After a competitive application process, the School of Public Affairs and the Project on Civic Dialogue are excited to announce the first class of Civic Dialogue faculty fellows. This one-year fellowship supports SPA faculty members’ efforts to infuse their courses and programs with opportunities to practice dialogue across differences, collaborative inquiry, and dispute resolution.

Meet our fellows:

Associate Professor Janice Iwama will redesign her course SPA 300: Experimenting with Violence to incorporate dialogue between students and individuals inside and outside of the criminal justice system.

Associate Professor Alan Levine will conduct research on the efficacy of various dialogue practices in the classroom through gathering and interpreting student data.

Senior Professorial Lecturer Jim Quirk will infuse dialogue on the 2024 election into GOVT 322: American Political Parties this fall semester.

Senior Professorial Lecturer Jeremy Janow will redesign GOVT 208: Justice and Citizenship to incorporate civic dialogue in its consideration of the good citizen.

Senior Professorial Lecturer Jason Fabrikant will include sessions on dialogue and freedom of expression in a revamped version of SPA 220: American Constitution.

The American University School of Public Affairs challenges its students and faculty to explore our society’s most challenging questions with rigor and intellectual curiosity. We recognize that by engaging in dialogue with one another and attempting to understand diverse viewpoints, students can refine and improve their own ideas. The SPA Civic Dialogue Faculty Fellows program supports efforts to infuse their courses and programs with opportunities to practice dialogue across differences, collaborative inquiry, and dispute resolution.

The program is open to any SPA faculty member. Suggested projects include, but are not limited to:

• Designing a new SPA course or redesigning an existing course to include dialogue across differences, problem-based learning, dispute resolution, collaborative learning, depolarization, information literacy, intellectual diversity, generous listening, or related skills and competencies.

• Creating co-curricular dialogue activities or learning opportunities for a new or existing SPA program.

• Conducting research on a relevant teaching and learning issue in an SPA course or program.

• Generating a proposal for future SPA programming around dialogue across differences, freedom of expression, academic freedom, depolarization, or information literacy.

• Designing a mentoring or peer support mechanism for SPA faculty interested in infusing dialogue into their courses.

• Fellows will receive a stipend of $4000 (distributed over the year) and serve for one academic year.

Responsibilities include:

• Completing the project described in the fellowship application.

• Attending a monthly fellows’ meeting to workshop works in progress, discuss teaching challenges and opportunities, and offer feedback,

• Presenting or facilitating at one SPA faculty and staff dialogue session,

• Being open to participating in a panel at the Ann Ferren Conference,

• Completing a short final report.

If you have questions about the program, contact dialogueproject@american.edu.