Town Hall Meeting Toolkit

The Town Hall Meeting (THM) is the oldest, most statistically proven, and most recognized PSP program on the CSU, Chico campus. The THM brings students, faculty, teaching associates, and the community together for intensive discussions about diverse, critical topics that are chosen by participating students. The toolkit introduces the THM event by providing the structure of the event and syllabus of the participating Political Science class, as well as documents that explain how student-led event coordinators organize and manage this event. 

This toolkit is broken down by the various aspects of how the THM is organized. Not all meetings need to be organized this way, but this information should be useful to you as you consider incorporating a public sphere in your classroom.

The Course Related Materials section should help you understand how we incorporate Public Sphere Pedagogy (PSP) into our Political Science classrooms. Here you will find an example syllabus and assignment guides that exemplify course integration. This section is critical to understand the course-event connection. The faculty and students should have an understanding of what a PSP event entails and the benefits PSP events provide for students. Students having an understanding of the structure and their participation in the event make preparation for the event a lot easier. 

The Logistics section covers the nuts-and-bolts of the THM. Our THMs can incorporate 600+ students and 75+ community members. Making sure everyone knows where to go and what they are doing is critical. In this section you will find everything from sample name tags to instructions on how to plan tasks leading up to the event. As events grow and change you will find the increasing importance of making sure logistical issues are resolved in advance.

The Moderators and Consultants section covers recruitment and instructions for our community partners. We recruit a large number of community members for the event, and we have to organize and inform them of their role once they arrive at the event. 

• Course Related Materials

  Public Sphere Pedagogy (PSP) requires a coordinated effort to move from the classroom to a public event. It’s important that students begin to view their work as real-world. Students’ work and ideas should be highlighted, and PSP gives the opportunity to students in POLS 155 to share those ideas with students and community members. “Students need to have an experience when they come to college that allows them to distinguish what happens in high school from where they are now in their schooling and development. This gives them a sense that education is for the rest of their lives. It is not just to help them get from one class, but to help them do things in the world” (Thia Wolf). Bringing students and members of the community together to share ideas allows the students to see themselves as emerging adults who are capable of having meaningful and productive conversations at the college level, as well as members of the wider Chico community who want to participate and contribute. Students have the opportunity to practice and gain confidence in their networking and public speaking skills, which will help them in their academic career.
  
  The POLS 155 Syllabus introduces students to the Town Hall meeting on the first day of the semester. The coursework students complete throughout the semester helps them in researching topics they identified as issues in their community. Integration of the event and the coursework actually starts earlier than this as participating course sections are designated “Town Hall Sections” in the course schedule, which is visible to students as they register. Extensive explanation of the Town Hall happens as the semester progresses, and students will learn about the various aspects in their engagement with their peers and the community members who are invited.
  
  The first two assignments are “Choosing a Policy Area” and “Learning from Experts.” Students find a topic they are passionate about and research policy problems and solutions from an expert in that field. “Choosing a Policy Area” and “Learning from Experts” are assignments that are completed prior to the Town Hall Meeting event and are crucial for students to bring with them to the event to fully participate in large and small group discussions with fellow students and community members. The third assignment, “Moving from Problems to Solutions,” is an important tool for students to have at the event, because students will be able to share their policy problems and various solutions to address the problem in their discussions at the event. The final assignment, “Taking Action to Help Solve Public Policy Problems,” is for students to complete after their participation in Town Hall. Students will use their policy problems and turn them into actions they can take to help the government solve the proposed problem. Students get the opportunity to take their learning and research from class and apply them to the community they are in. 

  • Spring 2025 THM Assignment #1: Choosing a Policy Area
  • Spring 2025 THM Assignment #2: Learning from Experts
  • Spring 2025 THM Assignment #3: Moving from Problems to Solutions
  • Spring 2025 THM Assignment #4: Taking Action to Help Solve Public Policy Problems
• Logistics

  The logistics of an event like the Town Hall vary considerably depending on the size of the event, how many sections of the participating course(s) are involved, and the locations available. It is useful to organize the event according to a variety of schedules and documents outlining responsibilities and tasks.

  The Town Hall Meeting team utilizes an Event Timeline to stay on track with the different aspects of the event. The timeline lists weeks of the semester in flexible chunks and tasks that need to begin, be worked on, or completed within each week. This document allows the team to stay on track with tasks and helps ensure everything is completed on time for the Town Hall Meeting. 

  Before we begin unpacking the tools designed for planning the event, it is crucial that you look at the course calendar for the participating courses – specifically, the assignments that are leading up to the Town Hall Meeting and adjust the event structure to best meet the needs of the students participating. We suggest collaborating with the teaching team to ensure that everyone understands how the coursework prepares students for the event and to ensure that everyone uses common language to describe preparatory tasks and/or assignments when addressing participating students. 

  In preparation for the event, the teaching team provides a list of students and their corresponding policy topics. FYE’s team uses this information to organize students into groups based on their policy topic, and we aim for a maximum of 25 students per room. We have previously reserved approximately 20-30 classrooms, based on the total number of students participating, and we record this information in a spreadsheet, which we call the Primary Attendance Sheet (Google Sheet). Two weeks prior to the event, the Primary Attendance Sheet should be completed and shared with faculty. This gives students the chance to confirm their policy topic is correct and to find the room they will report to at the start of the event. 

  Later in the Town Hall Meeting, students move to more intimate roundtables where they are joined by one or two consultants to have a closing conversation. Students will be at various tables discussing their experience in their breakout session, feedback they received, and anything they found interesting with fellow peers and consultants. Students should interact with each other to add new information to their policy topic and learn about different policy solutions from consultants and peers. Having discussion guides available for participating students will allow them to begin discussions as soon as they sit with peers and consultants.

  The Program is a compact breakdown of the purpose of the Town Hall Meeting event and provides participants with a quick reference guide for what is happening and where. Important attributes of the program include acknowledgements of the people who make the event function as well as a simplified schedule. After the event, the program is an archive of what happened at the Town Hall, which students can keep.

• Moderators & Consultants

  The Town Hall Meeting brings the community to the campus in the form of moderators and consultants. These individuals range in experience levels and occupations. Lawyers, City Council members, community advocates, business owners, and University personnel have all served as moderators and consultants for the Town Hall Meeting. Moderators are there to help facilitate discussion during breakout sessions. Consultants are there to help add valuable perspective to the discussion. They are experienced in the field and are there to help students learn new facets of the policy topic that they didn’t know before the discussion and to refine their ideas for policy solutions. 

  The Moderator Invitation and Consultant Invitation go out to members of the campus and community. A key function of the invitations is reminding the person being invited on the purpose and format of the Town Hall – especially when reinviting past semester’s participants to share any changes made to the event. These documents also contain reminder options like emails and text messages. A large Town Hall can require 100 moderators and consultants who are experienced in the topics students are researching; ensuring moderator and consultant participation is critical.

  When Moderators and Consultants arrive at the Town Hall, they are invited to a Moderator and Consultant reception. The purpose is to remind them of the format and their purpose in the Town Hall. They receive a folder, containing materials which should aid them in discussion, the contents of which are listed on the Moderator Content List or the Consultant Content List. This is an important piece of communication for our guests and a useful reminder for us of what we need to compile in advance. Because our Town Hall is a campus-wide event we include a highlighted campus map with information about where to go and when.

  Moderators and Consultants are provided with an in-depth discussion guide prior to the Breakout Sessions at the event. The Moderator Discussion Guide (Google Doc) and Consultant Discussion Guide (Google Doc) should be used to keep discussions student-centered and use the time-frame provided to move through large and small group discussions.

• Promotion

  The purpose in designing marketing materials is to encourage stakeholders to not only attend, but to actively participate in the event. Marketing materials are critical for advertising an event, and can also be used to grow the FYE Program. This helps encourage new faculty and/or community members to attend the event, which could lead to increased participation from these stakeholders at future events or the possibility of a new relationship between FYE and another department on campus. 

   Marketing materials include:

  • Promotion on our Website
  • Promotional Videos
  • Informational Classroom Presentations 
  • Flyers