Refreshments table set up behind the MOSAIC front desk for students attending the Coffee Talks.

Snacks and drinks occupy a table toward the back of the cozy, living room-esque MOSAIC center, located in the SUB. Couches with pillows and padded chairs surround a coffee table with pens and paper neatly arranged. Despite the cold February weather outside, MOSAIC feels like a warm sanctuary. A few minutes past 11:30 a.m., Claudine Richardson, director of Student Development, Diversity & Equity, entered and began to lead one of the last Coffee Talks of winter quarter, speaking about self-love and self-worth.

The purpose of Coffee Talks is to help students learn leadership and adulthood skills. When Richardson came to SFCC in September 2016, there was a gap in leadership-type programs that focused on communication and emotional intelligence.

Richardson saw an opportunity to fill this gap and, taking inspiration from a previous employer, Dr. Susan Hills, at Eastern Washington University, set up the Coffee Talks at SFCC.

The Coffee Talks are where students are “engaging in an intelligent conversation where students are asking questions or learning through different communication styles,” according to Richardson.

They are held in the MOSAIC Center or LGBTQ+ Student Center, but most often, the MOSAIC room, located across from the Recreation Room in the SUB. Richardson said that organizers wanted students to feel comfortable, hence, why the room has couches, snacks, and beverages for events.

Previous Coffee Talk topics have ranged from building credit and how to do it, finding roommates and establishing boundaries, what it means to move on from relationships, and how to correct language when someone shares information with you.

Coffee Talks will be continuing into next quarter, and topics being planned include how to get credit and improving your credit score, as well as planning for attending college past SFCC and your career. The Coffee Talks on Feb. 6 and 13 featured the topics of self-love and self-worth and mapping how you want to be treated, respectively.

Richardson, who led the first talk this quarter, spoke about how it’s important to love yourself first and foremost and how it’s important to communicate and establish your own values to not just others, but to yourself.

Richardson also spoke to how its important to make a focused, clear effort in your way of living. “Pick one thing you know you can do, and create a more targeted, intenseful living of your life,” Richardson said.
The second Coffee Talk was more of a followup to the previous one than a standalone. Richardson had a conversation with the audience about choices and how both our conscious and unconscious mind influences both choices and experiences. “When you remove the ‘I’ (from your statements, you remove agency from yourself,” said Richardson.

In addition to this, Richardson spoke about how you want to be treated is shaped by how we treat others. The old adage, “Treat others the way you want to be treated,” was explored more in-depth and actually contradicted, as we explored how different people have different boundaries.

Besides this, Coffee Talks offer an opportunity for fellow students to meetC. Two students who attended the Coffee Talk on self-love and self-worth, Amy Krug and Elisa Vigil, spoke about how they both enjoyed the event. Vigil said it was “a lot of self-reflection (and) a space to connect” with others.

“It’s nice to take a minute to reflect and examine your self-worth,” Vigil said.
Krug said she found the information presented useful and that she wants to utilize it in her day-to-day life.

Coffee talks are most often generated out of things students wanted to see, despite being led by a faculty member. There is a long list of future topics planned, and all are vetted by MOSAIC Work Study students during the summer, as they tell Richardson what they wish they had known the previous year.

“Sometimes if you just create an opportunity, those conversations can take place in a way that is meaningful to (students),” Richardson said.

More information about MOSAIC’s services. Photo courtesy of MOSAIC.