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."

Charles Behling is an Emeritus Faculty Member of the University of Michigan. He recently retired from the psychology faculty at U-M. A clinical psychologist, he served for 15 years as Co-Director of IGR.

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 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.

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?

IGR is proud to announce a grant award for IGR Lecturer Timothy Corvidae. Timothy holds appointments in IGR, The Global Scholars Program, and The Center for Global and Intercultural Studies (CGIS).

Joe Person’s passion for IGR began when he enrolled in a dialogue on sexual orientation during his second-year in the winter of 2004. Before graduating from U-M in 2006 with a BA in English Literature, he completed the IGR training program for dialogue facilitation. Following graduation, Joe joined the IGR team full-time serving as the Program Assistant for over two years and in 2011 he earned his Master’s degree in Public Policy from U-M. He currently works as a Research Associate & Project Evaluator for the American Institutes for Research (AIR) in Chicago.

We in IGR are very proud of our own Adrienne Dessel. Dr. Dessel received the Alumni Special Recognition Award for written work from her alma mater, Simmons College. Dr. Dessel co-wrote the winning article Intergroup Dialogue Courses on Sexual Orientation: Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Student Experiences and Outcomes with Michael Woodford and Naomi Warren in a 2011 issue of the Journal of Homosexuality.

The award description is as follows:

IGR is proud to announce an upcoming major book publication, co-edited by IGR's Dr. Adrienne Dessel. Dr. Dessel's book, titled Conservative Christian Beliefs and Sexual Orientation in Social Work: Privilege, Oppression and the Pursuit of Human Rights, is slated for publication in Spring 2014 and includes four chapters on intergroup dialogue. It is co-edited by Rebecca M. Bolen at the University of Tennessee.

From the book description:

This is the first in a series of “Alumni Voices” articles from IGR. The aim of the series is to provide alumni with a space to share their stories, and their journey from being an IGR student to where they are in their lives currently.

Sharon Jacobs

IGR's own D Alvarez will be receiving the MyVoice Award for the 2013-2014 school year from U-M's Spectrum Center this year. This award is given to a member of the MyVoice team whom The Spectrum Center staff feels has done an exceptional job as a volunteer panelist on multiple panels offered through the center. D has received overwhelmingly positive feedback about their participation from past participants, and audiences often reported feeling a strong connection to D and their story.

D, we are so proud of you and feel so lucky that you have joined IGR as a staff member!

April 17, 2014

Welcome to the Winter 2014 tri-annual newsletter of The Program on Intergroup Relations (IGR) at the University of Michigan! We in IGR always look forward to this time of year because it gives us the opportunity to reflect and celebrate student achievements, both in and out of the classroom.

IGR staff is continually thinking of new ways to learn and share with colleagues on campus and around the world. This year, IGR decided to leverage online technology by creating a webinar series as a new way to disseminate information and foster discussion. IGR piloted its first webinar in mid-February. The webinar was held by IGR’s Research Director, Dr. Patricia Gurin.

For this profile, we are featuring two very dedicated and long-time members of the IGR community: Adriana Aldana and Davin Phoenix. These talented individuals have been involved in IGR over the last several years in numerous roles: as Graduate Student Instructors, Researchers, a Program Manager (Adriana), and as dedicated volunteers for IGR events. Both Adriana and Davin just received their Ph.D.s from U-M this summer, and have started the next phase of their lives in Irvine, California.

Brandon Colbert graduated in 2007 and began his work with the Program on Intergroup Relations as a first year student through a dialogue class on socioeconomic status. He continued his involvement as a facilitator for dialogue classes on gender and SES as well as with the Youth Dialogues program in Metro Detroit. Brandon is currently commuting between Washington, D.C. and Michigan working on starting a new company called Awakening. We are honored that Brandon decided to devote so much of his time to IGR as an undergraduate and want our readers to know the incredible things that he has learned and is up to!

For the past year, IGR has had the wonderful fortune of hosting Dr. Manal Yazbak-Abu Ahmad, a visiting Fulbright Scholar from Nazareth, Israel.  Dr. Yazbak-Abu Ahmad is an Assistant Professor and Chair of the English Department at The College of Sakhnin for Teacher Education.