A Letter From The Directors (October 2015)

Photo of Monita Thompson and Kelly Maxwell

October 2015
 

Dear Colleagues and Friends,

We hope this newsletter finds you well and enjoying the autumn weather! As always, we in IGR are greatly enjoying the Fall term and all the new excitement and energy the students bring to it. This term, we are excited to be offering our intergroup dialogue course to 117 students. The dialogue topics this semester are Ableism, Gender, Race & Ethnicity, Socioeconomic Status, Students of Color, and White Racial Identity. We have also already had several students express their intention to earn the Minor in Intergroup Relations Education.

In addition to dialogue and our other standard Fall courses, we are thrilled to be offering a new research course, created by Patricia Gurin, IGR's Research Director. Dr. Gurin's inspirational life and commitment to diversity, social justice, and dialogue, combined with her passion for research and teaching, will be a great benefit to students in the course. Speaking of Dr. Gurin, here's an interview with Rutgers Chancellor Nancy Cantor in NPR's On Being. In it, Dr. Cantor mentions intergroup dialogue and Dr. Gurin's work (at 40:20) as representing new and critical opportunities for the future of higher education.

We have changed the publishing schedule of IGR's newsletters to twice per term. We hope to provide you will less frequent but more robust news and updates and including many more student-written pieces. IGR is committed to empowering our students to share their own voices, and we are proud to share them here alongside our news stories.

Happy Reading,

Monita C. Thompson and Kelly E. Maxwell
Co-Directors of The Program on Intergroup Relations