By Dr. Charlene Berquist, Director, and Heather Blades, Associate Director

Socrates once said, “The secret of change is to focus all your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new.” The past few months have been a time of massive change at many levels as nations, communities, organizations, families, and individuals have had to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. For the Center for Dispute Resolution (CDR) at Missouri State University, this uncertain time has presented a variety of opportunities for growth and development.

As a conflict and communication center, the stay-at-home orders and subsequent social distancing designed to keep our communities safe necessitated change for the CDR. In March our programs were suspended, workshops and trainings were cancelled, and the future seemed uncertain. However, the CDR opted to take the advice offered by Socrates so many years ago, and we focused our energy on building something new for the future.

In a few short weeks (although they have often felt long!) the CDR has accomplished a great deal.

• We have reached out to students and interns enrolled in the Certificates in Conflict and Dispute Resolution to ensure they are supported and that their needs are being met.
• We have modified several of our high-impact programs (including our Victim Impact Program for Youth and our Restorative Campus Conduct Program) so they can be offered virtually while still meeting pressing community and campus needs.
• We worked in earnest to explore new ways to harness technology and utilize best practices to offer trainings, workshops, and educational opportunities using video conferencing and other online modalities without sacrificing the dynamic, responsive, and interactive features that have been traits of our trainings for nearly 20 years.
• We offered two week-long virtual instructor-led trainings via Zoom. One of these was a mediation training course, and one was a class focused on restorative processes in schools and organizations. Participants in the courses shared that they found the online courses “highly engaging” and talked about how they enjoyed the various learning modalities including “group discussion in breakout rooms,” connecting with colleagues in the “chat” feature, and interacting with the course instructor Dr. Charlene Berquist and producer Heather Blades. In the words of one student, the course was “the best group experience I’ve had in a college class.”

Our University president Clif Smart proclaimed, and we truly believe, that “Missouri State is built to serve, and we are made for times like this…We will be better than ever.” Out of this crisis we are building something new, and we are embracing new ways of doing our high-impact work. We look forward to continuing this journey and serving our students, clients, campus, and community in the remainder of 2020 and beyond.

For more information on how some of our campus and community programs have been modified in light of COVID-19, please visit the CDR’s Blog or email CDR@MissouriState.edu.