Need a Good Negotiator? Call a Camel.

Dean's Term alumni return to teach workshops

When Jennifer Trudel '99 was in her freshman year at Conn, she took a course called "Negotiation" during the one-week program known as Dean's Term. It changed her life.

     "It was amazing," said the human development major, who went on to work as a workshop teaching assistant each of her three years at CC. Trudel interned with Mediation Works Inc. (MWI) in Boston, which runs the "Negotiation" and "Mediation" Dean's Term programs. This January, Trudel found herself back at CC, helping to teach a new generation.

     She had a lot of company. With her were two of her former classmates, Mathis Martin '99 and Emily Epstein '99 as well as Brian Vander May '96 and Amy Gorin '77. All of them, with the exception of Gorin who attended CC in the pre-Dean's Term days, were bitten by the "negotiation bug" when they attended their first Dean's Term workshops.

     "We must be onto something good here," said Philip Ray, the associate dean who organizes Dean's Term, a weeklong program offering several non-credit workshops. "We've gotten a lot of people excited about doing this. Students are finding at Connecticut College an employment arena that they want to be in for the rest of their lives."

     The "Negotiation" workshop is one of two that have been offered annually since Dean's Term started seven years ago (the other is "Public Speaking"). This year the offerings included "Finding Your Center of Balance" and "Web Page Development."

     The executive director of MWI describes his organization as "focused on growing the capacity of businesses, municipalities and nations to become better negotiators.

     "Dean's Term provides an opportunity for the trainers to share their skills and knowledge with Connecticut College students, our next generation of peacemakers and effective negotiators," said Chuck Doran. "I view the significance of being in the negotiation field as one of deriving a tremendous amount of professional satisfaction from the notion of adding value to the community and the world.

     "Conn is a really great example of people taking what they learn from college and putting it into action in a really direct way," he said. "Dean's Term has had a lasting impression."

     Brian Vander May credits his Dean's Term experience in his sophomore year with having launched him on a successful career as a negotiation consultant. "I had been majoring in international relations and had no clear idea what I was going to do with that," said Vander May. "I fell in love with the (workshop) material and came back my senior year as a teaching assistant. I began networking there, learned a lot from the people who came to teach the workshop, and I will have been with CMI three years in June."

     CMI International Group is based in Cambridge, Mass., and handles international issues in the private sector as well as some public sector work with government organizations. Vander May is proud to have had a full house of CC alumni as teaching assistants and trainers at the last workshop. "Last year there were two working group leaders of four that were CC grads," he said. "This year there were three of three."

     Emily Epstein was one. Now a member of the "alternative dispute resolution field," she works in the American Arbitration Association's (AAA) San Fransisco office. "I took (Dean's Term) as a sophomore," she said. "I wrote a thesis on negotiation in the psychology department and decided to pursue it as a career."

     Epstein has been with the AAA since her graduation last May. "The workshop meant a lot to me. It began my interest in my field." She is further energized by continuing to work at Dean's Term because the students are doing what she did with the trainers, pulling her aside to ask about career opportunities.

     Mathis Martin, who majored in psychology at CC, left in February for his native Germany, where he plans to introduce his countrymen to a broader purpose for the art of mediation. "There is some family and divorce mediation," he said, "but it's hardly known in other fields." he is taking with him the support of MWI. "Chuck Doran has so many resources available and he really knows the field," said Martin. "It's a good thing or me to know him if I run into any challenges."

     Trudel, too, has left MWI for graduate school. She is taking courses toward a master's degree in education and conflict resolution at Lesley College in Cambridge, Mass. Her goal was formed at CC as a student-teacher for forth grade at the Regional Multicultural Magnet School in New London and S.B. Butler school in Mystic.

"I want to be an educational consultant to a younger audience," she said, still feeling the effects of that first Dean's Term.

Click here to return to the top of the page.

Click here to return to the article index.