Challenging Conversations & Bridge Building

The Crown Center for Teaching (CCT) is bringing together resources to help faculty, staff, and students engage difference in the classroom—and campus more broadly—in ways that respect individual identities, professional knowledge, and deeply held personal beliefs. The goal is not to take sides or change opinions, but rather to take seriously the things that matter to us most. Through that process we'll build bridges that help us accomplish the common good to which we are all deeply committed.
 
Details on campus-wide programming will emerge between now and the start of the spring semester.  But for now, we would like to share with you a list of existing resources to help us continue to engage difficult conversations while respecting the mutable boundaries of our collective freedoms, including those of religion, speech, and academics. This is neither an exhaustive nor prescriptive list, but rather one we hope everyone will explore AND supplement.  Please share with us examples you’ve encountered.

The only thing we love as much as teaching is talking about teaching. Is there something on your mind you’d like to talk about?  An assignment idea, a tricky classroom situation, a question about teaching, formed or unformed?

For the remainder of Block 4, from 1-3pm on Mondays and Wednesdays, you are invited to informal drop-in conversation hours in the CCT office. We’re on the second floor of Tutt Library across from the Colket Center and we’ll have coffee, tea, snacks, and fizzy water. Come talk about anything on your mind—big or small, general or specific—with Interim Director Ryan Bañagale and whomever else might happen to drop by as well.

The CCT invites and cultivates active conversation among all members of our community—faculty, staff, and students—as we continue to contemplate longstanding and emergent topics central to pedagogical experiences across our campus. Block 4 features two lunch-time sessions (food provided) on artificial intelligence that affect our collective work as educators. In addition to these sessions, you can visit the CCT page on Artificial Intelligence at CC for additional resources:

"An Intro to Generative AI": Thursday, 12/7 - 12:15pm - South Hall Common

Professors Blake Jackson and Ben Nye (Computer Science) provide a primer on the history of AI, some common misconceptions, how Large Language Models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT work, and what such tools can be good for.

"The Ethics of ChatGPT": Thursday, 12/14 - 12:15pm - South Hall Commons

Professors Helen Daly (Philosophy), Cory Scott (Computer Science), Leland Tabares (Race, Ethnicity, and Migration Studies) and student Elliot Triplett (Computer Science/Feminist and Gender Studies) consider the inherent bias of tools such as ChatGPT and what our engagement with them means for our individual and collective values.

If you would like to lead a future discussion and/or suggest a topic for conversation, please email Interim Director, Ryan Bañagale.

As faculty and academic staff prepare their syllabi for spring semester, please remember to include all the statements appropriate for your particular course. A variety of examples can be found on the Dean of Faculty's Course Policies and Syllabi Statements document and statements particular to artificial intelligence have been provided by the CC Honor Council. If you have questions or want to think about ways to hone particular statements for the needs of your classroom, please schedule an appointment with the Interim Director or drop by during the CCTs open office hours.