For more information about the project, contact:
democracyproject@aol.com
First Steps Elements Common to All Participating Campuses -The Art of Dialogue -An Ongoing Process of Assessment, Dialogue, and Action -An Emergent Plan The Toolbox -A Values Audit -Mapping Exercises -Facilitation Workshops -Community-Based Dialogues/Listening to Communities -Kettering Foundation's Public Policy Institutes -Study Circles Outcomes
First Steps in the Process
The first step for each campus is to identify one or more values-based issues or opportunities that the campus might want to explore. It can be broad, such as campus climate for learning, or narrow, such as enhancing integrity through a proposed honor code or credo. While the campus need not pursue that topic ultimately, it helps to frame the project in the context of a specific concern.
The next step is to create a leadership team consisting of faculty, administrative leaders, students, community partners (if appropriate to the topic), and trustees. That team will identify specific project goals, review toolbox options, collaboratively refine those items or create new ones, and generate a time line for activities. Each campus will create a plan of action that will include goals, objectives, strategies to achieve those objectives, and assessment techniques. DVP's project director will support the teams' work through campus visits, guidance in planning, facilitation, and consultations in between visits.
Elements Common to All Campuses
While each campus will build the project around its distinctive goals, objectives, and strengths, three commitments will be common to all. Those commitments are to (1) the art of dialogue, (2) an ongoing process of assessment, reflection, dialogue, planning, and action, and (3) an emergent plan.
1. The Art of Dialogue
Social and political scientists such as Robert Bellah and Robert Putnam worry that Americans have become overly isolated and individualistic. This disengagement erodes our ability to problem solve collectively and effectively.
In his 1999 book, The Magic of Dialogue, Transforming Conflict into Cooperation, Daniel Yankelovich argues that "dialogue takes skills most Americans do not possess . . . we can no longer 'just do it.' Reaching mutual understanding through dialogue doesn't come naturally to us anymore." Essentially a community building exercise, this project will only be as successful as the quality of the discussions that guide it.
To respond to these forces, this project seeks to strengthen participants' ability to "do dialogue." Those engaged in this project will have opportunities to experience and observe strategies to:
- convene working groups
- frame issues
- participate in and lead discussions
- listen carefully
- seek understanding
- weigh choices
- see new possibilities for action, and
- move the conversation to action
While not a cure for all campus concerns, skillful dialogue can reveal common objectives and build relationships that may then generate positive action.
2. An Ongoing Process of Assessment, Dialogue, and Action3. An Emergent Plan
This project provides campuses with spaces for dialogue, reflection and assessment, and action. It is not, however, without design. Sequence can be important. Pilot campuses will follow a process that begins with gaining data and insight. A series of dialogues and reflective exercises will follow. Moving from the abstract to the concrete, action strategies that result will generate a repeat of the circle. The cycle, then, is:
The emphasis is on a continuous, systematic process that allows for reflection, time to talk through issues, and trial and error.
Meetings with the leadership team, assessment exercises, community-based dialogues, and open meetings are likely to raise more questions than they answer and expose more issues than might be originally anticipated. Different participants will express different interests or concerns. A certain amount of uncertainty can be both expected and is encouraged. Identifying shared objectives and strategies to achieve them is a process of give and take. Not unexpectedly, the specific activities of the project are likely to emerge as it progresses.
The Toolbox
Campuses might choose among a variety of techniques to achieve their goals. They include, but are not limited to:
1. A Values Audit
A values audit helps a campus understand divergences between its articulated mission, its values statement, and the campus community's perception of how the actual practices of the faculty, administration, staff, and students compare with its mission. While the audit usually leads to a report, the process of interactive dialogue and reflection in and of itself fosters greater understanding and consensus around institutional values.
The overall strategy of a values audit is general and specific activities emerge through initial conversations. Audit exercises can include one-on-one interviews, questionnaires, open meetings, focus groups, discussions around case studies, and reflective exercises such as the collection of narratives or autobiography. Common to all activities, however, is the use of explicit values terminology, particularly the values integral to this project: social justice and civic responsibility.
2. Mapping Exercises
"Asset-based community development" is a term used by community builders and particularly John P. Kretzmann and John L. McKnight at Northwestern University. It refers to an approach - a philosophy - grounded in the belief that building community is best done by focusing on strengths and capacities rather than the problems of individuals and organizations within a community. Through surveys and one-on-one interviews, community assets are rediscovered and mobilized toward community objectives.
Campus communities can benefit from an asset-based approach in assessing its commitment to social justice and civic responsibility. Through one-on-one interviews, campuses can identify the sometimes invisible skills and interests of faculty and staff. With that knowledge, campuses can foster relationships among individuals who, sometimes unknown to each other, share common objectives. They can pursue new initiatives or strengthen existing ones. This is a friendly and pragmatic approach to "taking an inventory" of best practices on campus, practices that can then be used as educational tools and a cause for recognition and celebration.
3. Facilitation Workshops
Campuses can develop a pool of trained facilitators to increase their capacity to convene and moderate dialogues on campus. Because the DVP relies heavily on the art of dialogue, such a pool of skilled participants will be essential.
Training can begin through introductory dialogue on issues that emerge in the values audit, on the larger topic of how colleges and universities strengthen their commitment to civic education and engagement, or on a case study (e.g., an ethical dilemma of this institution's choosing such as affirmative action or the support provided to students with learning disabilities). Over time, participants will facilitate their own dialogues, simultaneously broadening the circle of participants in the project and gaining valuable facilitation experience.
Campuses may already employ experienced facilitators who can run workshops. They can decide whether to use their in-house facilitators, SVHE, or both.
4. Community-Based Dialogues/Listening to Communities
The American Council on Education (ACE) developed Listening to Communities as a way to explore with local communities their perceptions on how higher education can best fulfill its role as educator of American citizens and as partner in collectively addressing community concerns. Through a series of regional forums, Listening to Communities invited a range of civic, business, religious, government, philanthropic, and educational leaders to share with representatives of local colleges and universities their views on higher education's role in a democracy.
From this exploratory exercise, higher education learned that communities can offer valuable insight on the significant role area colleges and universities can play in a defined community and in American democracy. While model curricular and outreach initiatives exist, there is much room for improvement. Participants suggested that colleges and universities engage in meaningful dialogue with communities as a first step toward creating a vision of that community. This vision can then serve as an educational resource - the community as text - for fostering students' skills and consciences and for successful and sustainable partnerships. These steps, they suggested, will help campuses educate students to meet the changing needs of the community.
Listening to Communities tested multiple formats for convening forums, including two-hour breakfast sessions, all-day meetings, and multiple conversations with a core group. While any one of these formats is valuable, community participants recommended that community-based dialogues be ongoing and deeper than the one-time dialogues sponsored through Listening to Communities.
For institutional responses to Listening to Communities
5. Kettering Foundation's Public Policy Institutes
The Kettering Foundation is a nonprofit organization that welcomes partnerships with institutions and individuals who are actively working on public issues facing communities, government, politics, and education. The Kettering Foundation has agreed to partner with the Society by offering workshops through its Public Policy Institutes (PPI).
PPIs provide participants opportunities to understand and learn how to convene and moderate a public dialogue, usually through the Foundation's National Issues Forums. National Issues Forums (NIF) - resembling a traditional "town meeting" - provide opportunities for people to gather and deliberate around challenging public issues. Framed by issue booklets, forums can be run on topics such as alcohol abuse, health care, crime, and the economy. Developed by the Kettering Foundation, sometimes in cooperation with Public Agenda, issue booklets are available to frame discussions.
PPI participants observe and engage in community forums, become acquainted with NIF materials, and practice moderating forums. Rather than focus on specific solutions or points of view, PPIs offer a setting where people can focus on ideas and share their views through the deliberative process.6. Study Circles Resource Center
A study circle is a simple process for small-group deliberation. Comprised of eight to twelve people who meet regularly over a period of weeks to address an issue, a study circle is facilitated by an impartial person who asks questions and keeps the group focused. It is a progressive system that begins with personal experiences, ("How does this issue affect me?") and moves to a broader perspective, ("What do others say about this issue?") and to action ("What can I do about this issue here? What can we do?").While a study circles approach is recognized as an effective community building strategy, it can also be used within organizations to promote change and shift institutional culture. By participating in study circles, participants gain awareness and understanding of an issue, discover a connection between their personal experiences and institutional policies, and identify common ground for solving problems.
Another, not-insignificant outcome will be to introduce conference participants to a new way of addressing a pressing issue. It is a process that offers exciting opportunities for future decision-making, classroom practices, and community-university partnerships. For more information, see Study Circles Resource Center's web site.
Outcomes
It is important that campuses develop their project beyond the dialogue phase into planning and action. Campuses will need to plan from the beginning assessment strategies and develop attainable goals. Those might include, for example, new curricula or programs (e.g., a community building curriculum or a community fellows program) or projects that engage the community (e.g., the establishment of a community advisory group or an ongoing community partnership).
Campuses might be interested in developing other initiatives not listed above. Through its network of members and connections with other national associations, DVP can help campuses find models for consideration. It can also help campuses share with the higher education community their own models of good practice worthy of recognition and replication.
