Please join us in congratulating our graduates who persevered through more than a year of incredible challenge and hardship to complete their degrees and follow their dreams. We continue to be awed by the tenacity, courage and ingenuity of our wonderful graduates of the Advanced Certificate in Cooperation & Conflict Resolution of 2021!
We cannot wait to see what mark they continue to make on the world.
We are pleased to feature them here, telling us in their own words what they have learned and gained from their time with us at the MD-ICCCR.
Ronald Taylor
M.A. in Social-Organizational Psychology;
Advanced Certificate in Cooperation & Conflict Resolution
95% of all conflict can be overcome. It takes thoughtful communication, hard work…. and mastering anything that Drs. Bodi Regan and Hakim Williams taught you!
After some much needed rest, I plan to use my acquired knowledge and lived experience to make an impact in the Diversity, Equity & Inclusion space at Endeavor.
Andrew Haas
M.A. in Peacebuilding and Human Rights Education (IED Program); Advanced Certificate in Cooperation & Conflict Resolution
The Certificate launched my professional career in the field of mediation and conflict resolution in New York City. This program's courses ended up being the most engaging, well-taught, and positively life-shaping classes I took while at Columbia. The self-awareness that the program encouraged and understanding of the dynamics of conflict enhance my own mediation practice to this day.
I regularly mediate Special Education, Small Claims, and community cases as a member of a local Community Dispute Resolution Center (CMS in Queens) and am seeking work as an Ombudsperson, mediator, or mediation trainer in NYC.
Inbar Schwartz
M.A. in Social-Organizational Psychology; Advanced Certificate in Cooperation & Conflict Resolution
In May 2021, I will be leaving Teachers College with a MA in Social-Organizational Psychology, an Advanced Certificate in Cooperation & Conflict Resolution, and, perhaps most importantly, a widened perspective and deepened appreciation for the ways in which individual, group, and system-level dynamics shape and inform interpersonal interactions. By examining the impact of forces broad as culture and power to exploring the influence of forces micro as personality and individual difference, the coursework and experiential learning in the Certificate program has helped me better understand the complexity of interpersonal relations, as well as how to harness that complexity to engage in conflict constructively and pursue cooperation accordingly--learnings with implications extending far beyond any step, path, or direction I may take.
Thank you to the incredible faculty and staff at the MD-ICCCR for the opportunity to learn and to grow in this way.
Varshini Srinivasan
M.A. in Social-Organizational Psychology;
Advanced Certificate in Cooperation & Conflict Resolution
There is much I can say about all the different ways in which this certificate has benefited me, from the engaging and insightful content, to the expert instruction, to the sense of community. However, what I believe to be most valuable about this experience is how my conception of conflict has evolved. I always thought of conflict as something that needed to be avoided at best or quickly “fixed” at worst.
Through this certificate, I learned that conflict is an unavoidable fact of life. More than that, it even has the potential to be a generative source of constructive change. I am so glad that I chose - quite at random - to take a class on negotiation and conflict resolution during my first semester as an MA student at TC. Because of that random choice, I now feel better equipped to go out into the world and turn moments of conflict into opportunities for good.