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n an important step forward in the expansion of its offerings, Kent State University’s School of Peace and Conflict Studies began offering a Master of Arts degree in peace and conflict studies during the 2023 Fall Semester.
The master’s degree is offered in two concentrations: applied conflict transformation, and peace, conflict and development.
R. Neil Cooper, PhD, director of the School of Peace and Conflict Studies, says expanding into graduate degree offerings is the natural progression of growth since peace and conflict studies became an independent school within the College of Arts and Sciences in 2017. And the graduate programs provide a much-needed skill set in today’s world of growing conflict.
Students in the programs will examine the cases and consequences of violence, developing methods for preventing, resolving and transforming conflicts, as well as analyzing the values and institutions of peace. Notably, students will develop the advanced understanding and applied skills needed to become effective practitioners in mediation and conflict management.
Landon Hancock, PhD, professor and graduate program coordinator for the school, says graduate degrees are the path to growth not just for Kent State but for all schools that specialize in peace and conflict resolution.
“These advanced skills help train people in the ability to listen and communicate, look past surface divisions, and show ways people share the same needs, goals and desires.”
—Landon Hancock, PhD, professor and graduate program coordinator, School of Peace and Conflict Studies
People in the workforce, in a variety of disciplines, often realize that improving and advancing their skills in areas of mediation and peaceful interaction would help them on their career paths, Hancock says.
“Anyone who is involved in some kind of human interaction can benefit from having advanced skills in peace and conflict studies,” Hancock says. “These advanced skills help train people in the ability to listen and communicate, look past surface divisions, and show ways people share the same needs, goals and desires.”
When people can find better ways to communicate, he says, they can find common principles and common goals to bring people together.
The new degrees also coincide with the 50th anniversary of a peace and conflict studies curriculum being offered at Kent State.
The school was initially formed as the Center for Peaceful Change in 1971, as one part of the university’s long-range institutional response to the May 4, 1970, shootings. Students were protesting the expansion of the war in Vietnam to Cambodia and the occupation of the Kent Campus by the Ohio National Guard when guardsmen opened fire, killing four students and wounding nine others.
The center was established as a living memorial to the shooting victims—a place to research, teach and promote peaceful mechanisms of social and political change. It began offering courses in fall 1973. In 1994, it was renamed the Center for Applied Conflict Management and was moved into the Department of Political Science. In 2017, the Center for Applied Conflict Management grew into the School of Peace and Conflict Studies within the College of Arts and Sciences.
While just a few students are enrolled in the master’s degree programs this year, Cooper expects that number to grow considerably as the program becomes more well known.
Mandy Munro-Stasiuk, PhD, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, says the concept of peace and conflict studies is one that is increasingly important, both domestically, with political polarization, gun violence and labor strife, and globally, with ongoing wars and increased tensions among nations.
“From that standpoint,” she says, “the school truly manifests this whole idea of [moving from] local to global.”
The school also is in the process of creating a dual-degree program with the University of Rwanda’s Centre for Conflict Management.
Like Kent State’s center established in the aftermath of the May 4 shootings, Rwanda’s centre was created in response to the country’s 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi, in which nearly 1 million members of the minority Tutsi community were killed by Hutu extremists.
As part of Kent State’s growing relationship with the University of Rwanda, Cooper says they are currently developing a proposal for a dual-degree program that would allow students from Kent State or Rwanda to take courses at both universities and receive a master’s degree in five semesters from either or both institutions.
Munro-Stasiuk says the joint program is particularly exciting, because of Rwanda’s history and the important lessons to be learned from its past. “It’s such a unique partnership and experience for our students,” she says.
In addition, Cooper says the school is working on a dual-degree program with the Ambassador Crawford College of Business and Entrepreneurship, to focus on the mediation and facilitation skills needed in the business world.
As 2023 was dubbed “the summer of the strike,” with unions for teachers, autoworkers and even Hollywood writers, walking the picket line, the need for trained mediators has become obvious.
“Mediation is more important today than ever,” Munro-Stasiuk says. “When you talk about strikes, labor unrest, things like that, you really are talking about people who just can’t agree on things. The political climate, the mental health crisis, all of these things [call for] mediation.”
The school also is working on a combined bachelor’s/master’s degree program, to reduce the number of years (currently five to six) that it would take students to complete both degrees, Cooper says.
In addition, Munro-Stasiuk says the school performs functions that many may not be aware of, including offering mediation between faculty or between faculty and students at Kent State.
“They provide a service to the university,” she says, “which I think is a testament to the kind of work they do in the school.”
Saint Marcel de Rukara reconciliation village in Rwanda.