Engaging Community: A Toolkit for Reciprocal Teaching and Learning Beyond the Campus, co-published by AAC&U and Campus Compact and authored by Nicholas V. Longo, Carmine Perrotti, and Matthew Roy, is a free, open-access resource designed to help educators build authentic, reciprocal partnerships between campuses and communities. Organized into six modules, the toolkit moves from storytelling and asset-based community mapping through critical reflection and partnership-building to a dedicated module on facilitating dialogue and bridging divides, pairing each with lesson plans, videos, readings, and interactive activities. Its practical tools, including case scenarios, curriculum design worksheets, and assessment instruments, give faculty and program leaders concrete starting points for translating reciprocity from concept into classroom and community practice. By centering shared learning and mutual accountability between institutions and the communities they partner with, the toolkit offers NCDD's network a rigorously developed resource for advancing dialogue, equity, and collaborative civic engagement within higher education.

Catalyst, an open-access journal hosted by Wake Forest University's Z. Smith Reynolds Library, is accepting submissions for its second issue, themed "Our Democratic Imagination," guest edited by Dr. Tim Eatman of Rutgers University–Newark. The call frames America's approaching 250th anniversary as an opening for both critical reckoning and visionary imagination, inviting work that connects community-engaged scholarship to deliberative dialogue, trauma-informed civic repair, and the affective dimensions of civic life such as hope and joy. The journal explicitly welcomes contributions from community practitioners and authors without traditional academic credentials, alongside scholarly work, and charges no submission or publication fees. Submissions are open now through December 31, with authors notified by February 28 and publication expected in summer. This call offers NCDD's network of practitioners and scholars a timely, accessible venue for contributing original thinking on dialogue, deliberation, and democratic renewal to a broader public conversation.

​Jason Vadnos, a Vanderbilt University student and contributor to the State of the Student Vote Substack, examines what existing research can tell us about the long-term impact of student voter engagement work in a May 2026 article. Drawing on decades of service-learning and civic engagement studies, Vadnos argues that high-quality, reflective civic work in college is consistently linked to later careers in public service, nonprofit leadership, and civic life, even though direct evidence specific to nonpartisan student voter mobilization remains thin. He points to a practical takeaway for practitioners now: programs that build in structured reflection, mentorship, and explicit connections to civic identity produce more durable outcomes than turnout numbers alone can show. His call to invest in better data collection on these programs speaks directly to NCDD's mission of strengthening the infrastructure and practice of dialogue, deliberation, and civic engagement across generations.

​Project Pericles' Deliberative Dialogue Module is a set of open, adaptable teaching tools that help college faculty connect course content to real civic questions and guide students through structured deliberation on public issues. Built on the Kettering Foundation's understanding of deliberative dialogue as a way to think together rather than to debate or force consensus, the module frames classroom conversation as preparation for civic and electoral participation. It includes a faculty facilitator guide, a library of sixteen discussion topics spanning disciplines from computer science to public health, and guidance on crafting non-partisan issue stances that open multiple perspectives rather than collapsing into an us-versus-them split. The approach draws on evaluated workshop models and centers skills the dialogue field values, including active listening, critical thinking, and finding common ground across difference. By treating every discipline as a doorway to public questions, the module extends deliberative practice into higher education in a way that speaks directly to NCDD's mission of strengthening democracy through better public conversation.

​Wesleyan University has received a $250,000 grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to expand Democracy250, a national, nonpartisan initiative preparing undergraduates to do the practical work of sustaining free and fair elections. Supported by Wesleyan's Allbritton Center for the Study of Public Life, the program places students in national cohorts drawn from diverse institutions, where they collaborate with election offices, civic organizations, and public partners on voter education and access, election security, public communications, research, and policy. The emphasis is participatory rather than observational, training students not merely to inherit democratic institutions but to help strengthen and maintain the systems that make them work. Democracy250 is the first action under Renewing Democracy's Promise, Wesleyan's broader effort to make democratic participation more accessible and to connect campuses, educators, artists, journalists, and communities across lines of division. For the NCDD network, the initiative is a well-funded model of higher education mobilizing students around the infrastructure of democracy, complementing the field's work on dialogue and deliberation.

The SFU Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue hosted the inaugural Demshot Challenge on April 10, 2026, bringing together students from across disciplines to develop and pitch innovative responses to AI-driven misinformation, declining public trust, and political polarization. Winning proposals addressed local journalism, deliberative online dialogue, media bias, voter participation, and policy-first voting. After months of workshops in democratic theory, storytelling, and civic engagement, students presented research-backed, implementation-ready solutions to an expert panel. The initiative advances NCDD's mission by empowering young people as active contributors to democratic renewal.

The Kettering Foundation's Democracy and Community focus area will host the 2026 Summer Institute of Civic Studies at its Dayton, Ohio campus August 2–8 — an intensive interdisciplinary seminar bringing together faculty, graduate students, and civic practitioners for a week of seminar-style discussion, community engagement, and deep inquiry into the literature and practice of civic studies and democratic community-building. The Institute, which has been taught and hosted in locations across the U.S. and Europe since 2009, centers framing questions about collaborative problem-solving, value disagreements, power disparities, and the institutional conditions for civic engagement — topics central to the dialogue and deliberation field. Participation is free, with food provided and limited travel stipends available, though the 2026 application window has closed. This gathering represents a vital node in the intellectual and practitioner network that NCDD's mission supports, and NCDD members are encouraged to follow the Kettering Foundation for future SICS opportunities.

UConn's Democracy and Dialogues Initiative, co-directed by History Professor Brendan Kane and Nana Amos of the Gladstein Family Human Rights Institute, hosted a four-hour student retreat in March 2026 that equipped campus leaders with practical tools for facilitating constructive dialogue across difference. Drawing on frameworks developed in partnership with Essential Partners and Everyday Democracy, the program grounds participants in the neuroscience of conflict response and trains them to move from defensive reaction toward reflective, curiosity-driven communication. The retreat's peer facilitation model — combining structured listening exercises, role plays, and real-time practice — offers a replicable approach for higher education institutions seeking to build dialogue capacity among student leaders. This work directly advances NCDD's mission by embedding dialogue and deliberation skills into campus culture at a moment when civic communication competencies are urgently needed.

Dialogue Vanderbilt hosted The Dialogue CoLab on May 21–22, 2026, bringing together nearly thirty colleges and universities — ranging from Ivy League institutions to community colleges — for a national working summit focused on practical strategies for advancing campus dialogue, deliberation, and civil discourse. Directed by faculty director Sarah Igo and supported by the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, the CoLab is structured as a peer learning exchange rather than a traditional conference, enabling institutions with widely different student populations and campus cultures to honestly compare what they are trying, what students are responding to, and where challenges persist. Participating campuses have implemented a range of approaches — from dialogue-integrated student employment programs to faculty fellowships and structured deliberation models — and the summit creates space for those experiments to inform one another across institutional contexts. For NCDD members in higher education, the Dialogue CoLab offers both a model of field-building peer exchange and evidence of the growing momentum behind campus-based dialogue and deliberation work nationwide.