Academic Courses

Undergraduate Course

Undergraduate students: Please note, registration is now closed for SOC WGS CRS CFE 230
(Sept. 2, 2025)

A flier for CFE 230: Intergroup Dialogue-Race and Ethnicity at the Intersections.

For Fall 2025, the Intergroup Dialogue Program is offering SOC/WGS/CRS/CFE 230: Intergroup Dialogue-Race and Ethnicity at the Intersections.

The class meets weekly on Wednesdays from 3:45 to 6:30 p.m. and emphasizes a highly interactive, experiential, and reflective learning environment.

The course is open to students across colleges, majors, and years and meets the Arts & Sciences critical reflections requirement.

Course Details

Intergroup Dialogue may also be applied toward the School of Education Atrocity Studies and the Practices of Social Justice minor, the School of Social Work Social Justice minor, and the Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies minor.

The course addresses two of the six University-wide shared competencies for students: communication skills and ethics and integrity.

Intergroup Dialogue brings students together across multiple social divides, often with a history of conflict and/or unequal power relations, and limited opportunities to engage in deep and meaningful discussion of challenging societal issues.

Intergroup Dialogue is a research-based pedagogy developed in higher education and practiced across school, organizational, and community contexts.

The course covers:

  • Understanding social identities and the role of social structures and institutions in creating and maintaining inequality
  • Developing intergroup and other communication skills
  • Planning and enacting collaboration across difference

IGD is organized around multi-disciplinary readings (e.g., historical, sociological, psychological, and personal narratives), experiential learning activities, small group work, and reflective writing and additional exercises.

Students analyze and learn about issues facing groups on campus, in higher education, and in broader society. The program invites students to learn and engage in Intergroup Dialogue as a form of social justice education, engaging questions and practices of social responsibility. Class size is limited to enhance the quality of dialogue, exchange, and learning across students.

Facilitators

Each intergroup dialogue is led by a team of two trained/experienced facilitators who frame and initiate co-learning through asking questions, identifying key points, guiding group process, and providing overall curricular structure for dialogue.

This learning process builds community; explores differences, common ground, and intersections; and leads to in-depth discussion of persisting social issues. Students learn about coalitions and how to work together creatively in teams that encompass, acknowledge, and embrace different perspectives and experiences.

Graduate Course

In 2025-2026, CFE 640: Inequality and Intergroup Relations in Education will be offered again by the faculty director of the Intergroup Dialogue Program Professor Gretchen Lopez.

This course examines theory, research, and practice important for intergroup relations in education, within the context of racial, ethnic, class based, and intersecting inequalities in broader US society. The course covers the critical pedagogy of intergroup dialogue courses as a form/praxis of social justice education and serves as one step in the preparation of graduate student (masters and doctoral) co-facilitators for the IGD program’s curricular, co-curricular, and community offerings.