Update on NIF’s National Dialogue on Higher Ed
As many of you may know, our friends at the National Issues Forums Institute have been engaged in an ongoing national dialogue series based on one of their latest issue guides titled “Shaping Our Future: How Should Higher Education Help Us Create the Society We Want?” The guide has been helping facilitate conversations across the country about how our nation’s colleges and university systems should be changing and what role they should play in our society’s future. The series has continued to move forward, and we wanted to bring your attention to NIFI’s most recent update on the project.
Here’s an excerpt:
This spring is prime time for forums in all kinds of settings: Bellaire High School in Texas, Kansas State’s Alumni Center, North Carolina’s Campus Compact, Alabama’s Miles College, Victoria Falls (MD) OSHER Learning Center, and Cincinnati’s Open Stacks Book Club are just a few of the diverse organizations that have recently hosted forums-or will be hosting one in the next few weeks.
April and May are the perfect time to get the conversation going in your community. In cooperation with the American Commonwealth Partnership, National Issues Forums Institute (NIFI) is offering a suite of materials to support you in hosting a citizen deliberation, including:
- Well-tested, well-designed materials are easily available. There’s a video discussion starter, print issue guide, and participant questionnaire. You can download them for free.
- Take advantage of a moderator training webinar, conducted by Ellen Knutson of Northwestern University’s Center for Civic Engagement. There’s also a print planning and moderator’s guide.
- Find out why it’s so important to have this discussion now. You can hear from Kettering Foundation President David Mathews is crucial to higher education’s future and watch the September DC kick-off event featuring U.S. Undersecretary of Education Martha Kanter and Harry Boyte of the American Commonwealth Partnership.
NIF continues to seek out groups that are looking to host conversations around higher education, so please see the full post for more details on how you can be involved: www.nifi.org/news/news_detail.aspx?itemID=23853&catID=23664.
