In courtyards and classrooms, University of Michigan faculty, staff and students are navigating difficult conversations and asking for more ways to build skills for engaging across difference. 

Student Life and LSA are deepening their long-standing partnership and strengthening coordination through a new campus dialogue leadership structure taking effect April 15.

This new structure — which follows the January launch of Dialogue Michigan — will make dialogue education and support easier to access across the entire campus community by aligning resources around a shared strategy for growth, partnership, and impact. 

The evolution builds on a foundation of four decades of nationally-recognized work by The Program on Intergroup Relations, whose core learning experiences remain central. It also complements the university’s new Center for American Dialogue, a public-facing, service-focused hub fostering civic problem-solving and discourse.

Leadership appointments

Over the years, IGR has flourished under a co-directorship model that established strong shared ownership and collaboration by Student Life and LSA. This new structure brings that partnership even closer through a jointly appointed senior leadership role and an updated alignment within IGR. 

As part of this change:

• Donna Rich Kaplowitz, currently IGR’s LSA co-director, will become senior director for campus dialogue education, reporting jointly to LSA and Student Life. In the role, she’ll provide strategic leadership across a campus dialogue portfolio that includes IGR, Dialogue Michigan, a growing partnership with Difficult Dialogues National Resource Center, and related initiatives.
• IGR will shift from a co-director model to a single program director model. 
• Roger Fisher will become IGR’s program director and serve as senior associate director of campus dialogue education. Previously a long-time associate director, Fisher has been IGR’s Student Life interim co-director since August 2025. 
• Christina Morton, currently IGR’s LSA associate director, will become the IGR curriculum and instruction program director and associate director for campus dialogue education.

Building on success and impact

At The Program on Intergroup Relations — home of the Michigan Model of Intergroup Dialogue — U-M community members develop lifelong skills through courses, a minor, Community of Scholars faculty/staff seminars, CommonGround workshops, and other programs that strengthen community and leadership. 

With IGR leaders steering the new structure for campus dialogue education, it draws on decades of research, practice and proven insights in and out of the classroom.

These changes will facilitate IGR’s continued growth and leadership in intergroup relations education, intergroup dialogue and facilitation, while supporting and informing the broader framework. The unit will also move forward with its planned relocation to 530 E. Liberty St.