Transformative Learning Lab Code of Conduct
A Transformative Learning Lab is, by definition, a place for inquiry. Protecting the learning container is essential to sustaining inquiry and supporting both students and faculty.
Below is an excerpted version of the Student Code of Conduct provisions that apply specifically to Transformative Learning Labs. The Lab invites emotionally engaged, experiential learning while establishing clear boundaries around consent, confidentiality, physical contact, respectful participation, and each student’s responsibility for regulating their level of engagement. Before attending a lab for which you are registered, please review the full Student Code of Conduct and the lab-specific expectations below.
To attend the lab, you must submit the acknowledgment at the end of this page confirming that you have re-reviewed these requirements, understand them, and agree to comply with the Student Code of Conduct—including this lab-specific section—throughout the lab.
1. Transformative Learning Labs are graduate-level academic experiences designed to support the development of program capacities through experiential, relational, embodied, and reflective learning.
2. Because this work may involve emotional activation and attention to interpersonal or somatic experience, students are expected to participate with care for themselves and one another while remaining within the Lab’s academic purpose.
3. These requirements apply throughout every online or onsite lab module, including breaks, breakout groups, chats, common spaces, and other lab-related interactions.
4. A Lab is an academic learning environment. It is not psychotherapy, a support group, an invitation to forced disclosure or boundaryless intimacy, a forum for resolving interpersonal disputes, or a venue for addressing administrative complaints.
5. Students are expected to participate both vulnerably and professionally while taking responsibility for their choices, conduct, boundaries, and impact on the learning community.
6. The quality of transformative learning depends on trust. Students are expected to protect one another’s dignity and contribute to an environment in which people can experiment, make mistakes, and learn without ridicule, coercion, or personal attack.
2. Commitment to the learning process
Students agree to:
1. Attend as learners and remain focused on the course content, learning activities, and curricular outcomes established by faculty.
2. Follow reasonable faculty directions concerning the structure, sequence, timing, participation format, and facilitation of learning activities.
3. Arrive on time, return promptly from breaks, remain through the formal close of each module, and communicate anticipated absences, late arrivals, or early departures in advance.
4. Refrain from multitasking and unrelated activities, including email, texting, social media, web browsing, side conversations, and other conduct that diverts attention from the lab.
5. Bring scheduling flexibility, appropriate preparation, and the technical or personal resources needed to participate fully.
3. Faculty academic freedom and instructional authority
1. Faculty have the academic freedom and responsibility to select and facilitate course content and learning methods consistent with the approved curriculum.
2. Students may ask good-faith, course-related questions and offer relevant perspectives in the manner and at the times invited by faculty.
3. Students may not attempt to control, redirect, or prevent a learning activity because of personal preference, disagreement, scheduling needs, or a desire to address matters outside the curriculum.
4. When faculty redirect a discussion, close a topic, request silence or muting, limit chat use, or give another reasonable facilitation instruction, students are expected to comply promptly.
5. Respectful academic disagreement is compatible with the learning environment. Repeated interruption, argument about facilitation itself, off-topic commentary, or refusal to follow reasonable directions is not.
4. Respectful, non-disruptive engagement
The following standard applies equally to conduct concerning fellow students, faculty, staff, administrators, guests, and the University:
1. Communicate respectfully in verbal, non-verbal, written, and digital interactions.
2. Approach other participants with curiosity rather than interpretation or diagnosis. Speak from personal experience and distinguish observation from interpretation.
3. Do not tell another person what they are feeling, what their behavior “means,” or what psychological issue they may have; avoid unsolicited advice.
4. Do not ridicule, shame, disparage, scapegoat, diagnose, label, intimidate, or make personal attacks.
5. Do not attribute motives, character defects, psychological conditions, or hidden intentions to another person.
6. Do not use the Lab to recruit others into a grievance, build factions, repeat gossip, circulate unverified allegations, or create adversarial polarization.
7. Do not pressure another student to disclose, participate, agree, provide emotional support, or take sides.
8. Address the assigned learning activity rather than shifting attention to personal conflict, dissatisfaction with another community member, or criticism of an administrative decision.
9. Respect differences in culture, identity, personality, communication style, and comfort with emotional expression. There is no single correct way to experience, express, or regulate emotion.
10. Consider impact as well as intent. Conduct may be redirected when it interferes with faculty teaching, another student’s learning, privacy, dignity, safety, or participation.
5. Administrative concerns, complaints, and feedback
1. Lab time may not be used to raise or process complaints, frustrations, or criticisms concerning University policies, personnel, communications, procedures, decisions, or services.
2. Students must use the applicable channel outside the lab, such as the Student Services Request process, a course or program evaluation, an academic advising meeting, the Conflict Resolution Process, the grievance procedure, an accommodation process, or another published reporting procedure.
3. Faculty may stop and redirect an administrative or grievance-related discussion without debating the underlying issue during the lab.
4. This restriction concerns the time, place, and manner of communication in the academic setting. It does not prohibit a student from making a good-faith report, requesting an accommodation, raising an immediate safety concern, reporting suspected misconduct, or using an applicable complaint or grievance process.
6. Consent, choice, and responsibility
1. Participation in the Lab does not require agreement with any belief. Students are expected to engage in academic self-inquiry about beliefs and assumptions as relevant to the curriculum.
2. Students are expected to engage actively while retaining agency over the degree and manner of their participation. No student is required to disclose personal information they do not wish to share.
3. No physical contact is assumed or required. A student may decline, stop, or request a modification to a consent-based activity, including an activity involving touch, proximity, eye contact, movement, disclosure, or interpersonal engagement.
4. Consent must be ongoing and activity-specific. Silence, hesitation, or prior participation does not constitute consent to a new activity, and a student may change their mind during an activity.
5. A student who declines or modifies an activity remains responsible for communicating professionally, avoiding disruption, and meeting course learning and attendance requirements through an alternative identified by faculty when available.
6. Students may not pressure peers toward greater disclosure, emotional intensity, physical contact, participation, agreement, emotional support, or taking sides.
7. Emotional responsibility and self-regulation
1. Learning activities may evoke unexpected emotions, memories, bodily sensations, uncertainty, or resistance. Students are encouraged to notice their limits and make responsible choices about participation—an exercise of reflexive vulnerability.
2. Students are responsible for responding to their experience in ways that do not transfer responsibility to another student, faculty member, or staff member.
3. Students may briefly pause, sit out, step out, or request assistance when needed for self-regulation. Stepping out for self-regulation is not a failure to participate; the student remains responsible for minimizing disruption and returning promptly when able.
4. Students should communicate with faculty if non-participation or an extended absence becomes necessary.
5. Students may experience the same exercise differently. There is no expectation that an activity produce insight, emotional release, catharsis, or any particular internal experience.
6. When reflecting on an activity, students should describe what they noticed rather than prescribe what another person should have experienced.
7. Students may not attempt to conduct psychotherapy with one another, deliberately provoke emotional catharsis, pursue another student’s personal history, or continue an emotionally intense interaction beyond the activity’s stated purpose.
8. Faculty, staff, and students do not provide psychotherapy, clinical assessment, crisis intervention, or emergency services in the Lab.
9. Immediate safety or medical emergencies should be directed to emergency services. Accommodation needs and non-emergency concerns should be raised through the appropriate University process outside the Lab.
8. Privacy and confidentiality
1. Treat personal material shared by classmates as confidential.
2. Do not repeat, record, livestream, post, interpret publicly, or disclose another person’s experience or identifying information without explicit authorization.
3. Students may discuss course concepts and their own experience outside the lab, but may not identify or reveal another participant’s contribution.
4. Educational confidentiality cannot be guaranteed in the same manner as clinical confidentiality; students should exercise judgment regarding what they disclose.
9. Online lab requirements
Students participating online must:
1. Join from an appropriate, private, distraction-free setting with reliable connectivity and functioning audio and video.
2. Remain video-enabled except for brief personal needs or as otherwise authorized by faculty.
3. Use headphones when another person could hear the session, and prevent others from viewing the screen.
4. Remain muted when requested, unmute only as invited, and use the “Everyone” chat only when invited or clearly appropriate to the learning activity.
5. Enter late without interrupting or requesting an in-session recap.
6. Refrain from driving, riding in a vehicle, eating, multitasking, conducting other conversations, or engaging in unrelated movement or activity during class.
10. Onsite lab requirements
Students participating onsite must:
1. Follow all campus, building, access, safety, security, and emergency requirements.
2. Use classrooms and common spaces responsibly and follow directions from faculty, staff, security personnel, and authorized third parties.
3. Keep phones off or in “do not disturb” mode and use laptops only for authorized course purposes.
4. Refrain from recording, livestreaming, eating, napping, side conversations, or unrelated activities during class.
5. Maintain professional-casual attire and comply with any activity-specific safety or clothing instruction.
6. Submit facilities or administrative requests through the designated channel rather than approaching staff ad hoc or interrupting University operations.
11. Response to concerns during the lab
1. Faculty may redirect, pause, or end conduct that is off-topic, disrespectful, unsafe, or disruptive.
2. A student may be asked to take a break, leave a module, or discontinue participation when necessary to protect the learning environment.
3. Potential violations may be referred to the Student Development Committee and addressed under the Student Code of Conduct and other applicable policies.
4. Nothing in this section prevents a student from promptly reporting an immediate safety concern or suspected misconduct through an appropriate channel.
Proposed student acknowledgment
By signing below, I confirm that:
*