NEWS
Deliberative Citizenship Initiative Digest: The Fellows Deliberation Projects – A True Capstone Experience
For the past four years, one of the highlights of the DCI’s Fellows Program has been the opportunity for students to develop their own personal deliberation projects. After going through intensive training in how to facilitate contentious conversations and then serving as a facilitator of the DCI’s D Teams and Deliberative Forum discussions, the Fellows apply their skills to designing and hosting conversations on topics of personal interest to them. They select their topics and begin developing their project plans in the fall semester, and then revise and implement those plans in the spring semester.
DCI staff provide feedback to the fellows on their ideas and suggest relevant resources throughout the process, but these projects are very much the fellows’ own initiatives. They are responsible for identifying the topic, developing their deliberation guide, recruiting participants, finding a time and space for their discussion, and hosting it themselves. The Fellows very much appreciate this autonomy and independence they have in developing their projects. It enables them to demonstrate the full range of skills they have learned over the course of their year as a Fellow, discover the challenges and pitfalls of designing and implementing these types of conversations, and experience the joy of bringing people together to discuss hard topics and strengthen their own deliberative muscles.
The DCI’s most recent blog post summarizes each of the seven projects that the 2023-24 cohort of Fellows implemented this spring. Some Fellows worked together while others worked independently; their topics included equitable industrialization, humor, the moral obligation to stay informed and act on international issues, Davidson’s reckoning with its history related to race and slavery, transgender medical policies, repatriation and ownership in art history, and election issues.