 Putting the cornerstone of empathy in my curriculum has been really easy to do. It starts on the first day where we start with icebreaker exercises that go beyond just the standard introduction. Hi, my name is my major is my expected graduation is. And instead, share facts about ourselves that we wouldn't otherwise share in an academic setting. And that activity alone helps to dissolve some of the barriers, helps us all feel a little bit vulnerable, a little bit nervous, and a little bit willing to take risks. Because when we come together collectively to share those stories, people start to realize that, again, we have more similarity than we do difference. My students are first confronted with their assumptions and their knowledge base, right? Identify through their own experiences how they come to understand where they're at. And then we do a series of activities, whether that's an assignment, a reading, a conversation, or a physical activity to reinforce the content that we're working with and to challenge their assumption, their baseline assumption. And in the process, they come out with this reflective piece that is embedded into every assignment where they are expected to expand upon what it is that they actually learned and how it is that they shifted their action going forward based on that experience. And oftentimes, what we uncover, more often than not, what we uncover is that the experiences working with individuals above and beyond just the team dynamic that comes with group projects typical to college courses gives them an opportunity to really get to know people and to learn how to enact those communication skills so that they can not only bridge the gaps between the differences, but be able to elevate those similarities to the surface and then work together. One particular experience that I offer to my professional communication students is an exercise on interpersonal closeness. After talking about units on listening and speaking effectively, they start to engage in an exercise where they think that they're being paired together to practice listening and speaking effectively. And they spend 45 minutes going through incremental questions that are designed to sort of unlock higher levels of interpersonal disclosure. And it becomes this sort of scenario where they don't recognize that they're in the hot water until it's too late. And you would find it really interesting to walk around the class as these partners are paired up. They're seemingly opposite ends of many, many spectrums and they come together and 10 minutes in you hear something like, well, I haven't really shared that with anybody, but since I've already told you about my relationship with my mom and these personal disclosures come out and amplify over the course of the 45 minutes, then I bring them together in a nonverbal communicative state where they have to simply sit across the table from each other and engage in a mutual gaze in silence for four minutes. Doesn't seem like a long time, but after you've done this level of disclosure and this level of learning and connecting on an empathic level with another human being, that incredible act can be very profound. I have looked around my classroom to see students crying as they're staring at one another, complete strangers 45 minutes prior, simply because of the connection that occurs when we actively listen empathically to the people that we're connected to. That experience is one that I will continue to integrate into my courses as often as possible because of the amount of connection and barrier dissolution that comes from that one class session. I've gotten student feedback that I had a nontraditional student in his 40s come tell me that he in his lifetime had never ever sat in silence with another human being and just looked at them. And to go halfway through your life potentially and not have an experience like that, to me is tragic. So I'm very excited to figure out how to motivate the students to get to the space where they feel comfortable connecting interpersonally like that. And it really does bring that empathy to the center of their learning experience.