Building a new level of understanding
SOE’s Intergroup Dialogue Facilitation Development Institute focused on engaging anti-racist social change.
The VCU School of Education recently offered four days of facilitator-led training for SOE faculty, staff and doctoral students to help foster understanding and anti-racist action between different social identity groups. The training was hosted by SOE’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee. The planning and pre-work leading to the institute began last year under the leadership of Tomika L. Ferguson, Ph.D., assistant dean for student affairs and inclusive excellence.
The training sessions were part of the Intergroup Dialogue Facilitation Development Institute, led by B. Ratnesh Nagda, Ph.D., who works with educational institutions and community agencies to build capacity for intergroup dialogue and action as founder of IDEALeadership LLC.
Nagda is a co-developer of the intergroup dialogue model and a leading scholar-practitioner of intergroup dialogue in educational and community contexts. His research and teaching interests focus on intergroup dialogue, cultural diversity, and social justice education, and on multicultural, empowerment-oriented social work practice.
Participants were impressed by the training, and with the impact that it had on them.
“This training has really shifted the way I will approach group facilitation,” said Cassandra B. Stanley, Ed.D., assistant director in the Office of Strategic Engagement. “It is essential that we make the time and create the space for these intense dialogues.”
“I am very appreciative of everyone's vulnerability, respect, and trust,” said Benjamin Olsoe, program coordinator in the International Educational Studies Center. “It's a space like this that gives me hope for the future. I highly respect everyone for the level of energy that everyone came with.”
The overall goals for the Institute were to:
- Foster a shared understanding of the intergroup dialogue model for engaging social identities, social inequalities and anti-racist social change;
- Develop skills and capacity for participating in and facilitating intergroup dialogue processes;
- Envision viable ways of infusing intergroup dialogue facilitation and practices in curricular and co-curricular areas in the School of Education to advance anti-racist change efforts; and
- Build a shared identity as changemakers committed to sustaining engagement and co-learning through critical practice (action and reflection).
Faculty, staff and students who completed the training will be required to complete service in at least two of the following areas: staff meetings, town halls, breakout room facilitation and knowledge sharing.
