Our CommonGround program is one way that student organizations, residence halls, Greek life, academic courses, and other campus communities can request programs that raise awareness about social identities (race, gender, socioeconomic status, etc.), prejudice, stereotyping, power, privilege, and oppression. Facilitated and coordinated by trained U-M undergraduate and graduate students, these interactive workshops help promote social identity development and enhance group dynamics, while building a community of social justice advocates on campus.
Workshops are designed around a 1.5 to 3 hour time frame and are customized to your group's needs. If you don't see a topic that interests you, please let us know and we can work with you to explore various opportunities. We request that all workshops be requested three weeks prior to the event.
If you are a student interested in joining the CommonGround community as a facilitator or coordinator, please fill out this interest form for more information.
*updated December 2017*
We are making changes to streamline our request process and wanted to keep you updated about these upcoming changes. In the last few years, the number of workshop requests coming to CommonGround has sharply increased. We are adopting the following changes to the workshop request process in order to improve your experience as requesters and to better meet the growing needs of our campus.
IGR’s CommonGround program has completed its 10th year, and we want to commemorate its success with all of you! On November 3-4, 2017, please join us for a weekend of reuniting with IGR alums to celebrate CommonGround through the years.
CommonGround is proud to congratulate Tahany Alsabahi and ‘Dolapo Adeniji on their recent graduation and post-graduate employment! We are certain they will bring their voices and thoughtful care to all their future work, relationships, and learning. We are so excited to see where ‘Dolapo and Tahany’s journeys take them!
The CommonGround program in IGR develops and facilitates short, interactive, peer-led workshops on various social identity and social justice topics for groups of undergraduate and graduate students. Our program has had an eventful summer and Fall semester in 2016, full of workshops and exciting updates.
From new staff to a program restructure, there have been a number of changes in CommonGround. Earlier in the semester, two staff members who oversaw CommonGround—Danny Alvarez (Program Manager) and Taryn Petryk (Assistant Director)—accepted new positions at the Residential Education program at Stanford University and the U-M Ross School of Business, respectively.
Tyra Bandt, a long-time member of the CommonGround programming team, graduated just a few short weeks ago and will soon be joining the corporate business world. Because of her deep engagement with the program and dedication, we wanted to thank her for her work with us and send her off with well wishes!
by Q Dockery, IGR Programming Team
Every month, the CommonGround Programming Team hosts a monthly training for the workshop facilitators and student coordinators. During this monthly training, workshop facilitators are:
