Conflict Resolution competency is needed and valued across every industry sector, making these minors a valuable experience for all Mason students. Meet with an advisor today to explore your class options and evaluate how this certification can be added to your degree plan.
For undergraduate students who are looking to expand their education and build a competitive resume, the Carter School offers six interdisciplinary minors:
This minor strengthens critical thinking and creative problem-solving skills while deepening students’ ability to understand conflict and its underlying sources. Using proven conflict resolution and mediation techniques, students apply critical thinking and communication skills to navigate conflict collaboratively and productively.
Courses and Requirements
REQUIRED COURSES (SELECT ONE FROM FOLLOWING, TOTAL 3 CREDITS)
CONF 101: Conflict in Our World
Brief history of the field, survey of key conflict resolution themes and theories and intervention methods. Overview includes general factors of conflict and its resolution and nature of conflict in interpersonal, group, organizational, and international situations.
CONF 210: Theories of Conflict Analysis and Resolution
Students will utilize critical thinking and analytical skills to begin an in-depth examination of the major theories of conflict analysis and resolution.
REQUIRED (TOTAL 3 CREDITS)
CONF 300: Conflict Resolution Techniques and Practice
Advanced consideration of CONF 101 topics, introduction of core notion of reflective practice, conflict resolution techniques, practice, third party roles, and ethics.
SELECT ONE FROM THE FOLLOWING (TOTAL 3 CREDITS)
CONF 302: Culture, Identity, and Conflict
Covers deeply rooted, intractable, or protracted social conflicts around core issues of identity, including race, ethnicity, religion, and nationalism. Explores cultural, symbolic, and discursive approaches to identity conflict.
CONF 320: Interpersonal Conflict Analysis and Resolution
Considers personal, relational, social and cultural dimensions of interpersonal conflict. Introduces concepts and skills for understanding the causes, patterns, systems and dynamics of difficult issues and situations.
CONF 330: Community, Group, and Organizational Conflict Analysis and Resolution
Covers conflict in communities, groups and organizations. Introduces theories of social harmony and conflict, drawing on sociology, social psychology, community psychology, organizational psychology, administration of justice, philosophy, and conflict resolution.
CONF 340: Global Conflict Analysis and Resolution
Covers conflict at macro level, introducing theories of international and global violence and conflict, drawing from disciplines of international relations, political science, intercultural communication, and conflict resolution.
ELECTIVE MINOR COURSES (TOTAL 6 CREDITS)
Select 2 Conflict Analysis and Resolution (CONF) credits from core, elective, and special topic courses.
Some examples include:
CONF 325: Dialogue & Difference
CONF 326: Negotiation
CONF 329: Community Engagement & Collaborative Problem Solving
CONF 335: Justice and Reconciliation
CONF 337: Restorative Justice
CONF 345: Social Dynamics of Terrorism, Security, and Justice
CONF 347: Mobilizing for Change & Justice
CONF 392: Youth and Conflict
CONF 394: Human Rights & Inequality
CONF 425: Mediation
CONF 435: Building Peace in Divided Societies
Learn how to harness the power of sports as a tool for peace! Offered jointly with the School of Sport, Recreation, and Tourism Management, this minor was designed for students who plan to work with youth, sports management, or community engagement. Students learn how sports diplomacy can bring divided groups together and the cultural and social impact sports can have.
Courses and Requirements
REQUIRED COURSES (3 Credits Each)
SPMT 201: Introduction to Sports Management
Introduces sport management profession. Primary focus is on sport industry, including professional sport entertainment, amateur sport entertainment, for-profit sport participation, nonprofit sport participation, sporting goods, and sport services.
SPMT 307: Sport Diplomacy
Introduces the use of sport as a public diplomacy tool, including the interrelationships among conflict, collaboration, sport, organizations, and diplomacy.
CONF 101: Conflict and Our World
Brief history of field, survey of key conflict resolution themes and theories, and intervention methods. Overview includes general factors of conflict and its resolution; and nature of conflict in interpersonal, group, organizational, and international situations.
CONF 300: Conflict Resolution Techniques and Practice
Advanced consideration of CONF 101 topics, introduction of core notion of reflective practice, conflict resolution techniques, practice, third party roles, and ethics.
ELECTIVES
CHOOSE ONE CONF: 3 CREDITS
CONF 302: Culture, Identity, and Conflict
Covers deeply rooted, intractable, or protracted social conflicts around core issues of identity, including race, ethnicity, religion, and nationalism. Explores cultural, symbolic, and discursive approaches to identity conflict.
CONF 435: Building Peace in Divided Societies
A major challenge to peace building efforts domestically and globally are the boundaries that communities believe separates themselves from others. The boundaries have ethnic, racial, religious or cultural roots, often with long histories of division and violence. This class will examine case studies and strategies from around the globe of peace building in complex communities.
CHOOSE ONE SMPT: 3 CREDITS
SPMT 302: Philosophical and Ethical Dimensions of Sport
Investigates moral issues in sport and judgments about right and wrong behavior among athletes, coaches, spectators, and others.
SPMT 304: Sport, Culture, and Society
Analyzes sport from educational, political, economic, and cultural perspectives.
Offered jointly with the Costello School of Business, the minor combines concepts of conflict management, corporate governance, leadership development and organizational behavior with approaches to collaborative intra- and interdepartmental problem solving. Students develop critical managerial skills that focus on social entrepreneurship, community investment, community engagement and stakeholder relations, and social impact marketing.
Courses and Requirements
REQUIRED COURSES (CHOOSE 3):
CONF 300: Conflict Resolution Techniques and Practice
Introduction of core notion of reflective practice, conflict resolution techniques, practice, third party roles, and ethics.
CONF 330: Community, Group, and Organizational Conflict Analysis and Resolution
Covers conflict in communities, groups and organizations. Introduces theories of social harmony and conflict, drawing on sociology, social psychology, community psychology, organizational psychology, administration of justice, philosophy, and conflict resolution.
MGMT 303: Principles of Management
Examines managerial work under a range of business models. Managerial functions and activities including planning, organizing, balancing conflicting demands, leading and controlling are examined in depth and in context of current organizational examples. Discuss variety of pressures contemporary managers face.
MGMT 464 Teamwork and Interpersonal Skills
Focuses on intensive development of a high professional-level skill set for collaboration and leadership in contemporary environments.
ELECTIVES (CHOOSE 2):
CONF 320: Interpersonal Conflict Analysis and Resolution
Considers personal, relational, social and cultural dimensions of interpersonal conflict. Introduces concepts and skills for understanding the causes, patterns, systems and dynamics of difficult issues and situations.
CONF 325: Dialogue and Difference
Covers challenges of communicating across differences of age, gender, language, culture, political orientation, and contextual situations.
CONF 326: Negotiation
This course is an introduction to the analysis and practice of negotiation and provides a solid foundation for further inquiry and application.
CONF 329: Community Engagement and Collaborative Problem Solving
This course will explore how organizations and leaders across sectors can use community engagement techniques and collaborative problem-solving tools to achieve their goals and reach consensus-based and mutually-beneficial solutions.
CONF 425: Mediating Conflict
A skill development course connecting conflict resolution theory and practice to the mediation process through lectures, discussion, self-reflection, experiential learning, and role-plays.
FNAN 444: Sustainable and ESG Investments
This course is an introductory resource for students who aim to be investment advisors, financial planners or other financial professionals who want to learn the basics of sustainable, responsible and impact investment. The course covers the implementation of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) data.
INTS 404: Ethics and Leadership
Teaches students to develop ethical decision-making strategies, communicate effectively in diverse group settings, value civic engagement and actively apply ethical leadership skills.
INTS 435: Leadership in a Changing Environment
Examines diverse definitions and processes of change across multiple complex contexts. Focuses on identifying innovative, collaborative solutions to seemingly intractable social problems.
MGMT 313: Organizational Behavior
OB is field of study aimed at predicting, explaining, understanding and changing human behavior as it’s reflected in organizations. Science of OB is interdisciplinary draws from psychology, sociology, social psychology.
MGMT 321: Introduction to Human Resource Management
Builds on MGMT o by introducing key concepts and techniques that managers need to attract, retain, develop, compensate, and motivate quality talent.
MGMT 412: Diversity in Organizations
Examines phenomena and processes in general and with regard to specific dimensions such as gender, race, and ability.
MGMT 431: The Legal Environment for Employee and Labor Relations
Examines the legal aspects of employee and labor relations from a managerial perspective.
MGMT 461: Cross Cultural and Global Management
Explores theory and practice of managing culturally diverse organizations in domestic and international contexts.
MGMT 463: Negotiations in Organizations
Focuses on theory, processes, and practice of negotiation within and across organizations, including attention to ethical issues. Explores systematic ways to increase quality of negotiated agreements.
Jointly offered by the College of Engineering and Computing, this minor sits at the nexus of technology, engineering, environmental issues, and human conflict. Learn how engineering technologies and approaches can impact human systems, creating or eliminating potential conflicts and environmental issues at the local, regional, or global level.
Courses and Requirements
REQUIRED COURSE:
CONF 101: Conflict in Our World
Brief history of the field, survey of key conflict resolution themes and theories and intervention methods. Overview includes general factors of conflict and its resolution and nature of conflict in interpersonal, group, organizational, and international situations.
SELECTIVE COURSES:
CEIE 100: Environmental Issues and Solutions Around the World
Society’s relationship with the environment is fundamental to its success, is extremely complex, and impacts not just locally but globally as well. This class will examine the history of society’s interaction with the environment and foster debate on today’s critical environmental issues.
OR
DSGN 101: Introduction to Design Thinking
Teaches the fundamentals of design thinking using interdisciplinary domains by bridging knowledge from the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, and engineering.
SELECTIVE COURSES:
CONF 435: Building Peace in Divided Societies
A major challenge to peacebuilding efforts domestically and globally are the boundaries that divide communities. These boundaries have ethnic, racial, religious or cultural roots, often with long histories of division and violence. Examine case studies and strategies of peacebuilding in complex communities.
OR
SYST 414: System Thinking
Introduction to analysis and a synthesis of feedback systems. Class will learn linear and nonlinear systems, block diagrams, signal flow graphs, and frequency response method.
ELECTIVE COURSES:
Choose one course:
CONFLICT ANALYSIS AND RESOLUTION
CONF 329: Community Engagement and Collaborative Problem Solving
CONF 330: Community, Group, and Organizational Conflict Analysis and Resolution
CONF 340: Global Conflict Analysis and Resolution
CONF 435: Building Peace in Divided Societies
AND
Choose one course:
ENGINEERING
CDS 205: Introduction to Agent-based Modeling and Simulations
EVPP 336: Tackling Wicked Problems in Society & the Environment
SYST 130: Introduction to Computing for Digital Systems Engineering
SYST 202: Engineering Systems in a Complex World
SYST 414: System Thinking
An excellent match for history, sociology and many other majors, this minor examines genocide and crimes against humanity through social, political, legal, historical, and ethical frameworks lenses. Students build critical thinking and cross-cultural skills as they study the role of memorialization, disinformation, and human rights advocacy with an eye towards identifying preventing future atrocities before they occur.
For more information, contact the program's director, Bruce Aft.
Courses and Requirements
REQUIRED COURSES:
CONF 403: Preventing Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity
Introduces fundamentals of genocide and crimes against humanity, both as crimes under international law, and as conflict systems and social practices. Considers how individual and collective actions shape social, cultural, economic, and political circumstances, and the factors that encourage or forestall responses to genocide and crimes against humanity, including humanitarian, justice, political justice, political, conflict resolution, education, religious, ethical, human rights, non-violent, and military approaches.
RELI 383 or HIST 383: Holocaust: History and Meaning
Students examine the Holocaust – the term commonly used to denote the destruction of European Jewry during World War II – within the contexts of twentieth-century European, Jewish, and global history. The first part of the course, “History,” analyzes the steps leading to the genocide of the Jews in Europe as well as the factors that enabled its implementation, focusing on the on the interaction of victims, perpetrators, and witnesses/bystanders. The second half of the course, “Meaning,” deals thematically with contemporary interpretations and literary and visual representations of the Holocaust and its meaning, looking at issues of testimony and how the tension between history and memory affects how we can learn about the violence and mass murder.
SUPPORTING COURSES (Choose 3 classes):
CONF 335: Justice and Reconciliation
CRIM 308: Human Rights and Justice
CRIM 405: Law and Justice Around the World
CRIM 421: International Crimes and Accountability
ENGH 202: Texts and Contexts (when topic is Literature and Film of the Holocaust)
HIST 309: Europe in Crisis: 1914-1948
HIST 326: Stalinism
HIST 317: Nazi Germany
INTS 362: Social Justice and Human Rights
INTS 416: Refugee and Internal Displacement
PHIL 329: Philosophy after Auschwitz
OR
Replace one class with an approved field experience, study abroad, or internship.
Offered jointly with the College of Education and Human Development, this minor is perfect for students interested in working in educational, human development and youth-centered fields. Students in this minor will develop leadership skills and tools to support and facilitate dialogue and understanding on difficult, complex, and sensitive topics. Students will also learn to appreciate multiple viewpoints and develop strategies for managing group dynamics and collaborative problem-solving.
Courses and Requirements
REQUIRED COURSES:
CONF 300: Conflict Resolution Techniques and Practice
Introduction of core notion of reflective practice, conflict resolution techniques, practice, third party roles, and ethics.
CONF 408: Global Peace Education
A comprehensive exploration of peace education as a global, interdisciplinary, and transformative field, emphasizing its relevance in an era of interconnectedness and social complexity. Peace education extends beyond the classroom, equipping individuals with the knowledge, skills, and dispositions needed to foster cultures of peace, address structural injustices, and build resilient communities in diverse local and global contexts.
SEED 440: Human Development, Learning, and Teaching
Explores processes that influence intellectual, social, emotional, moral, ethical, and physical development of middle and high school students. Examines research and theories for understanding the learning process.
SUPPORTING COURSES (SELECT TWO):
CONF 302: Culture, Identity, and Conflict
CONF 320: Interpersonal Conflict Analysis and Resolution
CONF 325: Dialogue and Difference
CONF 329: Community Engagement and Collaborative Problem Solving
CONF 337: Restorative Justice
CONF 392: Youth and Conflict
CONF 425: Mediating Conflict
CONF 435: Building Peace in Divided Societies
SEED 367: Teaching History and Social Science in the Secondary School
SEED 370: Young Adult Literature in Multicultural Settings
SEED 405: Teaching and Learning Difficult Histories
SEED 406: LGBTQ Issues in Education
SEED 408: Creating Advocacy with Adolescent Learners
SEED 422: Foundations of Secondary Education
To declare one of our minors, please contact an academic advisor at ugradcar@gmu.edu.
The University Catalog is the authoritative source for information on program requirements and courses. The Schedule of Classes is the authoritative source for information on classes scheduled for this semester. See the Schedule for the most up-to-date information and see Patriot web to register for classes. Requirements may be different for earlier catalog years. See the University Catalog archives.