Workplace Learning & Development - University of Massachusetts Amherst

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Days of Dialogue

A Five College Event

During the week of October 17-21 in 2011, the Five College Intergroup Dialogue Initiative will once again be offering "Days of Dialogue". These facilitated, introductory conversations will build on the successes of the previous two years' dialogues and are intended to be a starting point for continuing conversations about important issues on our campuses and in the world at large. We want our campuses to become vibrant and diverse communities where we can engage and interact with each other in the fullness of our common humanity, while also understanding and valuing the identities and differences that make each of us unique. We seek to create and sustain campus environments that are welcoming for all and free of bias and discriminatory attitudes and practices. Our Days of Dialogue will once again offer us an opportunity to help build such communities.

This initiative is a partnership among the Five College Training and Development Collaborative, the Diversity Directors, and the Social Justice Education Program of the UMass School of Education.

What will happen on the Days of Dialogue?

On the Days of Dialogue, faculty and staff will have the opportunity to participate in short dialogues. Two and a half hours in length and varying in topic areas, they will be led by pairs of trained peer facilitators. Each group will consist of approximately 8 to 14 participants from various campus positions and departments, who will dialogue about one of the four themes that continue to have the most traction on our campuses: race/ethnicity, class/rank, gender and religion.

The Days of Dialogue uses guidelines and activities that are quite common in classic intergroup dialogues. However, they do not provide the ongoing opportunity to grow with other members of our campus communities in exploring different social identities, and building empathetic bridges. Thus, our hope is that you will become so engaged, as a result of this opportunity, that you will want to participate in a sustained intergroup dialogue (6 week long) in the Spring of 2012.

Participation in each dialogue will be limited to insure the quality of the experience, so advance registration will once again be required. In order for the dialogues to be most effective, we will make every effort to maximize the diversity of the participants within the dialogue topic.

Who will be facilitating the dialogues?

As our Five College Intergroup Dialogue Initiative continues to expand, so does our pool of facilitators. All facilitators are our colleagues from within the Five Colleges who have been trained to lead these introductory dialogues.

Each dialogue will be co-facilitated by a team of individuals who are generally from the different backgrounds represented by the dialogue topic. The effectiveness of these sessions is not based on any particular person's knowledge of the content, but rather on the willingness of the participants to engage the subject matter and talk about these sometimes controversial topics.

	What happens after the Days of Dialogue?
	We will create more sustained opportunities for faculty and staff intergroup dialogues (IGD) in the Spring of 2012. Information about these efforts will be available in the spring.

	Days of Dialogue Schedule and Registration
	For more information about the dates and times and to register for the dialogue of your choice, please click on the link below.

REGISTER NOW!