Chapter 2: From Courageous Conversations to Classroom Dialogues

Like many colleges and universities in recent years, Regis University has faced the increasing challenge of creating productive spaces for dialogue as a way of becoming more adequate to a social reality, on and off campus, where contentious issues surface more frequently and more urgently. In 2016–2017, students, staff, and faculty at our institution consciously and deliberately examined—and found wanting—past approaches used to respond to inflammations around race, politics, and democracy. That process of institutional examination transformed, in key ways, the first-year experience at Regis University, which serves all traditional undergraduates transitioning to our institution. These changes aim not only to create classroom spaces for dialogue, but also to contribute to constituting an academic culture with a clear sense of the importance of dialogue, of why conversation matters.