The Center for Global Understanding and Peacemaking at Elizabethtown College introduced a certification program to instruct students, staff members and faculty in conflict management and transformation.
Peacemaker-in-Residence Jonathan Rudy designed the Conflict Transformation Certificate program to overview the foundations of conflict transformation with an emphasis on practicing communication and mediation skills. Rudy stated that the course will help teach students and staff to turn conflicts into stronger relationships based upon trust and will facilitate other restorative processes to help build the campus community. The Conflict Transformation Certificate is an outgrowth of previous peer mediation programs on campus and reflects the growing need to “raise the background understanding on campus of what conflict is,” Rudy said.
According to Rudy, “Conflict is neither good nor bad.” Instead, he said, “It is our choices that we make in response to conflict that either get us into trouble with destruction and violence or can be an opportunity for greater trust and better communication.” Over the course of the eight sessions in the program, Rudy intends to teach positive conflict interventions and create a medium which fosters trust and communication on campus.
“My philosophy is that conflict is a natural human phenomenon,” Rudy said. “Everybody in their own way is an expert at conflict, or at least feeling it, and what we are looking for is conflict transformation strategies.” By offering the Conflict Transformation Certificate, Rudy aims to create a setting in which students and staff can have the unique opportunity to deliberate, discuss and explore the dynamics of conflicts and conflict resolution strategies. “Getting all those people in one room will open up some dialogue channels that may not exist now,” he said.
The Center for Global Understanding and Peacemaking at Etown will be collaborating with the Lancaster-based Center for Community Peacemaking for several sessions in the course. Case Manager of the Center for Community Peacemaking Carol Steffy will work alongside Rudy to instruct lessons on meditation. The meditation module is the largest and most extensive section of the course and is designed to teach staff and students to practice meditation, facilitation skills, and ways to move forward following conflicts.
“Conflict is what I do, and it’s what I teach,” Rudy said. “I’m immersed in conflicts in Africa and Asia, and since I came to Etown in 2012, I’ve been trying to find ways to bridge what happens here and the global world.”
The Conflict Transformation Certificate program started Sept. 9 and spans until March 2015. The program is comprised of eight three-hour sessions, and students and staff must attend all meetings to receive the certificate.
Registration for the new Conflict Transformation Certificate began in early August. According to Rudy, “it filled up almost immediately.” Based on the high interest in the certificate program, Rudy said that the Center for Global Understanding and Peacemaking is exploring the idea of further certificate programs in the future. Rudy said that while future certificate programs will likely be shorter sessions, they will still focus on “enhancing the capacity to transform conflicts that occur on campus.”
The Conflict Transformation Certificate session is almost completely full, but “if there’s popular interest, we will do it again next year,” Rudy said.
