A break for justice—Graduate and professional students from across University participate in the Graduate Institute for Engaged Teaching and Research

A break for justice

Graduate and professional students from across University participate in the Graduate Institute for Engaged Teaching and Research

November 19, 2025

As many of their peers caught up on rest or reading over fall break, a select group of 14 graduate and professional students joined the annual Graduate Institute for Engaged Teaching and Research at the Institute for Social Concerns on October 22–24.

*Participants (left to right) Geleta Tesfaye Berisso, Kingsley Safo, and Duda Kobayashi at the Civil Rights Heritage Center in downtown South Bend*

Focusing on themes of restorative justice, mass incarceration, art and community, and the ethics of engaged teaching and research, the Graduate Institute met in the Geddes Hall Coffee House and included travel throughout the region to meet with community experts. Participants explored principles and effective models of public scholarship and community engagement and experienced a mix of dialogue with community and academic leaders, workshops, guided reflection, and community walking tours.

The Graduate Institute kicked off with a talk on publicly engaged scholarship by Dé Bryant, professor of psychology and director of the Social Action Project at Indiana University South Bend. Participants then traveled to the Near Northwest Neighborhood to meet with members of the Lead Affinity Group and Notre Dame Lead Innovation Team. There they learned how community members and University researchers came together to address a significant health problem in South Bend, ultimately developing lead screening kits, risk assessments, and other projects to address lead in the community.

*Participants walk past an abandoned home in Gary, Indiana*

Participants ended the day by visiting the South Bend Community Reentry Center—one of only two state-operated reentry centers in Indiana—where the institute’s carceral engagement staff provide regular workshops, mock interviews, and other programming.

Portia Ozioma Chigbu is a Juridical Science Doctor (JSD) candidate at Notre Dame Law School and an academic researcher and attorney who earned her LL.M degree at Notre Dame Law School in 2023 and, before that, her LL.B. degree from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. She found her time at the Reentry Center powerful, as it deepened her understanding of what empowerment and justice mean.

“As someone who studies human dignity and resilience, this visit reminded me that justice must always involve inclusion and hope,” Portia shared after her visit. “The Reentry Center embodies that principle by helping people move from isolation to belonging, showing that justice is not just about accountability but also about rebuilding lives with compassion and purpose.”

The second day of the Graduate Institute took participants on a whirlwind tour of the institute’s partnering organizations across South Bend. Participants learned about initiatives in arts and dignity at Foundry Field, restorative justice at the Beacon Resource Center, and growing good in business at the South Bend Entrepreneurship and Adversity Program’s Collaboration Hub.

*Participant Sannah Arvidson-Hicks* *at FAITH Farms & Orchard in Gary, Indiana, which uses abandoned or unused land for food production*

For Vahid Jadidi, visiting the Civil Rights Heritage Center in South Bend was especially meaningful. Vahid is a Ph.D. student in sociology who holds an M.A. in sociology from the University of Tehran and a B.A. in social science–social research from Allameh Tabataba’i University in Iran, and his research focuses on gender-based violence, social inequality, political sociology. He is especially interested in how legal processes and institutional practices shape disparities in the criminal justice system. He shared that visiting the center made him realize that “questions of justice are never abstract; they are lived and embodied in place.”

“The Institute made me realize that power is not just in laws and institutions,” Vahid reflected, “but in the stories people share about who belongs and who matters as well. Additionally, it reshaped how I think about my research, encouraging me to study injustice not just as a social problem but as a relational process that connects structural forces with everyday experiences.”

The final day of the Graduate Institute took students to Gary, Indiana, to meet with Freida Graves, director of the Food is Medicine program at Faith CDC, who together with the institute’s assistant professor of the practice, Ryan Juskus, discussed the relationship between food and environmental justice. Participants also met with a member of the mayor’s cabinet to learn about revitalization initiatives in the city.

*Curtis Whittaker (right), pastor of Progressive Community Church in Gary, Indiana, shows Ryan Juskus and Connie Snyder Mick some of the food handling and storage facilities at FAITH Farms & Orchard*

The Graduate Institute concluded with a reception where participants each presented one aspect of their experience to family, friends, and institute faculty and staff gathered in the Geddes Hall Coffee House.

Nicolás Buitrago-Rey, Colombian lawyer and JSD candidate in the Law School, reflected on how “every single activity that we were doing was about providing dignity.” Duda Kobayashi, a Brazilian poet and researcher pursuing a master of global affairs at the Keough School, read a poem she wrote about the importance of community during her time at the Institute. And María Rivadeneira, a sociologist originally from Ecuador and Venezuela, shared how her eyes had been opened to the ways the criminal justice system can be a trap and how the pursuit of justice involves engaging with the community to ensure that everyone’s basic needs are met.

“We met so many people who stand up for the community and try to create love,” Lisa Stabel, a master’s student in peace and conflict studies from Germany, told her fellow participants, “but we also came together as a group of people who, despite all this suffering and pain in the world, still believe in something, still believe in healing and community and justice, and I really appreciate that. I think we need courageous people in this world, people who stand up and who speak up against injustices, and that’s what I found in you, and I’m so grateful that we created this little community together.”

Organized by Connie Snyder Mick, professor of the practice at the institute, and Regina Williams-Preston, community partnerships program director, the Graduate Institute is designed for graduate and professional students in all fields at all levels interested in applying their disciplinary lens and tools to issues of justice. This year, participants hailed from five continents and represented the College of Arts and Letters, College of Engineering, College of Science, the Keough School of Global Affairs, the Law School, and the Mendoza College of Business.

The Graduate Institute for Engaged Teaching and Research is just one of the ways the Institute for Social Concerns engages graduate and professional students. For more ways graduate and professional students can be involved in the work of the institute, see the institute’s Graduate Education page or contact Connie Snyder Mick.

All photos by Matt Cashore for the University of Notre Dame.