Unscripted Activities: Thematic Initiatives

One of the best ways to create a culture of dialogue is to make it a campus-wide initiative through a thematic year. 

Learn from a few schools that have dedicated initiatives to dialogue on campus. 

Lewis & Clark College

Launched in 2023, Community Dialogues is Lewis & Clark President Robin Holmes-Sullivan’s signature initiative. The initiative builds empathy and viewpoint diversity by facilitating discussions among students, faculty, and staff and helps the campus community address pressing societal issues head-on. Community Dialogues bridges divides and strengthens campus community bonds in a time of deep division.  

Hear from President Holmes-Sullivan on Lewis & Clark’s Community Dialogues Initiative:

No matter the issue, colleges and universities must always be places that welcome an open exchange of ideas. This principle is central to the educational mission. At the same time, we must strive to be places that model respectful disagreement that builds community. It is a challenging balance. There are no easy answers. What I know is that as a community of scholars, we must practice the skill of listening and speaking across differences. It is the path to greater understanding and to making the world a better place. The Community Dialogues initiative is just one way we are working toward creating this better world. We must teach it, model it, live it—no matter how difficult the road.

Learn more.

 

University of Pittsburgh

College campuses are ensuring every student has the chance to engage in productive, challenging conversations about the pressing issues shaping our country. From classrooms to dorm rooms, faculty, staff, and campus leaders are making this a campuswide priority—one that includes the surrounding community and prepares students for life beyond graduation.

Real Talk: Across Campus, Across Divides, spotlights the University of Pittsburgh’s commitment through its multi-year thematic initiative – The Year of Discourse and Dialogue– to building the motivation, skills, and social permission for dialogue across difference. 

Hear from Dean of the School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh and Co-Chair of the Year of Discourse and Dialogue, Carissa Slotterback: 

“I’m really pleased to share a little bit about the ways that we’ve engaged across campus as we’ve advanced our work with the Year of Discourse and Dialogue. From the start, we recognized that our work on discourse and dialogue was about capacity – our ability to engage in discourse and dialogue as a community of students, staff, and faculty. We worked really hard from the outset to pull in folks who are experts in these areas, folks for whom this is the work that they do on a day-to-day basis, whether as staff, whether they’re teaching about it as faculty, whether they are students who are involved in engaging other students through various programming.

We wanted to bring those folks to the table to help shape what we might do. They brought perspectives from the outset about what was needed. They helped us identify things that were already happening on campus that we could leverage, and most importantly, helped us imagine what we could do next to bring this in. It’s also been a wonderful opportunity to connect with the Institute for Citizens and Scholars, to be able to connect with a community of experts who are working on this across a wide range of universities.”

 

Learn more.