Dartmouth has partnered with the national nonprofit StoryCorps to bring the One Small Step initiative to campus. One Small Step brings people with different perspectives together, two at a time, to record a 50-minute conversation about their lives in an effort to remind the country of the humanity in all of us—even those with whom we disagree.
Dartmouth is "training the next generation of leaders across the broadest swath of society who will go out in education and business and politics and the nonprofit world and have an impact," said President Sian Leah Beilock during an on-campus discussion with David Isay, the founder of StoryCorps, in April. "If we can learn with you about how to listen to each other, how to have humility, how to have the courage to approach uncomfortable situations, I can't think of anything more important."
The new collaboration is part of the Dialogue Project, a campuswide initiative that provides training in collaborative dialogue skills to foster a community that cultivates the respectful and open exchange of ideas. "We think that the Dartmouth community has the potential to model for the rest of the country what it looks like when we're able to see the humanity of people with whom we disagree," Isay said at the kickoff event.
One Small Step is based on contact theory, which is rooted in the idea that a meaningful interaction between people with opposing views can help turn "thems" into "uses." Its scientific and systematic approach is supported by a group of advisors that include scientists, researchers, and psychologists.
Since its founding in 2003, StoryCorps has helped more than 655,000 people in the U.S. record interviews about their lives. The recordings are collected in the Library of Congress, and select stories are broadcast weekly on NPR to more than 11 million listeners and shared through a podcast, animated shorts, digital platforms, and books.
Over the course of the next three years, Dartmouth students, alumni, faculty, and staff will have the opportunity to take part in conversations, some of which will be produced as stories for distribution on campus and beyond.
Visit The Dartmouth Dialogue Project to learn more about the partnership and to listen to One Small Step conversations between Dartmouth community members.
Photograph by Robert Gill, pictured: Samantha Palermo '24 and Mac Mahoney '26 talk as StoryCorps staffers Stephanie Glaros and Diane Bezucha facilitate and record the conversation.
