Alumni Mark Wilson ’02 and Mark Davidheiser ’05, now veterans in the field of conflict resolution, visited Guilford College last week. On April 5 in Bryan Jr. auditorium, Wilson and Davidheiser spoke about their experiences since leaving school in a presentation called “Conflict Transformation in Multicultural Settings.” During lunch at the caf the next day, the alumni discussed career and graduate school opportunities in conflict resolution. Wilson also visited the Career and Community Learning center and met with members of the Greensboro Truth and Community Reconciliation Project.
Davidheiser attended several classes, including Vernie Davis’s Mediation and Conflict Intervention class and Laban Gwako’s Cultural Anthropology class.
After graduating from Guilford, Davidheiser conducted an ethnographic study of the Navajo-Hopi land dispute, and later gained experience in intercultural mediation working in Eritrea, the Gambia, and Senegal. Today he is Assistant Professor of Conflict Resolution and Socio-Cultural Anthropology at Nova Southeastern University.
Davidheiser had training in Arabic and Islamic social dynamics, and is also proficient in the Mandinka language of West Africa. He has studied the social dynamics of development, displacement and resettlement, and rural societies and systems.
Wilson currently works as Assistant to the Chief Executive and the Office Manager at the Association for Conflict Resolution in Washington, D.C. He spent two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in Senegal and later spent time in South Africa where he co-led a delegation of conflict resolution professionals.
Hatice Dogan, a junior majoring in Community Justice studies and Psychology, attended the evening’s presentation.
“When we look, especially at Guilford College with our Conflict Resolution Center, it’s probably the Western model on how to mediate and approach conflicts. (The alumni) brought in a multicultural view,” Dogan said. “I deal with conflict on a daily basis, being a human being, and it’s interesting to me to see how conflict resolution and mediation is portrayed across cultures.”
Davidheiser, who went by the name “Momodou” during the presentation in order to avoid confusion between the two Marks (the other Mark went by “Mass”) attributes his involvement in the field of conflict resolution to his experience at Guilford.
“Guilford was the influence that really put me on the track,” Davidheiser said. “I am who I am today because of Guilford. I would not have been a professor, an anthropologist, or a person in peace and conflict studies.”
Junior Autumn Woodward, a Peace and Conflict Studies major who helped coordinate the alumni visit, wants students to be aware of the opportunities open to them after graduation.
“Students seemed really excited to talk one on one with people who had actually done work in the field of Peace and Conflict Studies,” Woodward said. “It was a very positive opportunity for students to learn from (the alumni’s) experiences in order to apply it to their direction after leaving Guilford.”
Woodward said that the Peace and Conflicts Studies department hopes to bring more alumni to Guilford in the future.
“I hope the academic and co-curricular programs fit with the core values of the college related to our Quaker heritage,” said Davis, professor of Peace and Conflict Studies.
“The Conflict Resolution Resource Center provides mediation and facilitation services as a way both to contribute to the college and to give students practical application of their skills.”
Blaine Lukkar, coordinator for the Interdisciplinary Leadership for Social Change program, says that last year, a pilot program was launched though a collaboration between the CRC and the academic department of Peace and Conflict studies.
Called the Community Agreements Initiative, the project seeks to mediate concerns that students and faculty have that are not necessarily addressed by the college’s policy book.
“It takes place in a dorm room in Binford,” Lukkar said. “Staff, faculty and students take a certain issue affecting everybody’s lives (for example, trash in the halls), and on each floor everybody sits down and comes up with an agreement and posts it on the wall. Everything that students are learning about facilitation and conflict resolution skills, they’re actually getting to apply in the dorm rooms.”
“One of the common focuses of mediation when you get to the idea of possible solutions is to try to allow parties to create the solution on their own, not to give them the solution,” Davidheiser said.
“This is central to the concept of conflict transformative mediation: to empower the parties, to enhance their abilities to make positive constructive decisions that will help them deal with conflict in a more productive manner.