News

Summer 2014

In collaboration with IGR, the University of Michigan School of Public Health (SPH) is actively engaged in a five-year initiative to provide every student, staff, and faculty member at SPH with a substantive dialogue experience, including opportunities for students to be trained as intergroup dialogue facilitators.

In last month's newsletter, we highlighted comments we received from our alumni about their IGR experiences and the impacts these had on their lives after college (click here to view). This month, we thought we'd take a moment to share additional messages we've received:

"I can't think of any other alumni program more worthy or dear to my heart. Thank you for making this opportunity to re-connect with an important part of my past. I hope to not only re-forge old connections, but also make new friendships."

You may know IGR staff member Dr. Adrienne Dessel from her role of Instructor in:

• Foundations of Intergroup Relations
• Training Processes in Intergroup Dialogue Facilitation
• Conflict and Co-existence

We thought we'd take a few minutes to shed light on some things you may not know about Adrienne. We sat down with her and asked her several questions, so that we could share the answers with you.

What is the most life-changing book you've ever read?

Fall 2013

IGR's own Dr. Adrienne Dessel recently participated in a U-M Frankel Center for Judaic Studies event called Conversations on Community, Identity, and Israel: Making Sense of the Pew Portrait of Jewish Americans.

by Jessica Sumney, Graduate Intern

Although our new CommonGround facilitators participate in an intensive weekend-long training retreat at the beginning of each semester, there is always more to learn about facilitating social justice education. That's why CommonGround has dedicated this semester's monthly meetings to exposing facilitators and student coordinators to the activities and exercises available in the IGR catalog. 

IGR Student and Michigan Daily Columnist Zeinab Khalil wrote a thoughtful piece for the Michigan Daily called "When 'Minority' doesn't work."

Read it here.

You can also read a previous piece from Zeinab here.

IGR strongly supports students joining campus conversations on identity and social justice. Today we share a piece from IGR student Elena Ross, published in the Michigan Daily.

Elena also shared how her experiences in IGR have helped her to explore her views on social issues. 

Fall 2013

Congratulations to IGR co-director Kelly Maxwell! Kelly, along with Amy Harris (Museum of Natural History), Martha S. Jones (Afroamerican and African Studies, History, and Law), and Shari Robinson-Lynk (Ginsberg Center), served as the co-chairs for LSA's Understanding Race Theme Semester in Winter of 2013. This month, they were awarded a 2013 U-M Distinguished Diversity Leaders Award for their tireless work and commitment.

D. recently joined IGR's staff as an Interim Student Life Program Manager. His focus is on managing the CommonGround program, teaching IGR's training course and furthering CommonGround's research agenda. D. is excited to dive into his work with the CommonGround team and he hopes to see CommonGround spread into new areas of the U-M community.