At Montclair State University, faculty programming is in full swing, tackling the real-world challenges that spill into classrooms and shape students’ lives. With global events sparking tough conversations, Montclair is making sure educators have the tools and support they need to help students engage with complex topics. In 2024, the Dialogue Across Difference program hosted eight faculty seminars on building resilience for difficult conversations, developing strategies that embrace diverse perspectives, and fostering meaningful post-election discussions. The goal? To make Montclair a campus where, no matter where you look, “conversations about ideas that matter” are happening everywhere.
Mark Allman, Montclair State University
Hear from Mark Allman, senior advisor to the president and managing director of university initiatives and innovation, on the faculty trainings moving the needle at Montclair:
We held eight faculty trainings that included over 140 faculty. Our focus was on developing the skills to host honest, difficult, and substantive conversations in the classroom. It is heartening to see so many faculty who are eager to bring in what’s going on in the world around them, and the world of our students, into the classroom. Higher education is sometimes criticized for being an “ivory tower,” detached from the world. But not at Montclair. Our faculty know that teaching is always contextual. If you want to be an effective teacher, you have to be able to read the signs of the times and find ways to bring that into the classroom. But you also can’t assume that students are a monolith, that they think the same. So, the challenge becomes how do you create an environment where everyone feels they can voice their opinion, and will listen to understand different points of view and be mature enough to modify their beliefs based on what they’ve learned. That was where the Dialogue Across Difference trainings came in, and they were extremely popular.
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