Dr. Sarah E. MacDonald

Dr. Sarah MacDonald joined UWM’s Office of Community Empowerment and Institutional Inclusivity (CEII) in 2023 as the Training & Dispute Resolution Specialist. In this role, she fosters a campus culture of inclusion and belonging, in which diverse identities and voices are valued, heard, and fruitfully engaged. One of Sarah's primary goals is to help the UWM community engage conflict in constructive ways that can lead to learning, growth, and positive change. She offers workshops on conflict transformation skills, and she's available for consultations or to provide dispute resolution processes. She also supports the Vice Chancellor of CEII to develop and implement civil dialogue programming and facilitation training.

Before coming to UWM in 2018, Sarah earned a Ph.D. in Ethics from Emory University, with a concentration in Religion, Conflict, and Peacebuilding. Her dissertation research, focused on ethics of solidarity, grew out of her previous work in international peacebuilding and nonviolent activism. She also holds an M.A. in English from the University of Iowa and an M.Div. from McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago.

This variegated background has informed all of Sarah’s work at UWM. From 2018–2023, she was a teaching consultant in the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL), where she specialized in inclusive teaching and in conflict transformation as a tool for teaching and learning. Sarah has been a member of the UWM Ombuds Council since 2019, and she teaches facilitation courses for the Sustainable Peacebuilding program.