Intergroup Dialogue Program

The Intergroup Dialogue Program (IDP) brings together diverse groups of people to engage them in discussion of issues related to their diversity, broadly conceptualized. The purpose of intergroup dialogue is to enable its participants to develop comfort with and skill for discourse on difficult topics toward the end of fostering positive, meaningful, and sustained cross-group relationships.

Types of Intergroup Dialogues (IDs)

There is one type of ID offered to faculty:

“Story Circle” or “Study Circle” or “Culture Circle”

Smaller, more intimate, groups of 6 to 8 participants, who meet for 6 two and a half hour sessions to discuss, through the sharing of their autobiographical narratives, how they each conceptualize and experience the group identity they have in common (which is the focus of a given dialogue). A single facilitator, representing the identity group at focus in a given story circle intergroup dialogue, facilitates. Further, story circle intergroup dialogues have:

• participants from a single group that represent a wide range of perspectives on the perceived salient "issues" with which the group grapples;
• participants from a single group that have credibility within their larger constituency;
• participants from a single group that include, but are not limited to, members of the group’s leadership; and,
• a facilitator with the following special skills:
• extensive content area knowledge about the range of experiences of group members and the issues with which they grapple (specific and general);
• the ability to challenge as well as support the thinking in the group, as an insider to it; and,
• extensive facilitation experience.

Menu of Story Circle Intergroup Dialogues Offered (at least 1 each year):

Faculty Women, Faculty of Color, Tenure-Track Faculty, Others TBA

In This Kind of Intergroup Dialogue, the discussion is generative, but the skilled facilitators guide it, using problem-posing questions, to ensure that certain issues are addressed. Further, the participants decide on parameters for engagement usually having to do with ways to demonstrate respect for everyone's perspective, making sure that everyone is included in the dialogue—that no person or group dominates the discussion and the content focus or foci for the dialogue.

Intergroup Dialogue Program Expansion

OHRP is actively working to expand the faculty IDP by building faculty capacity to facilitate story circle as well as group-specific and issue-specific IDs.

For more information on the faculty IDP, to become a part of the faculty IDP expansion process, to learn to facilitate a faculty ID, or to enroll in a faculty ID, please contact the Associate Director or call 301.405.2842

Faculty Program Partnerships

Multicultural Curriculum Transformation Across Disciplines: A Local and Global School, College, and University Partnership

In collaboration with the Consortium on Race, Gender, and Ethnicity (CRGE), the Center for Teaching Excellence (CTE), the Afro-American Studies Program, the Department of Women’s Studies, and the Center for Renaissance and Baroque Studies, the Curriculum Transformation Project (CTP), and OHRP are co-coordinating the “Multicultural Curriculum Transformation Across Disciplines: A Local and Global School, College, and University Partnership” project in partnership with Prince George’s County Community College and the Prince George’s County Public Schools. This cutting-edge project integrates diversity in higher education, classroom teaching and learning, and global education into one multifaceted initiative. This initiative is designed to improve and maintain the quality of teaching and learning by building and sustaining meaningful linkages between faculty and students at all levels of education—locally, nationally, and internationally—through the development and integration of genuinely inclusive curricula processes. This project is still in the development stage.

For more information or to join in the collaboration, please contact the Executive Director or call 301.405.2841.