In our polarized era, colleges and universities must bolster students’ capacity for engaging across deep disagreement, cultivating curiosity and tolerance for perspectives different from their own. Higher education institutions cannot achieve these aims without chief academic officers taking a leading role in setting a strategy for free expression, civil discourse, and dialogue across difference, and implementing this strategy through both curricular and co-curricular channels.
This workshop will include a case study of how Saint Mary’s College (IN) has worked to build students’ skills and agency for engaging across difference. The session will also include interactive breakouts exploring policies, programs, and curricula that support a welcoming campus culture for robust intellectual exchange. Workshop participants will leave with approaches that they can adapt to their own campus’ unique history, mission, and community.
Megan Halteman Zwart, Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs, Saint Mary’s College (IN)
Jacqueline Pfeffer Merrill, Senior Director of Civic Learning and Free Expression Projects, CIC
Chair: Amy Clark, Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs, Nebraska Methodist College
Interactive seminars cover important issues that currently impact independent higher education. They are designed to be practical and hands-on with clear learning outcomes. Each will include examples of replicable models for participants to use when faced with the situations covered by the seminars.
These interactive seminars are free of charge and do not require pre-registration, but they have limited capacity. Space is available on a first-come, first-served basis. Seminars will be repeated at 1:00 p.m.