Community Dialogue Network
The Community Dialogue Network is now accepting applications for the Fall 2025 professional development experience! All sessions will run from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. on the following dates:
- 9/19
- 9/26
- 10/3
- 10/17
- 10/24
- 10/31
The Community Dialogue Network strengthens our campus community by enhancing the professional capacity of staff and faculty to lead inclusive dialogues that foster understanding and meaningful engagement across difference, in a variety of campus and community contexts. Through a thoughtfully designed professional development series, participants build essential skills in group facilitation, dialogue design, and navigating polarizing or high-stakes topics with intention, empathy, and care.
Graduates of the series join a vibrant network of skilled facilitators who serve as valuable resources for campus forums and engagement opportunities where identity, lived experiences, worldviews, and belonging are central themes—among other topics. The professional development series runs over six weeks and includes a total of 18 hours of interactive learning. Participants frequently describe the experience as transformative—deepening their sense of connection to a community of colleagues committed to cultivating a more inclusive campus climate while significantly elevating their facilitation expertise in ways that extend across their professional lives.
Our approach to dialogue facilitation emerged through an ongoing partnership with renowned facilitation experts Matthew Freeman and David Campt. The series emphasizes the full arc of dialogue, strategies for fostering meaningful engagement across differences, and tools for responding to common facilitation challenges in inclusive and affirming ways.
As part of our Shared Equity Leadership model, CDN facilitators are drawn from across all five schools, divisions, and units—embodying a distributed leadership approach to advancing inclusion and belonging.
