This article analyzes how White racial absolution, a form of White resistance to interrogating White racial identity through discourse, impedes cross-racial intergroup dialogs (IGDs) and impacts the IGD experience of Students of Color (SOC). Eleven undergraduate IGD students and six undergraduate IGD facilitators participated, and critical race discourse analysis (CRDA) was used for analysis. Findings showed that White students engaged in White racial absolution by avoiding White racial sharing (WRS), or side-stepping conversations regarding their Whiteness. The three themes around WRS included (a) Whiteness as a justification to not contribute to the IGD, (b) offering surface-level commentary regarding Whiteness, and (c) leaning on other social-identity-based marginalities or summoning the racial experiences of People of Color. Implications from this study illustrate that White racial absolution within cross-racial IGD alienates SOC, which stifles the overarching goal of resolving gaps between people of diverse social identity backgrounds.

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The Problem In the United States, undergraduate programs in Human Resource Development (HRD) have been growing and are visible in developing undergraduate students’ career readiness and skill set acquisition for lifelong learning. However, there is a limited understanding of high-impact learning experiences as a pedagogical approach in HRD. The Solution Course-based undergraduate research experience in a capstone class at a large research university is described. Five core competency areas for undergraduate research are defined and example learning activities aligned with the competencies are addressed. Student reflection summaries were analyzed to report students’ perceived learning gains. Information on this study can be used to further design impactful capstone research experiences for undergraduate HRD students through high-impact learning principles and practices. The Stakeholders The primary audience for this study is HRD faculty, instructors, and graduate students whose career goal is teaching and researching in HRD or closely related fields in the social sciences.