Volume 4, Number 1, Oct. 2003
Building a High School
to College Campus Mediator
Bridge
by Bill Warters
In May of this year 25 people
from across the country joined me at the Timber Ridge Retreat
Center outside of Atlanta Georgia. Our goal was to see if
we could start doing a better job supporting high school
mediation
program
alumni
in their transitions to college and hopefully, future careers
in the conflict resolution field. The snapshots below were
taken at this engaging and productive meeting.
As Report readers are probably
aware, peer mediation programs have become quite common
in high schools. Thousands of programs now exist across North
America. As a result, every year students with mediation
training and experience
graduate from high school and many of them go on
to college. And while the number of mediation programs
at colleges
and
universities is growing steadily (230+ nationwide), few
high school mediation program
alumni ever connect with them. Instead, their skills and
training "fall through the cracks" of the higher education
system.
No network or system is in
place to help these young and typically quite skilled conflict
resolvers connect
at the college and university level. Students with prior
mediation experience have no easy mechanism to identify other
high school peer
mediator
alums
at their
new chosen university, and thus must forego a possible new
peer group at college that could help them adjust to the
demands of finding friends and fitting in at college. Likewise,
existing
college conflict resolution mediation services and conflict
studies degree granting
programs
have no easy
way to identify and involve these especially promising new
students.
Our two and a half day working retreat was organized and
sponsored by the Conflict Management in Higher Education
Resource Center
(http://www.campus-adr.org) that I direct with special support
coming from the Consortium on Negotiation and Conflict Resolution
at Georgia State University. The group that gathered in Georgia
to work on the problem included high school mediators (current
and former), community mediators, school conflict resolution
program managers, guidance counseling staff, regional conflict
resolution program coordinators, campus ombuds, university
faculty from peace and conflict resolution academic programs,
staff from university mediation programs, and national experts
on conflict resolution in education.
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