The National Conference on Current Trends in
Conflict Resolution in Higher Education

Concurrent Workshops III

Applying Your Conflict Resolution Skills in Higher Education Conflicts:
An Interactive Case Study

    This workshop will consider an actual (and ongoing) case in an academic department of about twenty faculty at a research university. We will discuss ways conflict resolution skills are used at the stages of entry, data collection, data analysis, and intervention design. Participants will work in small groups to determine what they would do at each stage. A model for conflict analysis in the academy will be provided. We will conclude with a discussion of what actually took place and recommendations for follow-up.

Workshop Presenter

    Sandra Cheldelin, Ed.D., has been a faculty member and or administrator in the academy since 1971: Columbus State College, Ohio University, California School of Professional Psychology-Berkeley, Antioch, and currently at George Mason. She has applied her psychological and organizational conflict resolution skills to more than one hundred fifty organizations – colleges and universities, medical schools, associations, religious and community organizations and corporations. She is a frequent keynote speaker and invited lecturer on such workplace issues as violence, change and diversity. She is coauthor of the Jossey Bass Academic Administrators Guide Series, Conflict Resolution (in press, 2004) and co-editor of Conflict: from Analysis to Intervention (2003).

Workshop Notes

Conflict Exercise (Gender Case) "ism"

  • The new school President needed to replace the sociology department head immediately 

  • So he decided to replace him with the English head in receivership a Shakespearean scholar because it would be the most convenient

  • This polarized the Sociology department

  • Coalitions formed due to lack of knowledge as to what’s is actually going on in choosing a new head

  • Half of the department felt left out of the process

  • The president failed to interview most of the department in order to get the information necessary to make an appropriate choice

  • 12 Women made up the qualitative research group

  • 14 Men made up the quantitative research group

  • The groups offices where on different floors of the same building further isolating the groups

  • The men’s department gets the most grants

  • The department head was a marine sergeant

  • The women kept all examples of all e-mails that they felt where sexist or dismissive

  • The men also felt the new head was problematic but they had to admit he got the job done

  • In interviews with different members of the department threats of tenure denial from the head where exposed

  • Head exercised power over members by threatening them if they did not teach

Terms of engagement where identified

  • Communication issues developed and lead to a failure to coordinate an orientation for new students in their major

  • Interpersonal and group conflicts erupted

  • Members of the department had a high concern for themselves and no concern for others

  • The system was broken but not the individuals

  • 2 people exchanged rooms on different levels

  • They changed the structure of the office space to promote teamwork

  • The whole group drafted a letter

Organizational consulting vs. mediation

  • Organizational consulting is biased but no sides are taken

  • Mediation limits options but it focuses on learning not teaching

  • A hierarchy controls the department making it tuff to have a voice

  • The dean changed receivership

  • Sometime conflict must be escalated (new head) in order to get to heart of the conflict so it can be solved

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    © Polkinghorn and La Chance, 2009