The faculty-driven grant program supports endeavors to incorporate dialogue across difference into the classroom and campus life
By Hub staff report
/ Published Feb 4, 2025
Johns Hopkins University is launching the second award cycle for its Dialogue Innovation Fund, a universitywide grant program for faculty endeavors supporting the values and norms of dialogue across difference.
Applications are due March 17 for faculty proposals to teach, model, and incorporate engagement across diverse perspectives into the classroom and campus life.
The fund is part of a new suite of initiatives announced in fall 2024 by President Ron Daniels and Provost Ray Jayawardhana to foster dialogue and the reasoned exchange of ideas across the Hopkins community.
Related programming includes the university's new partnership with Open to Debate to host a flagship series of eight live debates over the next two years in Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, and Conflict in the Middle East: Contexts and Ramifications, a series of conversations coordinated by the Krieger School's Alexander Grass Humanities Institute to provide in-depth analysis focusing on historical roots, current dynamics, and potential pathways to peace.
Two proposals recently were awarded funding during the first award cycle:
Bridging the Divide: Fostering Constructive Dialogue on Religion and Science at Johns Hopkins University, a year-long seminar series and reading group to engage scientists, religious leaders, faculty, and students in constructive dialogue around the need for engagement of both scientific and religious communities to achieve collective aims of healthy and flourishing communities, led by Bloomberg School of Public Health faculty Johnathon Ehsani, associate professor in the departments of Health and Policy Management and Health, Behavior, and Society, and Beth Resnick, assistant dean for practice and training practice professor. Curating the Classroom: Leveraging Arts-based Pedagogy to Stimulate Dialogue Across Differences, a project to empower faculty across disciplines to integrate the arts into the classroom to help students learn the skills of expression and productive discussion and reduce self-censorship, led by Margaret S. Chisolm, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the School of Medicine, with a secondary appointment in the Department of Internal Medicine; Mariah L. Robertson, assistant professor of medicine at the School of Medicine with a joint appointment at the Bloomberg School of Public Health; and Kamna Balhara, an associate professor of emergency medicine with a dual appointment in the Program in Medicine, Science, and the Humanities at the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences..
The program is open to any full-time Johns Hopkins faculty member. Proposals from all academic and professional disciplines within JHU are welcome; applicants are encouraged to partner with staff members, students, or non-affiliates as appropriate in developing and submitting their proposals. A committee of faculty from across the university will review the proposals, with grants of up to $25,000 available for an award term of up to one year.
The anticipated start date for this round of funding is June 1. Proposals and questions about the program should be directed to the Provost's Office at [email protected].
Posted in University News