As polarization reshapes campus life, colleges face a growing imperative: how can institutions prepare students to engage across difference, not by avoiding hard conversations but by leaning into them with empathy, skill, and purpose?

Engaging Students Across Difference offers a timely, evidence-based framework for transforming everyday campus interactions into opportunities for curiosity, understanding, and connection. Grounded in behavioral science and informed by interviews with educators and students nationwide, this guide offers practical, replicable design principles that institutions can use to embed dialogue into the fabric of college life.

What’s Inside the Guide

Make Dialogue Practical

Dialogue is most powerful when integrated into action. From peer leadership roles and team projects to mentoring programs, students sharpen communication skills when dialogue becomes part of “doing.” These experiential formats support both academic growth and emotional intelligence.

Make Dialogue Reflective

Dialogue deepens when students explore personal narratives. Structured reflection, including identity exploration and storytelling, fosters self-awareness and reduces defensiveness. Guided conversations that center lived experience can transform disagreement into mutual respect.

Scaffold Dialogue Skills

Dialogue is not innate; it is a skill that grows with practice. The most effective programs provide preparation, coaching, real-time feedback, and post-dialogue reflection. These tools help students persist through tension and build confidence over time.

Make Dialogue Low Stakes

Students engage more readily when the pressure is low and the environment feels safe. Formats like craft nights, film discussions, or faculty-student Q&As create inviting spaces where disagreement is possible without becoming polarizing. Humor, informality, and creativity help defuse tension and encourage sustained participation.

Real-World Case Studies

Drawing from initiatives at the University of Virginia, College of Charleston, Providence College, and the University of Michigan Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, the guide demonstrates how tone, structure, and framing can influence who feels welcome to participate and how authentically they engage.

Who Should Read This Guide?

• Faculty seeking to enrich classroom culture

• Student affairs professionals designing co-curricular programming

• Campus leaders embedding dialogue throughout student life

Whether you are launching a new initiative or refining an existing one, download this report to find practical strategies to help build communities of curiosity, trust, and connection.