S-CAR Doctoral Graduates in the Field

The hallway conversations are always fun when we hear from colleagues and students of another academic job offer for one of our grads. We even enjoy bemoaning—not-so-veiled bragging—the “burdensome” task of submitting letters of recommendation to university search committees. These personal exchanges, along with the timing of the important upcoming 30-year celebration of our School’s existence, raises the obvious questions: where are our PhD graduates, and have they been doing since graduation?

We were the first conflict resolution graduate program standing as an independent academic field. Today, S-CAR is one of only three standalone academic institutions housed within a university, offering the original of only four PhD programs dedicated solely to the study of conflict. We brag that our independence allows us to embrace an interdisciplinary study reflected in the curriculu —theories, methodological approaches, and practices from a range of disciplines. We offer hands-on, in-the-field opportunities. Clearly it has worked. Thirty years later, more than 100 undergraduate and graduate programs in the field exist, and our graduates staff many of them.

Our grads are also of course, engaged in important work outside the academy. Our alumni serve in various branches of government—in the US, the Departments of State, Health and Human Services, Education, Environmental Protection Agency and the like, and in other countries, often in their militaries and governmental organizations. Our graduates hold key positions at the World Bank, the World Health Organization, the UN, USAID, USIP, the Peace Corps, ACCORD, and a variety of internationally-based NGOs that intervene in conflict. Several of the NGOs were established by graduates themselves.

A majority of our PhD program alumni, though, have chosen the path of working in the academy: teaching in universities around the globe, actively engaged in creating or staffing new conflict-related programs. Though we do not have all the data, what we have collected is impressive. Seventy-three are employed as full or part-time faculty in colleges and universities. Fourteen of these are outside the US: University of Winnipeg, Canada; University of Peace (3), Costa Rica; American Lebanese University, Lebanon; Sabanci (2) and Balikasir Universities, Turkey; University of Cape Town, South Africa; Colombo University, Sri Lanka; Sumatra University, Indonesia; Seoul National University, Korea; Hiroshima University, Japan; and Javeriana University, Colombia.

Our graduates are employed in 33 US colleges and universities. Public higher education institutions include Adams State College, George Mason, James Madison, Kennesaw State, Kent State, Plattsburgh State, Portland State, Salisbury University, Towson, and the Universities of Baltimore, Minnesota, Missouri, New Mexico and North Carolina-Chapel Hill. The private colleges and universities include: American, Arcadia University, Brigham Young University-Hawaii, Champlain College, DePauw, Eastern Mennonite, George Washington, Georgetown, Goucher, Guilford College, Harvard, Middlebury College, Monterey Institute of International Studies (graduate school of Middlebury College), Notre Dame, NoVa Southeastern, Seton Hall, St. Paul University, Swarthmore, and the University of San Diego.

We have insufficient data regarding our graduates’ titles, tenure-track or term
appointments, but of those we know, the range is broad including Lecturer, Assistant, Associate and Full Professorships as well as Academic and Program Directors. Most of the graduates are in programs of conflict resolution. A few exceptions include Gender and Women’s Studies; the University Honors Program; Justice Studies; Sociology, Anthropology and Criminal Justice; and various Schools including Government, Public Policy, Diplomacy, and International Affairs.

As the field evolves over the next thirty years and additional undergraduate and graduate programs emerge, it will be interesting to see how the curricula of these programs reflect the education and training of the faculty—graduates of institutions like S-CAR, and with degrees from CAR. Stay tuned.

###

For a growing list of S-CAR graduates teaching in academia, visit: scar.gmu.edu/people/alumni-in-academia

Send updates to [email protected]