Get Involved

Students

Faculty

Student Involvement

Constructive Dialogue Badge

• The Constructive Dialogue Badge equips students with knowledge and skills to engage in better conversations even when you disagree. Through online and in-person training along with personal reflection, students will better understand the psychological and metacognitive factors that shape how and why people disagree, learn skills to engage in conversations across differences and put those skills into practice.
• LEARNING OBJECTIVES Students will:
  • Better understand why we disagree
  • Better understand why it's hard to have good conversations when we disagree
  • Develop skills to better listen to those you disagree with, including showing respect, curiosity and non-judgement
  • Develop skills for better conversation, including asking curious questions
• To earn the Badge, students will:
  • Complete online Perspectives modules
  • Participate in a 2-hour in-person workshop to develop and practice skills for better conversation
  • Submit a short reflection on their learning
• If you are interested in completing the Badge as an individual or offering the Badge through a course or program, please email cce@binghamton.edu. 

Student Organization Uncommon Grounds

• • Uncommon Grounds hosts meetings open to all students with unique activities to practice civil dialogue 

  • Spring semester meeting time: Monday, 7:30 – 9:00 p.m.

  • Join the OPI GroupMe for updates and meeting locations:
  • Follow Uncommon Grounds on Instagram to stay up to date!

Faculty Involvement

Applications Open for 2025-2026 Civil Dialogue Teaching Fellows 

• The Civil Dialogue Teaching Fellows program guides faculty in the design and implementation of course content that facilitates student practice of civil dialogue. Selected faculty will receive a stipend and meet several times throughout the academic year to explore how classroom activities can support student development of skills necessary to engage in dialogue about meaningful topics with people holding different points of view. Sessions will focus both on understanding relevant theoretical frameworks and on applying practices within the classroom setting. 

  The program is open to full-time faculty of every rank and discipline. Fellows will receive a stipend of $2,000 and are expected to integrate civil dialogue into at least one of their courses at the conclusion of their fellowship experience.

  Applications for the 2025-2026 cohort are due by 5p.m. on Friday, June 6, 2025. Submit your application here. 

  For more information, contact Alison Twang, PhD, director, Center for Civic Engagement at atwang@binghamton.edu. 

• Civil Dialogue Teaching Fellows

  Sean Dunwoody
  Associate Professor
  History and Medieval & Early Modern Studies
  Sean Dunwoody is a historian of early modern Europe, with a research specialization in the German-speaking lands (Holy Roman Empire) in the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century. His current book project examines the role played by religious and political emotions in securing and challenging peaceful coexistence between Protestants and Catholics in the imperial city of Augsburg in the later sixteenth century.

  Stacey Shipe
  Assistant Professor
  Social Work
  Stacey Shipe is an assistant professor in the Department of Social Work. Using her practice experience as an administrator in an urban child welfare system, Shipe’s research focuses primarily on organizational culture and its influence on the decision making of front line caseworkers and how these decisions ultimately impact family outcomes. 

  Lubna Omar
  Lecturer
  Anthropology
  Omar is a zooarchaeologist whose research and teaching interests broadly focus on the archaeology of human and animal relations, including complex societies in the Near East and the emergence of Urban economies and subsistence resources in prehistoric and historical settlements. 

  Cheri Robinson
  Lecturer of Spanish
  Romance Languages and Literatures
  Cheri Robinson’s research is transnational and interdisciplinary in nature with primary foci in cultural studies, film and literature in 20th and 21st-century Latin America. Other relevant research has focused on physical and theoretical aspects of borderlands and frontiers, representational strategies using child and adolescent protagonists, and intersections between the Holocaust and Latin America. 

  Dana Stewart
  Associate Professor of Italian; Collegiate Professor of Mountainview
  Romance Languages/Res Life
  Dana Stewart received her PhD and her MA in Italian from Stanford University and her BA in French from the University of Southern California. She is an active member of Binghamton’s Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (CEMERS) and serves on the Advisory Board for the Center’s journal, Mediaevalia (for which she previously served as Editor-in-Chief). 

  Chris Davey
  Visiting Assistant Professor
  Institute for Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention
  Davey has been involved in Utah Valley University's Peace and Justice Studies program as Associate Director. Davey’s dissertation addressed the relationship between genocide, narrative and identity formation among Banyamulenge soldiers from eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. From 2021 to 2023 he have conducted research and taught at the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University as the Charles E. Scheidt Visiting Assistant Professor of Genocide Studies and Prevention. 

  Matthew Cole
  Visiting Assistant Professor of Humanities and Social Sciences
  Source Project (External Scholarships and Undergraduate Research Center)
  Matthew Cole is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Humanities and Social Sciences. He received his PhD in Political Science from Duke University and his BA in Political Science from Carleton College. Before joining Binghamton, he taught at Harvard University, Emerson College, and Duke University, where his classes covered topics in political science, history, ethics, interdisciplinary studies, and expository writing. 

  Megan Benson
  Assistant Head of Instruction and Outreach
  Libraries
  Megan Benson joined Binghamton University Libraries in August 2018 as the Instructional Outreach Librarian. She teaches UNIV 180A Critical Research Skills and is in charge of the Libraries social media accounts, @bingulibraries. Prior to coming to Binghamton, Megan received her master’s degree in history from the University of Nebraska – Lincoln where she studied Medieval and Early Modern British women. 

  Sarah Ford
  Lecturer
  Digital and Data Studies
  Dr. Ford is a lecturer in digital and data studies at Binghamton University. Her work focuses on the way that online spaces shape people's behavior, particularly the way that online spaces shape the social behaviors and political beliefs of fans.
  

  John Cheng
  Associate Professor
  Asian and Asian American Studies
  John Cheng is a historian of modern America and the history of science and technology. His book, Astounding Wonder (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), explores the emergence of science fiction as a popular cultural genre in interwar America and its relationship to popular science, and was selected by Locus Magazine for its 2012 Recommended Reading list.

  Tina Chronopoulos
  Associate Professor Classics and Medieval Studies
  Middle Eastern and Ancient Mediterranean Studies
  Tina Chronopoulos is a British-infused Greco-German transplant whose research and teaching interests range all over the Mediterranean and span more than a millennium, from Greco-Roman antiquity to the medieval period and beyond. Trained by old-school philologists, she enjoys deep dives into libraries and archives, as well as close readings of texts, contexts, and medieval manuscripts. 

  Will Glovinsky
  Visiting Assistant Professor of Humanities
  External Scholarships and Undergraduate Research / Source Project
  Will Glovinsky is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Humanities. Before arriving at Binghamton, he was a lecturer in English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, where he received his PhD. A specialist in 19th-century British literature, he is revising his first book on the regulation of feeling in realist novels and imperial culture. His next project explores how the idea of universal basic income—or giving cash regularly to everyone—emerged in 18th- and 19th-century tavern ballads, dialogues, essays, and novels.

  Gina Glasman
  Lecturer
  Judaic Studies
  Gina Glasman is a London born American immigrant, now resident in Binghamton, New York. She has had a life-long interest in the study of Yiddish society and its urban culture, that has roots in her own biography, as the grandchild of Yiddish speaking immigrants to London

Civil Dialogue Faculty Teaching and Research Grants

• Civil Dialogue Faculty Teaching and Research Grants are available to support full-time faculty of any rank and discipline with up to $5,000 in funding for expenses that contribute to and expand upon the civil dialogue initiative. Grants are intended to strengthen student skill-building to engage in meaningful dialogue across differences, provide opportunities for students to put these skills into practice, support faculty in the development of relevant pedagogical approaches, contribute to research on civil dialogue, and more.
• Allowable expenses include but are not limited to: supplies or materials for events, research stipends, research participant incentives, honoraria for speakers, training expenses, travel or field trip expenses, and more.  
• Grants applications are accepted on a rolling basis. To apply, complete this form.
• For more information, contact Alison Twang, PhD, director, Center for Civic Engagement at atwang@binghamton.edu.