By MARTY LEVINE
The capstone event for the Year of Discourse and Dialogue — “Developing Capacity for Discourse and Dialogue Across Our Campuses” on April 5 — will include several panels (one involving Kenyon Bonner, former vice provost for student affairs) and a chance to meet and discuss “Year of” projects with representatives from many of the 40-plus funded endeavors.
The event will focus on methods and tools for encouraging and easing engaged conversations on campus, including insights from department and unit leaders who spent the year exploring new ideas.
“There was just work bubbling up all over campus,” said one of the two Year of … co-chairs, Carissa Schively Slotterback, dean and faculty member in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs. The Year of Discourse and Dialogue, she added, was about “building capacity ... about pulling people in and building skills” in dialogue and discourse. “Over time we'll hopefully see this capacity building and engagement over all parts of the University.”
The capstone event’s kickoff panel, on “Academic Freedom and Freedom of Expression: Articulating Values, Challenges, and Policies,” will feature Bonner (now vice president and chief student affairs officer at the University of Virginia) and William “Chip” Carter Jr., faculty member and former dean of the School of Law. They will provide perspective on “how do you implement this day-to-day,” Slotterback said.
This will be followed by discussion of how discourse and dialogue are best implemented in various units of the University, from Dietrich School departments and those of other schools to the Institute of Politics and the Office for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion.
Alongside lunch, the event will end with a showcase of Year of Discourse and Dialogue funded projects — a kind of open house, as Slotterback described it, for attendees to visit tables and displays from the Year’s projects and hear more about them from their organizers.
Such projects encompassed seemingly every angle on the year’s topic, from “Engaging African Students in Discourse on Tribal Equity in Africa” and “Building Capacity Against Threats to Discourse and Dialogue” to “Parenting for Racial Equity: Assuring the Next Generation of Antiracists” and “Using Discourse and Dialogue to Prevent Eco-Gentrification in Pittsburgh.”
“There is a role most of us can play at Pitt,” Slotterback said, with everyone examining: “Do we have spaces where people can come together... where there is access to do this kind of work?”
The event is from 9:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. April 5 in the University Club, Ballroom B. Registration is required.
Marty Levine is a staff writer for the University Times. Reach him at martyl@pitt.edu or 412-758-4859.
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