Hosting Sinclair Community College Students

The Global Peacebuilding Center at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) welcomed students from Sinclair Community College in Dayton, Ohio on June 19, 2012. The group was hosted by David Smith, who led them in a program that explored what it means to be a peacebuilder. Activities included experiencing two multimedia exhibits: “Witnesses to Peacebuilding” video stories and the Peace Well.

USIP’s David Smith speaks to Sinclair Community College students in the Global Peacebuilding Center’s PeaceLinks Classroom.

David was joined at the end of the program by Noor Kirdar, from the Academy for International Conflict Management and Peacebuilding, who talked about USIP’s online courses. Katherine Rowell, the faculty organizer and sociology professor at Sinclair Community College, attended USIP’s seminar for community colleges in 2006 and has been using USIP’s online courses with her students ever since. To date, approximately 500 students from that college have completed one or more of the online courses on Introduction to Conflict Analysis (also in Arabic, Farsi and Spanish), Introduction to Negotiation and Conflict Management, Introduction to Interfaith Conflict Resolution (also in Arabic), and Introduction to the OSCE. She has found USIP’s courses a valuable and easily accessible way of engaging community college students in global issues and peacebuilding.