Overview
ACC’s Peace and Conflict Studies (PACS) Center has offered programming for over a decade. The Center’s work includes an annual symposium for students, core curriculum courses that reflect a focus on peace and conflict studies, a cinema series, and the Conflict Transformation Academy.
ACC has offered he PACS Conflict Transformation Academy as a virtual conflict transformation training workshop over the past three years. Level 1 provides high level conflict transformation theory with exercises that focus on skills participants will practice or discuss such as the role of power, drivers of conflict, and communication strategies. Level 2 allows participants to practice these skills through role-playing using scenarios based on fictional college-based conflicts.
The Peace in Relationships series brings clinical and academic practitioners whose practice, research, and/or teaching focuses on intimate partner relationships to share insights into how to improve the health and quality of our romantic partnerships. The Cinema of Conflict and Transformation series explores issues of social, cultural, political, personal, and interpersonal conflict with the aim of expanding audiences’ understanding of the issues addressed on screen while also helping them imagine positive futures arising from complex issues in our societies.
This year the PACS Center piloted the Poetry of Conflict and Transformation series in partnership with the University of Texas Middle East Studies Center. Focusing on social, cultural, political, personal, or interpersonal conflict, the series brings ACC faculty in Peace & Conflict Studies into conversation with UT faculty in Middle Eastern literature to explore poems translated from Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, and Turkish.
Accomplishments
- 10 staff and eight faculty attended the two-day, 14-hour Level 1 CTA training in fall 2022. Attendees came from 14 different areas of the college.
- 14 staff and five faculty attended the two-day, 14-hour Level 2 training in spring 2023,. Participants came from 18 different areas of the college.
- Feedback from participants included comments such as: “Professionally and positively impacting work environments. This should be mandatory. This could decrease turnover and HR issues because much of the perception in a conflict could very well be assumed.”
- Peace in Relationships: 142 faculty, staff, students, and community members attended these events. Videos from these sessions are on our YouTube channel and have garnered 300 views.
- Cinema of Conflict and Transformation: 135 faculty, staff, students, and community members attended these events. Videos from these sessions are on our YouTube channel and have garnered 267 views.
- Poetry of Conflict and Transformation: 71 faculty, staff, students, and community members attended these events. Videos from these sessions are on our YouTube channel and have garnered 148 views.
- CommuniTEA & Conversation: In the fall of 2022 protests erupted in Iran following the death of Mahsa Jina Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman who was detained by morality police during a visit to Tehran, beaten, and ultimately died in police custody on September 16 for wearing “improper hijab.” The PACS Center received an equity mini-grant to fund a series of four meetings aimed at providing psycho-social support to our Iranian community.
- These gatherings provided a space for those impacted by the political violence in Iran to come together, build community and collective empowerment, and process the challenging developments taking place inside Iran.
- Each event featured Persian tea and sweets, music, and facilitated dialogue and activities aimed at processing the collective trauma impacting Iranian Riverbats and others in our community with ties to Iran. One participant said: “It felt therapeutic without realizing it. I found it to be very insightful and inspiring.”
- Spring Symposium: Climate Science, Climate Justice: Personal and Civic Action. This annual event garnered comments such as these:
- “Just wonderful. Holding the conference in a LEED constructed building was thoughtful. So many small nuances about the day showed careful planning (i.e., students at the recycling, compost bins, etc. etc. etc.). I learned a lot and I was inspired!”
- “I was grateful to learn more about the science behind the climate crisis and to commune with other people who are also concerned.”
Impact
The PACS Center is having impact beyond the walls of ACC. In October 2022 ACC faculty conducted multiculturalism training for the Austin Police Department’s 147 cadet class. They led the cadets in discussions toward understanding that worldviews, and therefore actions, are shaped by one’s own culture and experiences. Cadets were encouraged to be more aware of how people tend to use their own understanding of the world as the standard way of being.
Next Steps
- Build the appropriate infrastructure to support PACS Center training and events.
- Recruit additional faculty to serve as program leads and facilitators to broaden the reach of the PACS Center and expand the human resources.
- Develop a strategic plan to support intentional and manageable growth of the PACS Center.