Course Descriptions
All ICCCR courses may be taken for credit or for noncredit (not to be applied to a degree program). Please call 212.678.3289 with any questions regarding our course offerings.
ORLJ 5148.001: Managing Conflict in Organizations
(3 credits)
This course investigates how conflicts unfold in organizational settings, and explores the causes, influencing factors and strategies for managing these conflicts. The course blends a strong theoretical foundation with experiential applications to develop self-awareness, insights and skills for managing or resolving these conflicts. This course is a requirement for Masters Degree students in Social-Organizational Psychology and may be used as an elective for students seeking the Certificate of Attendance in Conflict Resolution.
ORLJ 4800: Conflict and Complexity: A Dynamical Systems Approach to Addressing Protracted Conflict
(1 or 3 credits)
This course will develop the relevance of dynamical systems theory for understanding protracted and seemingly intractable conflict at different levels of social reality (interpersonal, inter-group, international). The course will outline the conditions under which such conflict can be transformed and thus may point the way to realizable avenues of conflict resolution.
ORLJ 4000.001: Conflict Resolution in Schools: Pedagogy and Curriculum Design
(1 credit)
This course investigates the field of conflict resolution education in the context of supporting student academic achievement, increasing social and emotional learning, and creating positive and caring classrooms. The course will integrate theory and practice, looking at research and evaluation on conflict resolution education, diverse program models, and the approaches of organizations active in this field. Participatory activities will allow students to experience first-hand effective strategies that support students' learning of essential social-emotional skills.
ORLJ 4811.001: Power and Conflict: How Leaders Throughout Organizations Use "Smart Power" to Resolve Conflicts
(1 credit)
This course introduces a new framework for understanding power, conflict, and leadership, and will allow students to explore ways to resolve conflicts ups, down, and across power differences.
ORLJ 5016: Healing and Reconciling Relationships in Conflict
(1 credit)
This course examines the role that unaddressed and unhealed emotional trauma plays in creating and maintaining conflict. It also highlights unaddressed trauma as an obstacle to reconciliation-'"our ability to put the past to rest and to rebuild relationships that have broken under the strain of conflict. Using evolutionary psychology theory, a framework is presented that explains our emotional human vulnerability, showing that threats to our inner psychological stability are as dangerous as physical wounds and perhaps more so because they are often ignored and left unattended. The framework uses the language of dignity and indignity to describe the universal effect emotional injuries have on human beings. The course presents the Dignity Model-'"a way of repairing, reconciling and building human relationships. The Dignity Model has been applied in the workplace, schools, churches, and interpersonal relationships.
ORLJ 4819.001: Transforming Conflict From Within: Leadership Interventions in Long-term Conflicts
(1 credit)
This course is designed to engage students as leaders and interventionists in their own and others' long-term conflicts. The course treats long-term conflict as a complex phenomenon that requires a complex approach to transformation. The course applies four realms to transform long-term conflict: wisdom (knowing), cognition (thinking), affect (feeling), and behavior (acting). A particular emphasis is placed on wisdom. Wisdom is developed using a practice called mindfulness.
ORLJ 4857: The Art of Listening
(1credit) Listening is a critical skill in the resolution of conflicts. We all encounter conflict at different times in our lives and the skills learned in this class will facilitate our being able to better resolve these conflicts. It also offers very practical skill practice and advice for those wishing to be practitioners in the field.
ORLJ 4859: Conflict Resolution and the Psychology of Humiliation
(1 credit)
This course presents the theory of humiliation, showing that the capacity to humiliate and be humiliated are aspects of a dense web of "hot" filaments wired into the tissue of culture, giving it a potentially explosive character that is too little recognized.
ORLJ 4861: Managing and Resolving Conflicts Through Large Group Methods
(1 credit)
This course provides students with information and an experiential introduction to four large group processes: Open Space, Future Search, Appreciative Inquiry and Dialogue. After students experience these methods, they work in small groups to lead the class in one of the four methods as they apply it to managing and resolving conflicts.
ORLJ 4870: Conflict Resolution: Experiential Education Methods and Design
(1 credit)
An interactive course designed for conflict resolution facilitators interested in expanding their skills on planning, delivering, and debriefing experiential learning activities and programs.
ORLJ 5016: Creativity and Negotiation
(1 credit)
This course examines creativity within the context of negotiation. Within the negotiation process a clear phase of idea generation emerges. The difference between successful outcomes in negotiation and outcomes that are compromises on both sides is the ability to generate novel ideas that lead to positive results. In order to generate ideas one must become familiar with the creative process. The course reviews the concepts of divergent/convergent thinking, creative negotiation templates, close and distant associations, the role of brain preferential thinking, and incubation periods.
ORLJ 5012: Organizational Internship -- Community Mediation
(3 credits or noncredit)
In mediation, an impartial third party guides disputants through a series of problem-solving steps to diffuse their conflict, communicate more effectively and find their own solutions. This course teaches students how to provide a collaborative way of resolving differences between individuals, groups, and organizations as an alternative to prolonged litigation or violence. Students participate in two weekend workshops & conduct follow-up supervised community mediation.
These courses represent ICCCR's contribution to a rich and varied curriculum of courses in conflict resolution that are offered by various member programs of AC4 at Columbia University. Advanced Consortium for Cooperation, Conflict Resolution and Complexity (AC4) of which the ICCCR is a constituent, compiles and distributes a cross-disciplinary listing of conflict resolution courses offered by Teachers College and other graduate level programs of Columbia University (such as the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), the Law School, the Business School, School of Journalism, School of Social Work and the School of Public Health, and the Master's program in Negotiation and Conflict Resolution in the School of Continuing Education.