*Note* This scheduling program was not designed by folks who do a lot with APA Style and unfortunately it defaults to listing authors in alphabetical order. We cannot fix this for this online schedule, but the author orders are posted in the order submitted in the printed program available via pdf here.
Peer education is an approach to psychoeducational learning through which students learn from and interact with their peers rather than faculty or staff. Peer educators may solidify their own learning through facilitating workshops and presentations with their peers on topics related to health and mental health (Boud, Cohen, & Sampson, 2011). Additionally, Williams reported, “Learning done in the context of community creates rich opportunities for complex interactions with students different from one another” (Williams, 2011). Interactive learning “in the context of community” lends itself well to focusing a peer education program on the intersections of mental health and social and restorative justice. Although students involved in social and restorative justice based peer education programs have reported profound and transformative learning experiences in terms of insights about others as well as themselves, these programs are rare on college campuses (Voorhees & Petkas, 2011). The Multicultural Immersion Program (MIP) at UC-Davis is celebrating its 18th year as a peer education program sponsored by the Counseling Center that focuses on social and restorative justice work and the intersections of mental health and oppression. This structured discussion will feature past and current MIP peer educators along with their Counseling Center staff coordinators, who will discuss the evolution of their feminist, social and restorative justice work on campus. In the first part of this discussion facilitators will share their experiences in the MIP program, the development of their multicultural dialogue skills through their collaborations with community partners on campus, and the impact the program has had on them both personally and professionally. The facilitators will then engage the participants in discussion and in generating ideas for bringing peer-led social and restorative justice programming to campuses and organizations in which participants are involved.