A lso quite useful for their deliberations have been the results of a research project on the contours of graduate education in Dispute Resolution conducted by Bill Warters and a group of scholars working in the conflict studies field. While a fuller write-up is available in the Online Journal of Peace and Conflict Studies , the chair of committee brought a few of the key results of the study to lunch for review by the committee. As the statements and rankings presented in Table 1 indicate, Dispute Resolution was thought to be by its very nature interdisciplinary, both theoretical and practical, and to hopefully be more science than an art. As seen in Table 2, the list of core essential skills clearly indicates a shift away from a labor relations, arbitration-oriented emphasis that was found in an earlier 1986 study of conflict curriculum conducted by Paul Wehr. In the current survey, mediation skills are listed as most important, and while arbitration skills are mentioned, they are ranked last out of a group of 19.
Negotiation appears in the group of skills considered second in importance only to mediation.
The 12 areas most highly rated are listed in Table 3, out of a total of 28 areas identified. The diversity of areas identified is perhaps not surprising, given the interdisciplinary nature of the field, and the wide range of academic backgrounds study participants came from. Knowledge about the Labor-management area, which was the most common area of emphasis in Wehr's study, was listed as important by respondents, but was not highly ranked, at number 22 out of 28. Game theory, another key area of research and theorizing in the early days of the conflict resolution field, is also mentioned, but is listed last out of 28. Hopefully they'll also be able to actually hire one of the new crop of graduate students graduating with Ph.D.s specifically in conflict studies to help carry the program into the future.