MESSAGE FROM THE CO-DIRECTORS
This has been an important year of growth, learning, and planning for The Program on Intergroup Relations.
We’re excited to share that enrollment in our courses continues to grow, CommonGround participation has flourished, and attendance at our events has burgeoned. This June, we had another successful virtual National Intergroup Dialogue Institute and, in July, we published an edited volume of cutting-edge essays, making our work as accessible as ever. After a year of review, we revised our minor requirements to make them more flexible for our students, while ensuring they will have deep knowledge of the field of intergroup relations upon graduation.
This year we said farewell to our senior administrative assistant, Missy Schmidt, as well as our Student Experience Team program coordinator, Emely Hernandez. We welcomed Storm Saddler and Vibha Shivakumar in their respective places.
Shana Schoem, our associate director for strategic partnerships also moved on, and Patrick Kazyak-Abaladejo Muñiz joined us to lead out that work. We’re grateful to everyone who has traveled with us. Over 36 years, we’ve continued to educate thousands of students annually through
transformative classroom experiences and co-curricular programs; conduct and share groundbreaking research; and advance the field through our intergroup dialogue institute and consultation program that together have led more than 300 universities around the world to adopt our dialogue pedagogy to their campuses. World affairs always challenge us to create new learning opportunities for our students and the campus community. We remain steadfast in our mission of education for social justice as a continuing effort to raise consciousness and provide skills for working through conflict. We strive to do our part in making the world a better place.
Peace, Donna and Monita
The Program on Intergroup Relations is a social justice education program.
IGR blends theory and experiential learning to facilitate students’ learning about social group identity, social inequality, and intergroup relations.
The program prepares students to live and work in a diverse world and educates them in making choices that advance equity, justice, and peace.
IGR was founded at the University of Michigan in 1988, the first program of its kind. IGR is a partnership between Student Life and the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts.
Mission
The Program on Intergroup Relations is committed to helping students, and those who work with them, pursue social justice through educational engagement, practice, and pedagogy.
Areas of IGR
IGR organizes its work into six areas that are intended to both articulate the structure of the program and accentuate its goals and objectives.
This year we launched revisions to our areas, bringing student learning together with our engaged pedagogy.
ADMINISTRATIVE & COMMUNICATIONS
LSA and Student Life processes and storytelling
STRATEGIC INITIATIVES & PARTNERSHIPS
Building intergroup relationships and collaboration
STUDENT LEARNING
Engaged learning pedagogy for social justice education and leadership
RESEARCH, ASSESSMENT, & EVALUATION
Processing the impact of courses, facilitation, and leadership opportunities
ADVANCING THE FIELD
Moving forward intergroup relations education on college campuses
ALUMNX
Engaging our alumnx in intergroup work and donor stewardship
Student participation
Students are involved with IGR through co-curricular workshops and activities, paid learning experiences, and our academic minor and courses. Many graduate and undergraduate student organizations and groups participate, as well as individual students. Courses are designed for undergraduates, who enroll from schools and colleges across the UM-Ann Arbor campus.
656 course enrollments
2,308 engagements
8 Social Justice Fellows
23 events held through SET
877 CommonGround participants
29 attendees per SET event, avg
30 current minor enrollees
76 high school SYD participants
Student learning
IGR’s opportunities for student learning—across courses, our minor, CommonGround, and beyond—are delivered through engaged learning pedagogy.
Minor
The IGR minor is a 15-credit program where students learn critical analytical skills, problem-solving in groups, intercultural leadership, and a synthesis of intellectual and practical skills to help them create a more just and equitable world. In May 2024, we celebrated 12 graduates completing the requirements for their minor in the 2023-24 academic year, and we currently have 30 students in our minor.
Courses
We provide all students the opportunity to analyze and understand social conflict, intergroup relations, and issues of diversity and inclusion through experiential learning. IGR offers a wide array of Applied Liberal Arts (ALA) courses, from first year experiences and intergroup dialogues to facilitator training to practicum to community-based learning opportunities, and more.
30 total minor enrollees
656 total course enrollments
Dialogue courses in particular are a core strength of IGR. Intergroup Dialogues (ALA 122) is a two-credit course carefully structured to explore social identity, group differences and commonalities, group conflict, and social inequality. Each dialogue focuses on a specific topic among social identity groups. This year, 112 students were enrolled in ALA 122 dialogue courses across fall and winter semesters.
of courses
ALA 122: Intergroup Dialogues
ALA 170: Social Identity, Social Inequality, and Social Media
ALA 171: Making the Most of Michigan
ALA 220: Foundations of Intergroup Relations
ALA 270: Special Topics in Intergroup Dialogue
ALA 320: Training in Intergroup Dialogue Facilitation
ALA 321: Practicum in Intergroup Dialogue Facilitation
ALA 322: Advanced Practicum in Intergroup Dialogue Facilitation
ALA 323: IGR Directed Study
ALA 429: Senior Capstone
ALA 471: Leadership and Facilitation in Community Building
ALA 472: Advanced Leadership and Facilitation in Community Building
dialogue course enrollments
dialogues 22 facilitators
Curriculum updates
This year we approved a series of changes to our courses and our minor in intergroup relations education. They follow a year-long curriculum review—a coordinated effort to meet the evolving needs and interests of students—and will take effect starting in fall 2024.
Courses
• NEW! ALA 221: Introduction to Social Justice and Intergroup Relations Education
• Recognizing several courses as fulfilling key degree requirements from the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts: race and ethnicity and the college’s social science distribution.
• ALA 122 and ALA 320 will increase from 2 credits to 3 credits
• ALA 321 will increase from 3 credits to 4 credits
Minor
The IGR minor is a 15-credit program where students learn critical analytical skills, problemsolving in groups, intercultural leadership, and a synthesis of intellectual and practical skills to help them create a more just and equitable world. Its original two-track structure, centered on facilitation and research, is evolving to a more flexible model where students can integrate those long standing strengths with other approved courses and experiences. In this new model, students will take introductory and capstone courses, and choose from among a curated set of options in the key areas of awareness and knowledge, skill building, and praxis.
CommonGround
CommonGround is a student-led, student-serving program—for student organizations, residence halls, Greek life, courses, and other student communities. Known for its peer-led workshops, CommonGround uses a dialogic model to nurture social identity development and enhance group dynamics. Requesting organizations are able to choose from among existing workshop modules or have activities modified or designed to address their group needs. In 2023-24, we delivered 33 workshops, from among 65 requests, reaching 877 total participants. In winter, we also offered a special dialogic workshop on disability.
Summer Youth Dialogues
Through the Summer Youth Dialogues program, U-M students learn about and facilitate critical diversity dialogues with high school students and young people in metro Detroit, the nation’s most segregated metropolitan area. In partnership with the School of Social Work, we recruited 8 social justice fellows to facilitate and organize intergroup dialogues with 76 high school students.
SYD participants
Research, assessment, and evaluation
Our program reaches a wide range of diverse students on the U-M campus and beyond, from our campus programs to our national leadership.
Program assessment
The IGR Assessment of Learning Survey and other instruments are key tools for us as we seek to understand and interpret the participants’, trainees’, and facilitators’ learning outcomes based upon our goals of intergroup dialogue.
Through them, we assess how students develop their skill sets over the course of the semester-long experiential learning process.
“I will take the learning from this course throughout my entire life, in my professional, academic, and personal life.”
ALA 122 STUDENT
“Being able to recognize that sometimes my first instinct is to create a debate and combating that with what I’ve learned about dialogues is helpful in learning how to navigate relationships with people who disagree with my opinions.”
ALA 122 STUDENT
Courses
Students who participated in IGR courses showed statistically significant growth between the retrospective pre- post- survey in every area we measured, as seen below.
3 GOALS OF DIALOGUE
Identity awareness: Increase personal awareness about identity and raise consciousness about privilege and oppression. Relationships across difference: Improve intergroup understanding and build relationships across difference.
Social action: Explore ways of working together toward greater equity and justice. Strengthen capacity to create social change.
Comparison of mean differences in IGR core courses
Positive student growth in all areas of ALA 122, ALA 320, and ALA 321
MEAN DIFFERENCES
IDENTITY AWARENESS*
RELATIONSHIPS ACROSS DIFFERENCE*
SOCIAL ACTION* OVERALL*
CommonGround
CommonGround participants reported at high levels that their involvement prepared them for success across all key learning areas.
Participant outcomes
“This workshop allowed me to...”
“I learned about some of the automatic biases I have and how to
interrogate them.”
PARTICIPANT
Stepoutsidemycomfortzone Reflectonmysocialidentity Increasemy self-awareness Reflectonothers’socialidentitiesIncreasemyunderstandingofotherperspectivesApplytheworkshopcontenttomydailylifeEngagein conversations relatedtosocialjusticeInteractcomfortablywith peopleofdifferentidentities
“This was really interesting and I appreciated the open space for conversation and discussion.”
PARTICIPANT
New publications and presentations
Abid, R. & Slosberg, D. A. (2024, January).
“Feedback: How to give it, how to get it, and how not to sweat it” [Conference presentation].
University of Michigan Student Life Professional Development Conference. Ann Arbor, MI.
Hicks, S., Rich Kaplowitz, D., eds. (2024, July).
Facilitating Transformational Dialogues: Creating Socially Just Communities. Teacher’s College Press.
Hicks, S., Russell, D., Howe, E., Templeton, A. (2024). “Designing and Equitable Syllabus” [Conference presentation]. Enriching Scholarship Conference: Surveying the Now. Ann Arbor, MI.
Kirpes, Martha. (2024, May). “Asking Questions that Produce Discussion and Reflection” [Conference presentation]. University of Michigan Enriching Scholarship. Ann Arbor, MI.
Rich Kaplowitz, D., Thompson, M. (2024, January). “Introduction to Intergroup Dialogue” [Webinar]. Difficult Dialogues National Resource Center.
Rich Kaplowitz, D. (2023, November). “Talking Across Difference” [Webinar]. Difficult Dialogues National Resource Center.
Kaplowitz, M., Kaplowitz, D., & Liu, Y. (2023). Intergroup dialogue success in racially diverse high school classrooms. Multicultural Education Review, 15:1, 1-27.
NEW BOOK
Facilitating Transformational Dialogues: Creating Socially Just Communities
FEATURING IGR CONTRIBUTORS
Sara Crider
danny alvarez
Christina Morton
Deborah Slosberg
Mark Chesler
Monita Thompson
Roger Fisher
Charles Behling
Pat Gurin
Cesar Vargas-Leon
Meaghan Wheat
Emely Hernandez Rubio
Shana Schoem
Kelly Maxwell
Ollie Jayakar
Strategic initiatives and partnerships
Community of Scholars
Community of Scholars is an intentional space for U-M faculty and staff to gain skills and experience with intergroup dialogue and dialogic pedagogy, while building meaningful relationships with passionate colleagues and intergroup dialogue practitioners.
Intergroup Dialogue Basics Seminar
Intergroup Dialogue Basics Seminar (IGD Basics) is offered over six weeks each fall. It is a popular program that brings together a small, select cohort of faculty and staff from across U-M. These participants are invested in incorporating dialogic practices
12 IGD Basics participants FALL 2023
into their work in a way that will directly serve students. This seminar helps staff and faculty to understand any attend to intergroup issues that often arise in and out of the classroom.
Intergroup Dialogues for Faculty and Staff
These intergroup dialogues take place over 8 sessions and are rooted in the Michigan Model for Intergroup Dialogue. Participants include U-M faculty and staff from schools, colleges, and units across the university.
Diversity and Inclusive Teaching seminar
The overarching goal of DIT is to expose GSIs to a range of evidence-based inclusive teaching practices and IGR frameworks that productively acknowledge and engage instructor/student
identities and experiences in the learning process. It also covers best practices for inclusive course design and explores techniques for managing student resistance and conflict. This seminar is designed to:
1. build relationships between GSIs and the facilitators and amongst the participants;
2. develop awareness and knowledge around social identities and power structures; and
DIT participants
FALL 202 3
3. increase skills and confidence in applying this knowledge in the classroom setting.
“I loved the humanity of the facilitators, always very caring, respectful and considerate. I also liked the student-lead sections as it made it a collaborative and constructive learning environment. The contents covered allowed for deep reflections and the diversity of disciplines in the course enriched the discussions.”
SEMINAR PARTICIPANT
SPOTLIGHT
Strengthening campus relationships
Deepening office connections within Student Life and across campus enriches our own work, contributes to a more diverse and inclusive campus, and makes us more effective in serving students.
This year, we:
• Co-led and facilitated a 16-hour facilitation training for 40 colleagues across the university
• Co-created and supported the facilitation of a twohour social identity curriculum for 34 staff members from Student Accessibility and Accommodation Services
• Grew our strategic partnership with the Office of Student Conflict Resolution
• Coordinated with 10 Student Life units to explore potential partnerships using the Student Life Partnership Toolkit as a guide.
Advancing the field
“[The IGD Institute] lit a fire under me.”
PARTICIPANT
National Intergroup Dialogue Institute
This summer, 66 leaders and faculty from across the country came together virtually to learn how to develop intergroup dialogue programs at their institutions. Staff and faculty from The Program on Intergroup Relations led sessions throughout the four-day program. The goals were to explore the Michigan Model of Intergroup Dialogue, share strategies for using dialogic pedagogy in curricular and co-curricular programs, and equip participants with a foundation of institutional strategies for developing and supporting dialogue programs that suit their institutional context.
81.6%
85.7% 93.8%
agreed or strongly agreed that the Institute was useful in meeting their goals
agreed or strongly agreed that they were energized by their participation
agreed or strongly agreed that they now have more resources to do their part of this work
66 Institute participants SUMMER 2024
23 INSTITUTIONS REPRESENTED AT THE IGD INSTITUTE
Boston College
California State University San Marcos*
Carlow University
Gettysburg College
Marquette University
Michigan State University
Montana State University
Swarthmore College
Rowan University
University of British Columbia
University of Chicago
University of Minnesota Extension
University of Pennsylvania
University of Rhode Island
University of Washington, Bothell
Whitworth University
Clemson University
Indiana University
Stanford University
University of California, Berkeley
University of Houston
University of New Hampshire
University of Washington
“I now have the language that I previously lacked in how to position and pitch this program to senior leadership, and I see what my role in this work could be.”
IGD INSTITUTE PARTICIPANT
“I
feel more committed to this work than ever, and the institute re-energized me and my colleagues in all the ways we needed.”
IGD INSTITUTE PARTICIPANT
Consultations
IGR faculty and staff offer consultations for higher education colleagues that are outside the University of Michigan to advance intergroup relations education across the country. Consultations typically involve on-site or virtual workshops tailored to the specific needs and goals of the host institution.
In 2023-24, IGR completed two consultations at UT-Austin.
2 consultations
Budget revenue overview
$ 1,760,785
Improving web performance
Following a comprehensive review of our website last summer and led by our new communications strategist, we groomed and refreshed content, further optimized pages and articles for search, and improved overall navigation. These revisions helped improve our total page views and users over the prior year.
148K page views
Reviving our newsletter
IGR Voice is our newsletter for students and campus colleagues, and a key communication channel for IGR and liberatory education at the University of Michigan. After a hiatus in 202223 amid staff transition, the formerly monthly publication returned bi-weekly for 17 editions, with a fresh coat of paint, from August 2023 through April 2024. We exceeded higher education industry averages for open rates, benchmarked in a range of 28-42%, with our average open rate of 51.17%.
Refining our branding
open rate
In the spring, we simplified the overall number of variations of our logos, and the most commonly used variations in particular. Our primary logos—a marketing signature for general purposes and an informal logo for folks who are familiar with IGR and U-M—now list “Intergroup Relations” boldly in a single hero line. Our most formal logos—stacked and stationery—are reserved for special uses and retain the full program name, The Program on Intergroup Relations. This evolution keeps our core work at the center, makes our logos easier for staff and partners to navigate and choose from in their work, and responds to evolving communications practices.
MARKETING SIGNATURE (PRIMARY)
FORMAL STACKED
INFORMAL SIGNATURE (PRIMARY)
FORMAL STATIONERY (LETTERHEAD ONLY)
Staffing
Professional staff
In 2023-24, we welcomed several new staff to IGR: Vibha Shivakumar, Patrick Kazyak-Albaladejo Muñiz, and Storm Saddler. We also bid farewell to Shana Schoem, Missy Schmidt, and Sierra Voigt.
danny alvarez Lecturer
Charles Behling Consultation Director
Retired former co-director
Mark Chesler Professor Emeritus of Sociology
Sara Crider Lecturer
Hailey Emery
Student Administrative Assistant
Roger Fisher Associate Director
Patricia Gurin Research Director
Stephanie Hicks Lecturer
Christina Morton
Associate Director
Nick Pfost Communications Strategist
Donna Rich Kaplowitz Co-Director
Patrick KazyakAlbaladejo Muñiz
Associate Director
Storm Saddler
Senior Administrative
Assistant
Missy Schmidt*
Senior Administrative Assistant
Shana Schoem* Associate Director
Vibha Shivakumar Program Coordinator
Deborah Slosberg Assistant Director
Monita Thompson Co-Director
Cesar Vargas-Leon Senior Program Manager
Sierra Voigt* Lecturer Meaghan Wheat Program Manager
Student colleagues
IGR is proud of our 51 students who work to educate their peers and others on campus. Student colleagues work in the following areas: CommonGround workshop facilitators, CommonGround Programming Team, IGR researchers, IGR Friends (recruitment team), Student Experience Team, office assistants, and graduate student instructors.
51 student colleagues
Appendix I: Participant demographics
Across the program
These overall figures come from UM-collected data in order to reflect total student engagement across courses, CommonGround, and events.
Race and ethnicity
Sex
Sex is reported as the sex on record with the university
Students with more than one race-ethnicity are counted in each of their racial-ethnic categories.
First generation status Citizenship
CommonGround
These CommonGround figures come from UM-collected data in order to reflect total student engagement within the CommonGround program.
Race and ethnicity Sex
Student events
These
Race and ethnicity
Sex is reported as the sex on record with the university Students
Dialogue courses
Demographic data for Intergroup Dialogues (ALA 122) was collected and summarized though IGR’s Assessment of Learning Survey. This data source offers us more demographic categories and expanded identifications. Demographic data is especially important for ALA 122 because we believe that balancing identity groups within a topic is critical to the rich outcomes of the class.
Race and ethnicity
n=73
Note: Students with more than one race or ethnic category are counted in each of their categories.
Gender n=74
Note: IGR’s Assessment of Learning Survey data for courses reports on gender, not sex. These are separate, distinct categories. 7-9% of student respondents identify outside the gender binary on IGR surveys about gender.
Religion n=72
AGNOSTICISM
Sexual identity n=73
EXPLORING/UNCERTAIN
SPIRITUAL*
SELF-DESCRIBE
PREFER NOT TO SA Y N U MBER
Household income n=72 05 10 15 20 25
*but not connected with any religion, tradition, or worldview 05 10 15 20
B ISEXUAL
DEMISEXUAL GAY
HETEROSEXUA L
LESBIAN
PANSEXUAL
QUEER
UNLABELED
QUESTIONING/UNSURE
PREFER NOT TO SA Y NUMBER
PREFER NOT TO SAY 1%
ADDITIONAL INFO 6%
$150,001$200,00 0
Location n=73
Students were raised in a...
Parent education n=73
Do any of your parents have a 4-year college or university degree?
Appendix II: Donor giving report
Giving Blueday results
On Giving Blueday—U-M’s annual day of giving—IGR raised $7,905 thanks in part to a generous, anonymous gift of $5,000.
$2.9K in grassroots gifts $5K donor gift $7.9K total raised + =
Laura Raines Gilbert Scholarship
The Laura Raines Gilbert Scholarship was established in 2017 by Laura Raines Gilbert, University of Michigan alumnae. Gifts to this endowment fund support scholarships to undergraduate students who facilitate intergroup dialogue courses or declare a minor with IGR. This year, funds were awarded to five outstanding U-M undergraduates.
Elsa Hall
Tasmia Jamil
Nadya Habib
Amanda Rosemary Webster
Aisha Idrees Fayyaz
Looking forward
In the year ahead, we look forward to continued growth and impact on campus and around the country.
• We’ll bring higher education administrators from across the nation together in Ann Arbor for our 19th annual National Intergroup Dialogue Institute, our first in-person since 2019.
• We’ll continue to build new relationships here on campus and deepen existing connections with partners in the School of Education, School of Social Work, and other LSA and Student Life units.
• We’ll welcome students to our recently relaunched minor in intergroup relations education and new student colleagues who are integral to our mission and work.
BY
PHOTOS
MICHIGAN PHOTOGRAPHY
© The Regents of the University of Michigan: Jordan B. Acker, Huntington Woods; Michael J. Behm, Grand Blanc; Mark J. Bernstein, Ann Arbor; Paul W. Brown, Ann Arbor; Sarah Hubbard, Okemos; Denise Ilitch, Bingham Farms; Ron Weiser, Ann Arbor; Katherine E. White, Ann Arbor; Santa J. Ono (ex officio)