Coastal Carolina University has been selected as one of 11 colleges across the United States to hold a unique community dialogue called Deepening the American Dream as part a national project.

The program of the Fetzer Institute began in 1999 to encourage a Community Conversation to reduce isolation and divisiveness in local and national communities.

Toward that end, 25 area citizens, including several Coastal students, have been invited for three sessions of such a conversation on March 24, May 12 and June 23 at Coastals Waccamaw Center for Higher Education at Litchfield.

Sally Hare, director of Coastals Center for Education and Community, will serve as facilitator of the sessions, and retired educator Florida Yeldell will be the community convener.

Fetzer began the program to explore the relationship between the inner life of spirit and the outer life of service and to sow the seeds of a national conversation.

There are no objectives or outcomes expected from the dialogue, said Hare. The purpose is truly to hold these community conversations and see what happens. We are very excited about the possibilities.

Hare is the R. Grant and Elizabeth Singleton Endowed Professor of Education at Coastal. She has been a Kellogg fellow, and she was Coastals Distinguished Teacher-Scholar Lecturer in 2001.

Participants include: Doron Aizenmann, Issac Bailey, Kelli Barker, Connie Nelson Barnes, Erica Bolin, Kate Carlier, Dave DeCenzo, David Drayton, Caroline Ewing, Janet Files, Wanda Smith Freeman, John Hymes, Karen Luke Jackson, Jackie Nelson, Jim R. Rogers, ELane C. Rutherford, Janice Sellers, Christine Thomas, Zenobia Washington and Norm Whiteley.