Enlarge Dan Grano teaches communications and advocates for immigrants.

Posted: December 17th, 2009 Aleigh Acerni

Crossroads Charlotte occasionally spotlights individuals who are improving the city's social capital.

As a communication professor at the University of North Carolina Charlotte, Dan Grano teaches his undergraduate and graduate students different ways of thinking about communication, rhetoric, persuasion, and public advocacy. Grano also practices that leadership, as way of helping along a local, educational effort at the grassroots level to bring about change in what he described as the “general broken condition” of the immigration system. “I think the way that immigration is talked about publicly is disturbing,” he said, mentioning some of the problems he sees, like scapegoating, hatred, and blaming immigrants for problems that immigration has little to do with. But Grano doesn’t think it’s a lost cause. “I’m optimistic. I think that there are a lot of opportunities to do good things social justice-wise in Charlotte.”

Why he does what he does? "Personally, I come from a family that immigrated to the U.S. about two generations ago. I try to create a classroom environment where everybody gets to express beliefs and values. I feel really fortunate to be in the position that I’m in as an academic, and I have some training that I can contribute to the community, so some of it is a sense of responsibility. But a lot of it is just a sense of enthusiasm.”

What's next? Grano hopes to organize more educational forums and panel discussions to help further the debate within the local community.

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