DCI Posts

Apply Today to Become a 2025-26 DCI Student Felllow!

April 8, 2025 by Graham Bullock

Each year, the DCI selects 12-15 students to serve as Deliberative Citizenship Fellows. These fellows spend the year playing a leadership role in the initiative. They immerse themselves in deliberative theory and methods, help choose the issues for the year’s focus, facilitate robust deliberations on those issues, and reflect on and document their experiences as sponsors of these discussions.

Applications for the 2025-26 Fellowship Program are now open. All Davidson students are welcome to apply. To submit your application, please complete the ‘Deliberative Citizenship Initiative – Fellows Application’ form on WildcatSync. The priority application deadline is May 9. Applications will remain open and new submissions accepted on a rolling basis until all positions have been filled by qualified candidates. To learn more and apply for this opportunity, check out the short videos about the program that features several of the DCI’s past fellows and the additional information below.

2025-25 Fellows Share Their Thoughts on the DCI Fellows Program

2023-24 Fellows Share Their Thoughts on the DCI Fellows Program

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DCI-Fellows-2025-26-Job-Description

Event Recap: The DCI’s Fourth Deliberative Pedagogy Faculty Panel

April 6, 2025 by Graham Bullock

Faculty members with wide range of backgrounds and expertise have participated in the DCI’s Deliberative Pedagogy (DeeP) Collaborative, and this diversity was highlighted in our recent DeeP Faculty Panel and Lunch. Professors who have embedded deliberation on difficult topics in courses on contemporary economic issues, sports communication, the philosophy of love and sex, and race on film all shared their deliberative pedagogy approaches and discussed both their successes and where they want to continue to improve in the future.

On Thursday, March 20 from 11:05 am to 12:15 pm, Professors Maggie McCarthy (German Studies, Davidson College), Rebecca Alt (Communications, Lenoir-Rhyne College), Rebecca Harrison (Philosophy, Vassar College), and Shyam Gouri Suresh (Economics, Davidson College) shared their work as members of the Deliberative Pedagogy (DeeP) Collaborative. Over 60 faculty members from 18 different institutions have participated in the Collaborative, which enables professors from across the humanities, natural sciences, and social sciences to work together on developing and implementing innovative ways to stimulate deeper discussions in their courses.

photo of in-person and virtual panelists

Nearly 40 people (22 online and 15 in-person) attended the panel and were able to ask questions of the panelists about their courses. You can watch the video below of the panel discussion moderated by Professor Graham Bullock, Faculty Director of the DCI. To learn more about the Deliberative Pedagogy Collaborative, the DCI’s Deliberation Across the Curriculum Program, and the upcoming panel, check out the attached flyer, this webpage, and these blog posts by faculty members who have participated in the Collaborative over the past two years.

You can start with these blog posts by the four faculty members who participated in this panel discussion:

Deliberative Discussions in Class “Bridge the Gap between Film and Reality”

Maggie McCarthy, Davidson College

Deliberative Discussions in Class “Bridge the Gap between Film and Reality”

From Skeptic to Advocate: The Power of Deliberation in Economics Education

Shyam Gouri Suresh

From Skeptic to Advocate: The Power of Deliberation in Economics Education

From “Small Group Discussions” to Micro-Deliberations: Transforming Everyday Student-Centered Discussion

Rebecca Harrison, Vassar College

From “Small Group Discussions” to Micro-Deliberations: Transforming Everyday Student-Centered Discussion

Tackling Difficult Conversations in the Classroom: Sport as a Barrier-Breaker

Rebecca Alt, Lenoir-Rhyne University

Tackling Difficult Conversations in the Classroom: Sport as a Barrier-Breaker

Event Recap: Campus Conversation on the Honor Code

April 6, 2025 by Graham Bullock

Honor and academic integrity were the focus of a campus conversation co-hosted by the Deliberative Citizenship Initiative (DCI), Honor Council, Student Government Association (SGA), and the Office of the Vice President of Student Life. Over 50 students, faculty, and staff gathered to deliberate about how a more robust culture of academic integrity can be created at Davidson. Held on Thursday, March 27 from 5:00 to 7:00 PM in the Lilly Gallery, the event complemented the Celebration of Honor held earlier in the month.

As participants got their plates of food provided by Much Ado Catering, the forum began with a presentation about the honor code from the Chair and Vice Chair of the Honor Council. Participants were quickly invited to dive into roundtable discussions guided by the DCI’s fellows and a deliberation guide written by the event’s student organizers, DCI Senior Fellow and Co-Convener LJ Phillips ’25 and DCI Fellows Isabella Neri ’27 and Cavan Klein ’27 (shown left).

You can check out the deliberation guide below, which provides some useful background about the nature of academic integrity, Davidson’s Honor Code, current perceptions of campus academic culture, and ideas for improving that culture in the future.

Honor-Code-Deliberation-Guide

Check out some more photos of the event below…

Event Recap: Deliberating about the Legacies of War

April 6, 2025 by Luna Noguchi

photo of deliberative event with screen in the background

Luna Noguchi ’25 (DCI Fellow)

On March 5, the DCI invited students, faculty, and staff together to a forum entitled “Lessons of War, Prospects for Peace: What should we say about the legacies of World War II in the Asia-Pacific region?” It served to provide some historical background for the Ginkgo trees planted in Spring 2024 between Chambers, Wall, and the Library. Co-sponsored with the History Department, East Asian Studies Department, Political Science Department, and the Office of the Vice President of Academic Affairs (VPAA), the event presented the history of World War II in the Asia Pacific with attention to historical controversies, while encouraging reflection on the universal human cost of war beyond regional or political divisions.

The Ginkgo trees were contextualized with informative presentations from Dr. Kristi Multhaup, Dr. Dáša Mortensen, and Dr. Keren Zhu. Dr. Multhaup, whose research focuses on memory, outlined the lasting memory of WWII in the Asia Pacific and her initiative to bring the Ginkgo trees to campus during her participation in the ASIANetwork in Japan in 2016. Dr. Mortensen provided a broad historical perspective of the war in the region, shedding light on the atrocities that occurred. Dr. Zhu gave a presentation on the causes and consequences of war through an international relations perspective. The presentations provided participants with a nuanced and inclusive understanding of the complexities of war. Participants also had the opportunity to watch a compilation of testimonials provided by survivors of WWII from across the Asia-Pacific region in a video created by Keya Zhou ’25, one of the event’s organizers.

In the second half of the event, participants — over dinner provided by local pan-Asian restaurant Sabi with support from the VPAA’s office — engaged in deliberations facilitated by DCI Fellows and guided by a deliberation guide (see below) developed by the event’s organizing team. The goal was to discuss the legacies of WWII in the Asia Pacific and foster meaningful conversation about the inhumanity of war’s moral atrocities. The forum was also intended to generate ideas for interpretive materials for the Ginkgo trees. As the discussions proceeded, fellows asked participants to write their ideas on post-it notes, stick them to a large sheet of paper, and explain their thought processes. Fellows made notes on the paper and moved the post-it notes around to indicate shared conclusions. Online participants shared their thoughts using Zoom’s whiteboard function in their breakout rooms.

Over 35 Davidson students, faculty, staff, community members, and alumni attended the event (24 in person and 14 online), and they included participants who had ties to countries throughout the region. The organizing team, which consists of Keya Zhou ’25, Luna Noguchi ’25, Flo Moser ’26, Romeo Norris ’27, Casey Scheiner ’28, Lily Ogawa ’28, and Dr. Graham Bullock, is currently in the process of collating and synthesizing the comments and ideas from both the post-it notes and submissions made to an anonymous online form that was shared with the participants. They will incorporate this input from the Davidson community into a proposal for how to introduce and contextualize the Ginkgo trees that have been planted on campus. Stay tuned for more info coming soon!

DCI-WWII-in-the-Asia-Pacific-Deliberation-Guide

A Campus Conversation about the Honor Code

March 1, 2025 by Graham Bullock

Academic integrity is a core value at Davidson College, shaping our community’s commitment to honesty, trust, and responsibility in scholarship. But what does a robust culture of academic integrity truly look like? How do we define it, how well does it align with Davidson’s current academic culture, and what steps—if any—should we take to strengthen it?

Join the Deliberative Citizenship Initiative (DCI), Honor Council, Student Government Association (SGA), and the Office of the Vice President of Student Life for a Campus Conversation on Academic Integrity on Thursday, March 27 from 5:00 to 7:00 PM in the Lilly Gallery. This event will complement and build on the Celebration of Honor earlier in the month and offers an opportunity for students, faculty, and staff to come together in meaningful discussion about the role of academic integrity at Davidson.

The forum will begin with a brief update about Davidson’s honor code from the Honor Council, but the majority of the evening will be dedicated to roundtable discussions among students, faculty, and staff. Participants will consider:

What does academic integrity mean in practice?
What is Davidson’s current culture around academic integrity?
Should strengthening academic integrity be a priority, and if so, how?
How should we respond to challenges like cheating and plagiarism?

The conversation will be guided by a deliberation framework developed by DCI Senior Fellow and Co-Convener LJ Phillips ’25 and DCI Fellows Isabella Neri ’27 and Cavan Klein ’27, with support from DCI Faculty Director Graham Bullock. A deliberation guide will be shared with all participants in advance to provide background information and key discussion questions.

This forum is open only to Davidson students, faculty, and staff, and registration is required as dinner will be provided. Come be part of this important conversation and help shape the future of academic integrity at Davidson.