Graduates Return to Address Conference "Conflict Studies: The New Generation of Ideas,” at UMass Boston, November 2 through 4.

Two graduates of the Dispute Resolution Program are using their professional and peacekeeping skills—sharing their knowledge with other professionals for a two-day conference on conflict studies. 

Susan Morash, nurse manager of a 24-bed, inpatient general medical unit at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in Boston, and Adele Keeley, nurse manager of an 18-bed medical intensive care unit also at MGH, are leading the workshop “Critical Conditions: Using Negotiation Skills in Clinical Health Settings.”  The workshop is part of the conference "Conflict Studies: The New Generation of Ideas,” held at UMass Boston, November 2 through 4 2007 and organized by the Graduate Programs in Dispute Resolution.

Graduate students from various fields are presenting their work at the conference and sharing ideas, according to Roni Lipton, assistant director of the program. Students will be interacting with scholars and practitioners of conflict resolution and analysis, she said. One main focus of the two-day conference is conflict in health care settings, Lipton said. The conference also features keynote speaker Tom Delbanco, who produced a film on medical error “When Things Go Wrong: Voices of Patients and Families,” she said.

"We negotiate all the time,” Lipton said. “Your skill as a negotiator is critical to your ability to get things done and to maintain positive, productive relationships. This is especially true in the health care environment, which demands constant negotiation with colleagues, patients and their family members. Susan and Adele have succeeded in that environment, and are uniquely able to help others learn the skills that will help them succeed.”

Morash, a Lynnfield resident and married mother of two, agreed. She said in her job, she works with colleagues, patients and family members in negotiating and dispute resolution. In the workshop, “we talk about using negotiation skills in the clinical health setting,” Morash said. The skill building workshop is “associated with life skills,” she said. “We all deal with conflict everyday.”

Keeley, a married mother of two teens and a Norwell resident, received her master’s degree in dispute resolution in June 2006. She said her degree helps her manage about 72 full-time employees.

“All groups experience conflicts…having the skills is really a benefit to me as a manager,” Keeley said, who has worked for MGH for the past 25 years. She wants to share her skills with others during the workshop, hoping the participants will leave with the understanding that people must work together toward a common goal.

The dispute resolution knowledge goes beyond the health care industry, she said. Gaining knowledge can help resolute disputes in any workplace or situation, she said. The skills will help improve work environment and workplace relationships, she said.

“It doesn’t matter if you work in business or health care…you need to learn the basic skills, both as part of your professional and personal life,” Keeley said. Disputes and conflicts are part of life, she said. “The way our world is now, it’s so important to look at conflicts (in order) to become better at peace building,” she said. The more folks talk about conflict, resolution and peace building, it will lead to a “whole lot more peace in the world” in both the micro and macro levels, she said.

Colin Rule

Colin Rule is Director of Online Dispute Resolution for eBay. He has worked in the dispute resolution field for more than a decade as a mediator, trainer, and consultant. He is currently Co-Chair of the Online Dispute Resolution Committee of the American Bar Association's Dispute Resolution Section, and he serves on the Steering Committee of the Better Business Bureau's Internet program, BBBOnline. Colin co-founded Online Resolution, one of the first online dispute resolution (ODR) providers, in 1999 and served as its CEO (2000) and President. In 2002 Colin co-founded the Online Public Disputes Project, which applied ODR to multiparty, public disputes. Previously, Colin was General Manager of Mediate.com, the largest online resource for the dispute resolution field. Colin also worked for several years with the National Institute for Dispute Resolution in Washington, D.C. and the Consensus Building Institute in Cambridge, MA.

Colin has presented and trained throughout Europe and North America for organizations including the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, the Department of State, the International Chamber of Commerce, and the CPR Institute for Dispute Resolution. He has also lectured and taught at UMass-Amherst, Stanford, MIT, Southern Methodist University, the University of Ottawa, and Brandeis University.

Colin is the author of Online Dispute Resolution for Business, published by Jossey-Bass in September 2002. He has contributed more than 40 articles to prestigious ADR publications such as Consensus, The Fourth R, ACR News, and Peace Review. He authors the online conflict resolution column in ACResolution Magazine and contributes to odr.info, a news resource chronicling developments in the ODR field.

Colin has been a contributing blogger at ODR News Blog , part of the web site for the Center for Information Technology and Dispute Resolution at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst . Recently Colin began publishing a blog of his own hosted at Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society. Colin's blog offers perspective and commentary on conflict resolution, civil discourse, politics, international relations, and, yes, technology and the Internet.

Colin holds a Master's degree from Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government in conflict resolution and technology, a B.A. in Peace Studies from Haverford College, and he served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Eritrea from 1995-1997. He earned a Certificate in Dispute Resolution for UMASS Boston in 1999.

Helen Barrington

Program Director of WFCR Radio

DATELINE: Amherst, Mass.; August 28, 2006

88.5 FM WFCR, NPR News and Music for Western New England, announced today that Helen Barrington has been named Program Director for the station, effective immediately.

Said General Manager Martin Miller, "Helen brings 17 years of experience in public radio to 88.5 FM WFCR in both news and music programming. She understands and embraces the station's need for an 'activist' Program Director, one who will interact with the community, and strengthen our renewed focus on localism. Helen has a proven track record of excellence, achieving and exceeding goals set before her in other positions. She is a valuable addition to our staff as we enter our 45th year of broadcasting to western New England."

Helen comes to 88.5 FM WFCR from her current position as a producer for PRI's nationally-distributed program, "The World," at WGBH in Boston.

She was additionally a producer of the PRI program "Sound & Spirit,” also from PRI and WGBH. In all, she held a number of positions at WGBH going back to 1998, including a production credit for the "Live from Tanglewood" broadcasts. For the WFMT Radio Network, she put together a 2-hour special called "Dvorak in America" and a 25-part series on the 12th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. Between 1994 and 1998, Helen lived in the Netherlands, working for the English language service of Radio Netherlands.

Helen augments this exceptional experience in the world of public broadcasting with a recently completed Masters Degree in Conflict Resolution from UMass Boston. She looks forward to integrating her skills as a mediator into her career in radio. At 88.5 FM WFCR, one of her roles will be to act as a liaison with the larger listening community. Martin Miller remarked on how Helen's areas of expertise will "add materially to the extraordinary breadth of abilities and interests among 88.5 FM WFCR's staff."

 

Belle Abaya

Belle Abaya established The Conflict Resolution Group Foundation, a non-profit, non-stock organization, whose focus is the use of mediation in judicial reform, and consequently trained the most number of mediators and ran consistently successful mediation programs in the Philippines. She catalyzed stakeholders to draft and work for the passage in a record 18 months the Alternative Dispute Resolution Act, which framed the country's mediation policy and updated the antiquated Arbitration Law. With the support of USAID and The Asia Foundation, Belle Abaya instituted the National Center for Mediation in 8 key cities nationwide by catalyzing a covenant among the nine largest business organizations, who committed to push the development and use of mediation. She was appointed by the President of the Philippines as one of 5 Government negotiators in the peace process with the National Democratic Front to address the country's decades-long conflict with communist rebels. Her foundation supports community based peace initiatives by teaching new methods of dialogue, and continues to be at the forefront of mediation applications in the workplace, in organizations, and education. Belle Abaya earned her Masters Degree in Dispute Resolution from UMASS Boston in 2001.

Ben Slomoff

Ben Slomoff had a full career as a very successful business owner and manufacturer of shoes. He was also a poet and a playwright. After he retired, he decided that he wanted a college education. He came to UMass/Boston, completed a BA, discovered dispute resolution, entered the Graduate Certificate Program, and went on to complete the Masters Degree in 1997. Ben, and his wife Sylvia, then moved to California where Ben mediates every week in small claims court, and acts as the neutral arbitrator on three-arbitrator panels for disputes in the field of securities.

Ben and Sylvia have been enormously generous to the Dispute Resolution program over the years, underwriting the annual Ben and Sylvia Slomoff Visiting Lecturer each year (past lecturers have included Morton Deutsch, Dennis Ross, and Phyllis Kritek), the Slomoff Dispute Resolution Browsers’ Library, and the prize offered at our biennial conference for graduate students studying conflict.

Sarah Gyorog

Sarah Gyorog received her Masters in Dispute Resolution in 2004. Currently she is a volunteer with Peace Brigades International (PBI). PBI works to protect human rights and promote nonviolent transformation of conflict by sending teams of volunteers into areas of repression and conflict when requested by local organizations. The volunteers provide a protective presence, or accompaniment, to human rights defenders, their organizations and others threatened by political violence. Sarah has spent the last year in Aceh, Indonesia. She will then move on to Papua. Read about her thoughts on the peace process in Aceh by clicking here.

Camilo Azcarate

Camilo Azcarate has been the Ombuds Officer for Princeton University since 2003. Before his current position he was a faculty member and Director of the Conflict Resolution Institute at FGCU where he also worked with the Ombuds Office. Previously he was the Government Programs Coordinator for the Massachusetts Office of Dispute Resolution (MODR). His dispute resolution practice includes mediation, facilitation, conflict management systems design and Ombudsing. Camilo has presented, trained, lectured and taught in Latin America and the US including Princeton, Harvard, Clark, FIU, ICESI and UV. He has published articles on the Journal of Peace and Conflict Resolution, the Association for Conflict Resolution Magazine and the IOA Newsletter in the areas of international conflict, identity-based conflict, cross-cultural issues in mediation and confict in the workplace.

 

Camilo is a member of the International Ombudsman Association (IOA) and is a former affiliate of the Program on International Conflict Analysis and Resolution (PICAR) at Harvard. He holds a Juris Doctor from Universidad Javeriana, a Masters in Corporate and Labor Law, both the Certificate and Masters in Dispute Resolution from the University of Massachusetts and an EEO Certificate from Cornell University. He has received several awards for his work in dispute resolution, including the Don Paulson Award for Excellence in Dispute Resolution from UMass and the Outstanding Achievement in Dispute Resolution

Angela N. Khaminwa

After completing the Masters Degree program at the Graduate Program in Dispute Resolution at UMB (2002), Angela Khaminwa joined The Coexistence Initiative (TCI) as a Program Officer. Working in the USA and abroad, Angela designed programs that facilitated knowledge-sharing among peace practitioners. While at TCI, she developed her current interest in the institutionalization of peace practice, specifically policies on inclusion. She conceptualized frameworks for understanding coexistence, related the idea of coexistence to practice, and explored policies on social cohesion.

In 2004, she returned home to Kenya where she researched the institutionalization of peace in Kenyan public universities. The results of this study have been compiled in a report (in press) which makes recommendations to policymakers, university administrators, and other stakeholders on reforming and institutionalizing conflict management at public universities in the country. She is currently working with the Open Society Justice Initiative as Project Coordinator for the Africa Citizenship and Discrimination Audit. The Audit will document trends in African countries where there are problems of arbitrary access to citizenship and discrimination of non-citizens. In all her work, Angela encourages refinement of conflict theory and promote links between research, practice, and policy.

Jeannie Adams

Jeannie Adams serves as Director of the Multi-Door Dispute Resolution Division at the District of Columbia Courts. She oversees 10 ADR Programs, 20 employees and 350 mediators. Jeannie Adams earned her Masters Degree in Dispute Resolution from UMASS Boston in 2004.

Deborah Mendez-Bowen

Deborah Mendez-Bowen earned her Masters Degree in Dispute Resolution from UMASS Boston in 2000. Shas spent a decade teaching classes at Hugh Wooding Law School in St. Augustine, Trinidad. She also has designed and facilitated workshops on negotiation, conflict resolution and mediation skills for a number of corporate clients in the region, South Africa and the United States. She is currently a trainer for a workplace conflict resolution program for Coca-Cola International. The program establishes a dispute resolution system and trains every member of the company (in this case, 77,000) on how to raise, respond to and resolve conflicts. Read more about Deborah Mendez-Bowen in the news.

Other Graduates

Business and Media

• Regional VP of Information Technology, J.P. Morgan Chase

• Director, Global Bid Desk, Hewlett Packard Corp.

• Producer, WGBH Boston

Health Care

• Ombudsperson, Cleveland Clinic

• Nurse Manager, Massachusetts General Hospital

• Managed Care Ombudsman, Commonwealth of Massachusetts

Higher Education

• Assistant Vice Chancellor for Human Resources, University of Massachusetts

• Ombudsperson, Princeton University

• Professor of Dispute Resolution, University of Quebec

• Associate Dean of Undergraduate Education, College of Arts and Sciences, UMB

State and Local Government

• Executive Director, Strategic Planning & Community Development, City of Somerville MA

• Founding Directors, Dispute Resolution Office, MA Dept. of Environmental Protection

• Transportation Planner, Boston Metropolitan Planning Organization

• Zoning Administrator, Town of Hingham

ADR/Mediation Practice

• Attorney, Business Law and Commercial Mediation

• Mediator/Arbitrator, Private Practice

• Director of Online Dispute Resolution, eBay

International

• Democratization Officer, Organization for Security & Cooperation in Europe

• Project Director, Africa Citizenship & Discrimination Audit, Open Society Justice Initiative

• Human Rights Violations Manager, Center for the Prevention of Genocide

• Presidential Negotiating Team (Communist Insurgency), Philippines