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Two accomplished faculty, Anne Becher and Nina Molinaro, have been selected for the 2019-20 CU Dialogues Faculty Fellowship. This new fellowship was created to provide summer funding and support for study and course development to a faculty member (or members) interested in integrating dialogue practice and principles into their teaching.

After participating in the CU Dialogues program for several semesters, Becher (Senior Instructor, Spanish and Portuguese, M.A. in Hispanic Linguistics) and Molinaro (Associate Professor, Spanish and Portuguese, Ph.D. Hispanic Literature) decided to apply to the fellowship and were selected by the committee to receive (and share) this year’s award. Both faculty are excited to find new ways to integrate the principles of communicating across difference and conducting classroom dialogues into their teaching and research.

“Because we each had an inspirational and informative experience with the CU Dialogues Program in our undergraduate Spanish classes, we were eager to deepen our understanding of the process, to engage in community with the CU Dialogues staff, to collaborate in course design and on potential research projects, and to see how the dialogic method might enrich our particular discipline, curricula, and teaching practices,” state Becher and Molinaro.

Their project is a multi-phase endeavor aimed towards incorporating the dialogic practice more intrinsically into the undergraduate writing class that they both teach (SPAN 3010), as well as to potentially introduce elements of the dialogic practice into other relevant courses in ��ƷSM����ӰƬ’s SPAN major and minor. 

Becher and Molinaro are excited for the opportunity to be part of a devleoping community of practice with CU Dialogues staff and faculty members, as well as interested faculty and graduate students in their own department. “We have begun to meet with the CU Dialogues staff and we look forward to integrating our departmental colleagues in the near future,” they said. 

“We strongly believe that the CU Dialogues Program teaches the skills embodied in the Colorado Creed (). As members of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, we are committed to inclusive excellence and to helping our students learn how to effectively communicate across difference(s). This fellowship will help us to develop critical skills and practices in order to better serve our students, the university community, and beyond,” said Becher and Molinaro.

For more information on the CU Dialogues Faculty Fellowship click here. The Fellowship was conceptualized and funded by Dr. Ellen Aiken, who is a retired CU faculty member and former co-director of the CU Dialogues Program. The call for applications for next summer’s Fellowship will open in the fall 2019.