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Day of Dialogue
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September 28, 2009
Dear Faculty and Staff Colleagues,
I am writing to invite you to participate in an important and exciting Five College initiative. Earlier this summer, the Five College Training and Development Collaborative, in conjunction with the chief diversity officers, trained 12 faculty and staff from each of our campuses as Intergroup Dialogue facilitators. These members of our community are now eager to work with faculty and staff in the Day of Dialogue which will be held at varying times on each of our five campuses on Tuesday, Oct. 27. Some campuses, including our own, will also schedule sessions for Wednesday, Oct. 28.
The Day of Dialogue is intended to be a starting point for continuing conversations about important issues on our campuses. As we work to foster a diverse community, it is imperative that we sustain campus environments that are welcoming for all and free of bias and discriminatory attitudes and practices. We want our campus to continue to grow as a vibrant community where we engage and interact with each other in the fullness of our common humanity while also embracing, understanding, and valuing the identities and differences that make each of us unique.
Intergroup dialogues bring members of different groups together in new and meaningful ways. Participants listen to different perspectives and views, find places of agreement, allow for and start to understand differences, and discover common and collective meaning. Dialogues aim to build relationships and foster learning across differences. As an educational institution, this learning process is essential to our continued growth and success.
All the presidents and chancellor at the Five Colleges support this initiative and this Day of Dialogue, and I want to encourage you to attend one or more of the sessions we will host on our campus on Oct. 27-28. Our hope is that these sessions will help all of us become more effective at talking about difficult issues and finding common ground in building more successful campus communities.
Please go to Intergroup Dialogue or call Workplace Learning and Development at 545-5428 for more information about the dialogue topics, schedule and registration process. Based on the outcome of the Day of Dialogue, we hope to create more sustained opportunities for faculty and staff intergroup dialogues, similar to those in which our students are already engaged. I urge you to plan, in collaboration with your administrative team, to participate in this important initiative and join our community in dialogue.
Sincerely,
Chancellor Robert C. Holub
