that the retreat helped increase their ability to contribute to the wellbeing of the campus and/or local community.
CEL would also like to thank the Office of Intercultural Student Affairs for their significant sponsorship, as well as the following areas for allowing their staff and/or graduate assistants to serve as retreat moderators: Campus Activities, Career Development, the Counseling Center, University Housing and UREC.
If you would like to serve as a moderator for next year’s retreat, please reach out to Summer Wisdom in Community-Engaged Leadership at wisdomss@appstate.edu.
* Response Rate = 88%
