Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Once your college or university confirms its intention to attend via pre-registration, you will receive an invitation to register through a provided link. 

As part of the registration process, institutional teams will be asked to identify an activity, tool, or approach they would like to share at the convening. 

We will make use of a waitlist if the conference is oversubscribed.

Contact ProjectsforPeace@Middlebury.edu with questions.

One faculty or staff member from each invited institution, with ideally two or three affiliated students. If only one student is available, that’s okay. If you have more than three possible student attendees, let us know - we will develop a waitlist and will let you know if there is space for additional students closer to the event.

Both undergraduate and graduate students are welcome.

Projects for Peace grantees from 2024 or 2025 are welcome, including those who have graduated.

Participating institutions must send a student/educator team. Unfortunately, we cannot host student-only or faculty/staff-only teams.

As a gathering of experiential learners and educators, this will be a participatory, reflective, and skill-building space. Attendees will share approaches, activities, tools, and questions related to one (or more) of our three focus areas: 

a. Conflict transformation and peacebuilding: skills and concepts

b. Civic identity: understanding who we are in community - and who we want to be

c. Reflective practices: what we do, how we do it, and why

The convening will include full group sessions and talks, with most of our time in workshops and activities led by attendees. 

When institutional teams register, they will be asked to identify an activity, tool, or approach they would like to share at the convening. We intend to create a program schedule that will allow each team to share/demonstrate their selected activity, tool, or approach with others at the gathering.

• Connect with people from other colleges and universities who are excited about conflict transformation, peace building, and social justice.

• Meet others committed to supporting - and developing - vibrant, peaceful, and just communities.

• Learn new perspectives on, approaches to, and impacts of experiential education.

• Develop personally and professionally - in meaningful company with others.

• Visit Washington DC and its many landmarks and museums.

Attending educators (staff or faculty) should be familiar with concepts of conflict transformation, peace and justice studies, civic identity development, and/or experiential learning. We’d expect educators to be familiar with the student(s) attending, although not necessarily as their direct advisor/educator. Projects for Peace Campus Liaisons would potentially, but not exclusively, be suitable attendees. 

The staff/faculty member should be comfortable leading experiential learning activities.  They will be asked to:

• complete the activity description form through a link provided by conference organizers

• help select the member(s) of their educator/student team who will introduce and demonstrate the approach, activity, or tool the team is bringing to share

• support those leading the demonstration to prepare 

The activity should be related to one (or more) of the Convening's three focus areas: 

a. Conflict transformation and peacebuilding: skills and concepts

b. Civic identity: understanding who we are in community - and who we want to be

c. Reflective practices: what we do, how we do it, and why

Each school is invited to bring 3 students. It’s okay to have 1 or 2 students instead, though. Both undergraduate and graduate students are welcome. Projects for Peace grantees from 2024 or 2025 are welcome, including those who have graduated.

Students should have participated, led, and/or assisted in experiential learning opportunities with a connection to conflict transformation and/or peace-building, and/or complex social issues/social justice.

Examples include (but are not limited to): internships, study away or community based learning courses, immersive trips, regular volunteering, social action, community-engaged research, alternative breaks, peer leadership roles, community project involvement, Projects for Peace, Shepherd Higher Education Consortium on Poverty internships or fellowships.

This doesn't mean the student’s program/project/prior engagement must include the words conflict transformation or peace-building! Relevant experiences could be related to dialogic practices, have a strong intercultural competence or cultural humility element, or focus on equity and access. All of these areas (and more) would be relevant.

While familiarity with concepts of conflict transformation and/or peace building may be helpful, this is not required.

Attending students (and educators) will be expected to contribute/participate in the following ways:

• Meaningfully reflect on experiential learning activities with connections to peace building and/or conflict transformation and/or complex social issues/social justice.

• Maintain curiosity about what a commitment to vibrant, peaceful and just communities looks like. In particular, be ready to engage with others to consider/discuss how they (personally) and experiential education have roles in transformation of the status quo. 

• Fully engage with their institutional team (including completing the registration survey, possibly co-facilitating a sharing of their team’s selected educational practice, full Convening attendance and participation, and maintaining relationships with other team members for considering what to bring back to home institution).

Students should have engaged in relevant, significant experiential learning in the past one to two years. 

Projects for Peace grantees from 2024 or 2025 are welcome, including those that have graduated. 

The student can be mid-experience of a long-term engagement, as long as this engagement has already been significant enough for the student to contribute/participate as described above.

Either is great!

Team members can play various roles (some more as facilitators)-- consider who to invite based on different roles that would be helpful within the institutional team. 

Please consider and discuss - as a team - the impacts of participation on everyone’s academic, work, and/or personal commitments. Each team and team member is responsible for acquiring permission for missing classes and/or other commitments as required by their sending institutions, supervisors, faculty, and administrators.

Accommodations, meals, and parking will be provided to participants free of charge. 

Funds to reimburse travel costs to/from Alexandria, VA are also available: please indicate your request in the registration form.

Travel costs (e.g., airfare, train tickets, mileage) will be reimbursed after the event. Travel expenses submitted for reimbursement should be “ordinary, reasonable, and necessary” given the team’s needs to travel from campus to Alexandria VA . Please feel free to ask questions.

The process for purchasing tickets/arranging travel will likely vary from campus to campus.

The steps for reimbursement are as follows: 1) Each participant should include an estimation their travel costs when they register for the conference and indicate if they will need reimbursement or not. 2) Book your own travel and save all receipts – this might be done individually or perhaps as a group. 3) Enroll in Middlebury’s vendor system (if you or your institution is not already enrolled – we can confirm for you if you are not sure). 4) After the event, complete a simple expense report and submit it with receipts. 5) Reimbursement will be made to the account on file in the vendor system, this usually takes 2-3 weeks.

This convening is supported by the Davis Collaborative in Conflict Transformation at Middlebury College.

In the registration process, we ask you (as a team) to identify an activity, tool, or approach you would like to share at the convening. This should relate in some manner to one (or more) of our primary focus areas:

a. Conflict transformation and peacebuilding: skills and concepts

b. Civic identity: understanding who we are in community - and who we want to be

c. Reflective practices: what we do, how we do it, and why

For example, have you experienced or facilitated a reflection activity (or used a resource) that was especially impactful; have you been part of a workshop on conflict analysis that you want to share; or do you know of a program activity or approach that supports learners to identify their community commitments and priorities? All of these examples relate to our focus areas.

We hope to have a variety of activities/tools/approaches that participants can engage with, including sessions where facilitators demonstrate a practice, inviting other attendees to participate in the practice during the session.

Depending on what you’d like to share, you may prefer a different format, such as a poster session, or a “speed share” activity. This is something else to consider, as we will ask you about it on the registration form. 

No, the whole institutional team does not need to be part of the presenting/demonstrating element from your institution. We’d like at least one educator and one student to be part of the facilitation, though.

We will continue to keep this website updated with guidance on any additional materials you should prepare to bring to the convening. We kindly ask that you refrain from wearing fragranced body products, including fragrances, perfumes, body lotions, and other similar products during the event, out of consideration for attendees with fragrance sensitivity. 

Educators will be in single rooms. Students may request to room with friends, but they will not be required to do so. All rooms will be booked on behalf of Projects for Peace. You do not need to book your room yourself.

Because our time together will be short, our program days will be full. Friday programming will conclude with dinner. We will end by or before midday on Saturday, which we hope will allow some folks to explore the city prior to their departure, should you choose to. We ask all attendees to be present for all convening programming.