Rebecca Smith: Alumna Gets in the Middle of Things With Career in Mediation

As an undergrad in English at Berkeley, Rebecca Smith (Class of ’07, M.A., negotiation, conflict resolution and peace building) was impressed with the power of language and how lives could be transformed through storytelling. While researching graduate programs in creative writing, she discovered the negotiation, conflict resolution and peace building masters program at California State University, Dominguez Hills.

“I found this program and I just knew this was what I should be doing,” says Smith. “A big part of transformative mediation and narrative mediation is to tell a story, to have an opportunity for each person to be heard and use a conflict resolution process that focuses on emotional and relationship issues.

Smith currently is serving as assistant to Forrest Mosten, a prominent mediator and collaborative attorney, and also volunteers at the Los Angeles County Bar’s Dispute Resolution Services and the Beverly Hills small claims court. Her experiences have given her a range of skills and approaches to the art of mediation.

“Most of the time in small claims court you don’t need to develop a relationship with the parties,” she notes. “But with landlord-tenant and neighbor-neighbor disputes, you need to help them build or rebuild the relationship. It was an opportunity to have ongoing cases where you can start facilitating mediation so the conflict is resolved. There was a lot of follow-up, with phone calls and referrals, since we weren’t allowed to give legal advice. With the small claims court, the parties come in and I give a two-minute intro to the services I provide. There isn’t a whole lot of time to develop a relationship with the parties. It’s more efficient, things get resolved right there in front of you. But there’s a certain sense of quality that is lost because you have to do it quickly.”

Smith values mediation for its community-building aspects and says that, “It’s a very new field, and in some ways, a very traditional means of conflict resolution. For example, in indigenous Chinese culture, the primary means to solving conflict is through mediation by an elder, someone who is well-respected in the community.”

Smith, who would like to become a family mediator and teach in her field, says that her professors at Dominguez Hills were “amazing,” not only for their knowledge and expertise, but also for their commitment to their students’ success.

“They’re here because they love to teach,” she says. “They’re always available and interested in whatever they could do to promote learning. The very first thing I did was go to the graduate orientation. The dean of the College of Behavioral Science got up and said ‘We are here to help you, we’re not here to kick you out. If you are having trouble with something, come and talk to us.’ The emphasis here is on the students’ needs and what they need to get the most out of their education. Taking the anxiety out of it promotes learning.”

Smith also credits the diversity on campus as a key part of her education at Dominguez Hills.

“It was great being in classes with people who are from all over the world, everybody from practicing lawyers to kids who have grown up in the inner cities who experienced conflict everyday,” she explains. “To learn from their experiences and be able to apply the [class] material to that was much greater than anything I could learn from books.”

Last summer, while taking a class in legal and ethical issues of counseling taught by Sydell Weiner in the marriage and family therapy program, Smith wrote a response to a case study vignette on dual relationship, which ended up being published in the December 2007 issue of The Therapist. She says that the assistance her professor gave her, as well as the mentoring and support of several faculty members, was invaluable.

“Being among such a level of well-recognized professionals in the field brings a level of credibility to someone who is just starting out,” Smith says. “It really translates beyond the classroom. The contacts that I’ve made [on campus] are all very involved in the community and professional organizations. It’s such a part of the professional world. If I didn’t have Professor [A. Marco] Turk as a referral, I probably wouldn’t have this job.”

Smith sums up the collaborative spirit that pervades her chosen field, as well as her studies and training at CSU Dominguez Hills.

“Nancy Erbe (associate professor of negotiation, conflict resolution and peace building) once said about group work, ‘You can’t bring each other down, you can only help each other,’” Smith recalls. “That’s what we were learning about, and we were practicing that through our education.”

- Joanie Harmon