Our Day of Dialogue will be October 27 2009. There will be two sets of concurrent sessions. The first set of sessions will be from 9-11:30 a.m. The second set of sessions will be from 1-3:30 p.m. The location for each dialogue will be sent to participants closer to the actual date.

Follow the link at the bottom of this page.

Intergroup Dialogue, as it has been practiced at a number of colleges and universities across the nation, is a unique effort to engage people (mostly students and often staff and faculty members) in sustained engagements with others from varied racial, gender ,and class backgrounds and other areas of social differences. Conducted by specially trained facilitators, we have found it possible in these settings for students, faculty, and staff to make significant gains in their understanding of themselves and others, in their ability to create positive relationships and empathically identify with people unlike themselves, in their understanding of the complex social world around them, and in their willingness to work toward a more diverse democratic society on campus and off.

On the Day of Dialogue, faculty and staff will have the opportunity to participate in short 2 hour dialogues on the topics of Class, Gender, Race, and Religion. Participation in each dialogue will be limited to insure the quality of the experience, so staff and faculty will need to register in advance to insure they have a spot in the dialogue. 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.

The dialogues will be facilitated by Hampshire College peers. Staff and faculty from across the five colleges were trained this past summer in intergroup dialogue facilitation, including twelve from Hampshire. These are individuals who are interested in working on our campus with their colleagues to help all of us become more effective at talking about differences and finding common ground as we strive to foster a more diverse community.

Based on the outcome of the Day of Dialogue, we hope to create more sustained opportunities for faculty and staff intergroup dialogues, similar to those in which our students are already engaged.

To register, please visit https://intranet.hampshire.edu/forms/viewForm.php?id=669