Students, professors practice mediation skills in Kiev, Ukraine
Gloria Clark and Cierra Franklin, Brenau University students and members of the university’s competitive mediation team, joined their professors, Ken and Mary Lou Frank, in Kiev, Ukraine, in November 2018 for an international mediation tournament.
The Franks worked for two days with conflict resolution students from seven countries — Ukraine, Lithuania, Poland, Singapore, India, Turkey and the United States — and a 10-team tournament followed the instructional portion.
Clark wrote about the experience in Her Campus at Brenau, an online student magazine. She discussed how much she learned from the people she met on the 10-day trip.
“Because of them, I know how big the world is,” she wrote. “Because of them, I know that not everyone thinks the same way Americans do. Yes, sure the competition was great, but the people, the place was even better.”
Clark and Franklin, whose trip was made possible through The Robert G. and Gloria S. Molloy Foundation’s support of the Conflict Resolution & Legal Studies program, found a third team member in Oksana Svyst, a student from Ukraine. They placed fifth in advocacy as a team, competing against law school students from around the world, and won individual awards as well.
“We were very proud of our team’s efforts and the experiences they had and the friendships they made were priceless,” Ken Frank says. “The Ukrainian people and particularly our hosts were delightful, and we did get to do some sightseeing in Kiev — but the real treasure was seeing students of every ethnicity and major religion working with each other, eating together, celebrating together and learning that they had far more in common that they have differences.”