Activation Plan

Below is an overview of some campus activities: 

• Discourse Series: Navigating Both Challenging and Essential Conversations in Academic Spaces: Tools for Inclusive Dialogue: In collaboration with the Institute for Citizens & Scholars, we offer a year-long faculty development series designed to equip educators with practical tools and strategies to strengthen facilitation skills to support challenging and essential conversations in their classes and beyond. 

• The Office of Civic Life provides educational workshops in support of departmental efforts to build a campus ethos that supports the goals of an engaged community. Workshops are offered throughout the academic year and can be requested by faculty, staff, students, and student organizations. They also host the annual Democracy Summit, which was held this year from October 13-18, 2025. 

• Interfaith Dialogue and Illinois Interfaith Conference: The First Tuesday Interfaith Dialogue series promotes religious diversity and interfaith understanding to strengthen students’ communication skills and enrich campus life. The Illinois Interfaith Conference held February 27–28, 2026, will bring together students, campus allies, and professionals from across the Midwest to explore key questions about interfaith engagement in higher education. 

• General Education and Informed Engagement: The chair of our General Education Board, in collaboration with the undergraduate education team in the Provost’s Office, is assessing how well our General Education program fosters informed engagement, upholding democratic values and promoting civic dialogue and action. We’re piloting this assessment in select General Education courses and have included related questions in the campus survey for graduating undergraduates. 

• Live Like Alma Project: a grant-funded project involving College of Education scholars to integrate civic character education that will cultivate civically engaged graduates who embody the spirit and drive of our campus’s land-grant mission. Delivered through service-learning courses, the program will strengthen collaboration between the College of Education and the School of Social Work and fosters broad faculty and community support. 

Highlights:

Curricular and co-curricular programs at Illinois equip students to be informed citizens and succeed in the workplace. A key campuswide learning outcome states that Illinois students will build and sustain relationships to address civic and social challenges locally, nationally, and globally. Both academic and student affairs programs contribute to this outcome, which is tracked through the Chancellor’s Senior Survey. Over the past six years, 44% of graduating students reported improving “very” or “extremely well” in their ability to give back to their communities. Below is a sampling of courses offered to students on campus: 

• College of Education foundation courses prepare students to understand the world critically and imagine/engage in civic projects that help them understand their agency to shape and uphold democracy. Through facilitated discussions, students gain valuable insights, develop essential intergroup & intercultural dialogue skills, and build connections with peers from various backgrounds. The 
• College of Liberal Arts & Sciences offers several courses, such as Plants and Global Change, where students are coached in small teams by faculty as they prepare and participate in parliamentary-style debates that address motions related to climate change, clean energy, biotechnology, carbon sequestration, and food security. LAS also offers a module on civil discourse, while the interns assisting with the classes take advanced courses to develop the skills to conduct meaningful conversations on potentially polarizing topics. 
• Seibel Center for Design course, Exercising Empathy, empowers students with a valuable skill essential to addressing today’s complex challenges: empathy 
• The School of Social Work offers a course that directly addresses the imperative to prepare students for participation in a diverse and contentious society, a cornerstone of a thriving democracy.
• Also, first-year and transfer students participate in I-Connect, an interactive workshop held each fall as part of the Illinois Experience. The program promotes engaged citizenship and inclusive relationships through evidence-based activities that build awareness of campus diversity and strengthen communication and conflict-resolution skills. These skills foster belonging and inclusion at Illinois and prepare students for success beyond campus.