Forty members of the campus community recently participated in a training session to become mediators at UCSF.
During this holiday season and throughout the year, a team of newly trained UCSF mediators will do their part to keep the peace -- helping to resolve disputes in the workplace.
Forty members of the campus community recently participated in a five-day mediation training session for conflict management. Susan Wall, MD, professor and vice chair of the Department of Radiology, was among them.
"The UCSF Campus Mediation Program is an enormous aid to the well being of our campus community," Wall said. "It's an honor to become a part of the team. The training is rigorous, stimulating and quite challenging. It is extraordinarily well organized and taught."
The training in mediation - the fourth round offered at UCSF since 1999 -- is a service of the Problem Resolution Center, part of the UCSF Work~Life Resource Center.
The training session, led by professional mediator Marvin Schwartz, JD, provides an innovative dispute resolution resource to administrators, faculty, staff and students. Mediation offers a neutral, voluntary and confidential process for resolution of workplace conflicts and disputes, assisted by neutral mediators trained through this program. Mediation at UCSF emphasizes open communication and creative problem-solving, and is available in addition to the University's existing formal grievance procedures.
Mediation trainees are drawn from a broad cross-section of administrators, faculty, staff and students from the campus, schools and the medical center.
Alma Sisco-Smith, director of the UCSF Work~Life Resource Center, was among the first of those recognizing the need for alternative approaches to conflict management. She chaired a conflict management steering committee in 1992 that worked for a year to arrive at a plan to train UCSF employees to work as internal mediators.
In fact, the mediation program was one of the first initiatives endorsed by campus leadership in 1998 in the movement to create a more supportive work environment. That movement is now receiving renewed attention, as it was recently embraced by the many people involved in the UCSF strategic planning process.
The UCSF Strategic Plan, unveiled in June, lists a number of recommendations to further promote a supportive work environment, ranging from developing effective mentoring programs for all to grooming and promoting the next generation of campus leadership.
Useful Skills
Those involved in campus mediation since the start of the program eight years ago say the program gives them skills they use in their personal and professional lives.
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Susan Wall, professor and vice chair of the UCSF Department of Radiology, second from left, listens to mediators in a role play session at Laurel Heights. |
"The mediation training is not only valuable to resolve conflicts at work, but it gives you skills to deal with family and friends," said Georgianne Meade, director of Research Planning & Communications in the School of Medicine's Dean's Office. "The listening skills are invaluable to me in my daily life and are an important tool that I use in negotiations with campus leaders."
The program is also a sound business practice. "By resolving employment labor cases through mediation, there is the potential for savings of time and money by avoiding the grievance process, lengthy EEOC investigations and employment litigations," Meade pointed out.
Mediators like Meade, who have honed their skills over the years, were on hand to assist the new group of mediators during the recent training session. UCSF's model for mediation is to use co-mediators to talk through the problems with the two parties. The new mediators will be paired with seasoned ones for the first year, Sisco-Smith said.
While the demand for conflict resolution has remained fairly steady in recent years, the program's popularity is growing.
"We average 25 mediations a year," Sisco-Smith said. "We also receive calls from departments and units asking for additional information on improving communication, as a way to prevent conflicts from arising in the first place - sort of like preventive medicine. We're just swamped. The need is great."
Thus, Sisco-Smith initiated a new round of training. Participants got an in-depth understanding of the process, purpose and potential challenges of mediation. During the training, participants practiced their techniques and tactics by role playing in eight realistic situations to resolve varying types of conflicts between different parties.
For Debra Harris, a 27-year UCSF employee who serves as a department manager in pharmaceutical chemistry, the experience was both rewarding and challenging. She decided to enroll in the training to give back to the campus community and to help resolve issues in the workplace.
"Conflict resolution is an amazing process," Harris said. "It's much more intense than I thought and it affects you in a profound way. I've already begun to use these skills with my teenagers."
For Shawn Hall, a programmer/analyst for OAAIS who has worked at UCSF for 14 years, the idea of mediation is fundamental to promoting a supportive work environment. "The reason I chose to work at UCSF is because I wholeheartedly support our mission. This is an opportunity to further support the faculty, staff and students while supporting the University."
Photos by Lisa Cisneros
Related Links:
Campus Mediation Program
Alma Sisco-Smith: Making UCSF a Better PlaceUCSF Today, Oct. 27, 2006
