The first cohort of Dialogue across Difference (DaD) Faculty Fellows was honored at a celebration on June 6, following their successful completion of the year-long program. The program is a partnership between the UCLA Teaching and Learning Center (TLC) and the Dialogue across Difference (DaD) Initiative, housed within the Bedari Kindness Institute. This special event marked the culmination of the 2024-2025 academic year activities.
The DaD Faculty Fellows program supports instructors in facilitating complex classroom conversations that acknowledge and honor differences in lived experiences, cultural backgrounds, and perspectives. Working with a community of colleagues, the fellows practice a range of dialogue skills and learn teaching strategies to create a supportive classroom setting that advances key learning objectives. This active collaboration equips instructors to integrate the DaD Initiative’s five values of intellectual engagement, curiosity, empathy, active listening, and critical thinking into their courses.
For the DaD Initiative’s organizers, the completion of the first Faculty Fellows cohort comes at a time when engaging with different perspectives is most needed.
“Over the years, we’ve lost a lot of the muscle needed to listen to and to engage in dialogue,” noted David Myers, the Sady and Ludwig Kahn Chair in Jewish History and Director of the Bedari Kindness Institute. He emphasized that higher education’s ability to develop understanding around complex issues relies on classroom settings where differences can be explored. “The university depends on friction and dialogue to develop knowledge … we have an obligation to foster, model, and export this mode of engagement.”
At the June 6 event, fellows from the first cohort celebrated the community they formed during their time together and shared stories highlighting the program’s personal impact. Many noted the value of getting to learn from fellow faculty on how to engage in productive dialogue.
“This has been one of the most impactful things I’ve been part of as faculty,” shared Faculty Fellow Natasha Wheaton, Assistant Dean for Curricular Affairs and Associate Clinical Professor in the David Geffen School of Medicine. A self-described argumentative person, Wheaton shared that she came into the program thinking that dialogue was meant to sway people to adopt a different position on an issue. Throughout its course, she came to value dialogue itself as a powerful tool for establishing genuine connection with others even if the underlying difference persists.
“The Dialogue across Difference program brings community together, and you start to see your commonalities,” she noted.
Other faculty fellows recounted how, despite initial reservations, they came to see the valuable role dialogue can play in a university setting.
“The history of medicine is riddled with well-meaning but ineffective work,” said Faculty Fellow Jonathan Heldt, Assistant Clinical Professor and Psychiatry Residency Director in the David Geffen School of Medicine, when recalling his initial skepticism of the program. “I am walking away convinced that dialogue can have an impact.” Heldt also detailed how the principles of dialogue had played out in his department during monthly meetings where attendees discuss a controversial topic together.
In supporting instructors’ adoption of evidence-based dialogic frameworks for instruction, the DaD Faculty Fellows program highlights how educational innovation remains a key priority at UCLA. The elevation of teaching is outlined as Goal 4 of the Strategic Plan, underscoring the vital role that creating a welcoming learning environment plays in the university’s ongoing success.
“We see it as an important lever of change to create classrooms that are more open to all,” emphasized Vice Provost for Teaching and Learning Erin Sanders O’Leary. “These have to be spaces where students can understand different experiences and perspectives and interrogate their own assumptions.”
The DaD Initiative was launched by Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Darnell Hunt in January 2023. At the culmination event, he thanked the fellows for their commitment to advancing the program as well as for actively demonstrating the UCLA True Bruin Values and principles of community.
“Naming our values is easy–living them is the hard part,” he said. “We need these values to be more than aspirations for our students to see them in practice in our classrooms.”
As the first cohort reflects on their experiences and carries on the program’s lessons in their classrooms, the TLC and DaD Initiative welcomes the second cohort of DaD Faculty Fellows for the 2025-26 academic year. These new participants will spend the year working together and learning best practices that foster an engaging and open classroom environment.
Visit the TLC website for more information about the DaD Faculty Fellows program. For updates about the DaD Initiative, which is housed in the Bedari Kindness Institute, visit the Institute’s website.