news from the front (office)

This month, I'd like you all to welcome our new board members and our new volunteers to our Mediation Community!

Ideal candidates for Board members of nonprofit organizations such as CMC need to possess certain traits.  (from "Doing Good Better" by Stoesz & Raber)
1. Compatibility with the organization's values and goals
2. Judgment:  Effective directors are capable of independent judgment while being open to influence and enriched by fellow directors.
3. Justice:  Effective board members are persistent in their pursuit of what is just and right. 
4. Teamwork:  The best directors are those who, while exercising independent judgment, function collectively.
5. Doers:  Board work involves hard work.  To talk about sitting on a board is an unfortunate misnomer.  Board service is not meant to be an honorary position, although it is honorable!
      The ideal is synergism, with the whole being greater than the sum of its parts.  Well-rounded boards include people of divergent backgrounds, operating in an atmosphere where each one is complemented by the others. 

Our new Board members are:

Wanda Donnelly, Esq. Wanda is a not so new transplant to Knoxville. She and her husband , Paul,  moved here in September 2004 from Champaign, Illinois to be closer to family.  They have a dog, Max, who will soon be eight years old. as well as a growing interest in the Smoky Mountains and hiking.  Wanda is a Legal Aid attorney and have worked there a little over a year and a half.  She's always been interested in mediation and decided to give it a try.   She's been mediating for CMC in Juvenile Court ever since her training in March 2005. 

Greg O'Connor, Esq.. J. Gregory O'Connor is a Knoxville native who graduated from the University of Tennessee in 1966 and from the College of Law in 1968.  He has been a private practitioner in Knoxville since 1971, a member of the firm of Carpenter, O'Connor, and Sterchi.  Greg became a Rule 31 civil mediator in 1997 and has been a very active civil mediator since that time.  He currently devotes the majority of his professional time to mediation practice.  Currently, he is the Chair of the O'Connor Senior Center Board of Advisors;  an active member of Immaculate Conception Catholic Church; and a Mentor at Beaumont Magnet School.  

Paul Rajkowski  Paul moved to Knoxville in 1986. He is a graduate of St. Mary's University, Winona, Minnesota.  Having been involved in several businesses including export in Tennessee, Paul is now part of Jean Munroe Associates as a trainer and a Rule 31 civil mediator. He has been doing pro bono mediations in civil and juvenile sessions and looking forward to advancing mediation, and mediation services statewide.  Paul is also a master chef extraordinaire!

Isabell Huie  We are very excited to have Isabelle on the board, and will report her biography next month!

Our new volunteer mediators are an interesting and skilled bunch!  We have four domestic violence advocates who work with victims through the YWCA, the KPD and the new Family Justice Center; a UT PhD student; a community college instructor of Occupational Therapy; a DCS attorney and former social worker; an aspiring social worker who works at Parent Place; a minister who is involved with the KPD chaplains; a Montessori school owner and director; and several UT Law students who are especially interested in family mediation.

Wayne Baker
Pat Boorse
Evelyn Condon
Barbara Johnson, Esq.
Clayton Leasure
Lauren Mackey
Janet Neely
Mary O'Neill
Alan Smith
Mary Smith
Natasha Williams
Vivian Wright
Judith Wyatt

Our new mediators will first observe 4-5 mediations, and then be assigned a "Mediation Mentor", one of our seasoned (notice I didn't say "old") volunteers.  The mentor and newbie will debrief mediations, read articles and discuss issues for several months before we will move the new mediator into a "mediate with any co-mediator" status.  We will be implementing our mentoring approach with all our mediators, eventually.  We will also be holding a monthly mentoring breakfast to discuss issues that arise in our mediations.  As many of you know, most of our volunteers mediate at least 2x a month, and quite a few mediate once a week.

Our training team, along with UT Mediation Clinic, will be reviewing our training protocols, curriculum, and materials over the next few months in order to strengthen them, remove redundancies,  and commit to our Courts that we are doing everything possible to recognize and address family violence issues affecting adults and children. 

We are developing plans to provide a training to Rule 31 family mediators who would like to volunteer at CMC.  The "bridge" training will focus on co-mediation techniques, CMC procedures, court forms, and some topics of daily use to our volunteers:  dependency, domestic violence, facilitative and transformative mediation skills.

I am going to an interdisciplinary conference at Vassar College in May, "Mediation and Domestic Violence:  Ignorance is NOT Bliss."  CMC would like to offer to volunteer mediators and other service providers and court workers in the family violence community an increased understanding of the complexities and hidden identifiers of domestic violence, and we hope this conference will move us along. 

Last but not least, I'd like to announce that I have accepted the position of Executive Director with CMC.  Last year was one of transition; this year will be one of challenges: documenting our successes, finding funds and resources for the mediation we already do, identifying where we need to improve our way of doing business, and expanding intelligently.  CMC helped create the path of mediation in Knox County, and we've watched it become a beautiful well-traveled series of trails. CMC will now be taking a leadership role again to create new avenues where mediation can thrive and grow, working with our bench and bar, our Rule 31 non-attorneys and attorneys, TVMA, UT College of Law, and our generous and skillful volunteers!  My personal goal is to create the opportunities for dialogue about the whole spectrum of mediation within our community.  Please consider signing up for one of our ad hoc committees to implement and shape our strategic plan.  We have the following teams in formation, so contact us for more info and sign-up:

• Outcome evaluation improvement, so that we can use our data in the best possible way, to understand what happens when we're successful and when we're not

• Peer mediation development, which includes working without new commitment to train UT Athletes in peer mediation and conflict recognition, and to be "champions" of peer mediation in our schools.

• Training and mentoring for all programs (juvenile, family, divorce, debt/healthcare, rule 31 bridge, domestic violence)

• How to improve and expand our Mediation spaces

• Developing a funding appeal, including marketing ideas.

• How to educate the state and local legislature on the needs of community mediation in our county and state-wide.

This coming year is a crucial one for CMC, and we need your help now.  Please consider joining in!

---Jackie Kittrell