How can students engage in generative conversations through conflict and crisis? Join a conversation led by Professor Sarah Lappas on student strategies for engaging controversial topics in the classroom. The event takes place at Kresge Town Hall on Wednesday October 10th, 2018. Catered dinner from India Joze will be served at 7pm, and the presentation and discussion will begin at 7:30pm. 

Higher education models are evolving to center student contributions and encourage active learning, placing undergraduate students at the nucleus of the most important social, political, and technological questions of our era. As Americans become increasingly siloed in echo chambers of political agreement, the role of higher education institutions as places where politically charged issues can be explored in all of their depth, nuance, and complexity is more critical than ever. How can students meet the urgency of this political and educational moment while fostering the curiosity, generosity, and reflexivity necessary for deep and disruptive learning? This workshop engages undergraduate students in a guided dialogue exploring best practices for engaging controversial material in the classroom. We will uncover strategies for challenging traditional models and long-held beliefs in ways that build community and confront inequity.

Dr. Sarah Lappas is an award-winning educator and facilitator dedicated to fostering learning environments that leverage the apparently intractable conflicts and greatest divides in American culture as our best opportunities for learning, transformation, and growth. As the 2017–18 Culture and Activism Fellow at the UC Berkeley American Cultures Center, Dr. Lappas spearheaded a campus climate survey on classroom conflict, culminating in a workshop that brought faculty and students together to discuss strategies for creating classroom environments that foster the generative educational potential of conflict. As a Chancellor’s Public Scholar at UC Berkeley, Dr. Lappas designed original courses and community partnerships that provided comparative and integrative analyses of race, ethnicity, and culture in the United States, dynamically analyzing these formations across time and space in traditional classroom settings and beyond. She has designed and taught original courses at UC Berkeley, UC Davis, and Sacramento State University, where she currently teaches courses on the intersection of popular music and the American racial imagination.

Hosted by Common Ground Center, Kresge College, the Center for Innovations in Teaching and Learning, and the Division of Student Success.