Fellow & Facilitator

Dr. Chris Godsey's charge as the 2019 University of Minnesota Center for Educational Innovation Faculty Teaching Fellow at UMD is to create and lead teaching-focused faculty development opportunities that complement UMD Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning programming and other efforts to help all UMD educators become more mindful and effective in their work.

Since the late 1990s Dr. Godsey has taught first-year and upper-division composition, first-year-seminar, and occasional cultural studies courses. He completed his Doctorate of Education in Teaching and Learning in December 2017. His autoethnographic dissertation — Making a Big Deal out of Nothing: White Supremacy, Patriarchy, and Teacher Preeminence — examines self-awareness and teaching insights he built during nine years of co-facilitating critical dialogue among men arrested for using violence against women.

The critical-dialogue process practiced in that battering-intervention work is based on concepts described by Brazilian educator Paulo Freire in his book Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Dr. Godsey's experiences and inquiry have taught him that mindful critical dialogue is an invaluable method for helping human beings in any context build and learn how to apply self-awareness about their often unexamined actions, intentions, and beliefs.

• "Godsey Named Faculty Teaching Fellow" from UMD News
• University of Minnesota Brief that includes a 2019 Critical Dialogues announcement

Contact: cgodsey@d.umn.edu