KROC 510 Leadership and Organizations (3 units)(Roche; Spring 2022)

Students in this course gain understanding about their personal purpose, goals and leadership style and begin to create their own plan to gain agency and grow as adaptive leaders. The course prepares students to become effective leaders in the peace and justice field by bringing core concepts and theories about leadership, organizations and change alive through experiential learning, case analysis, individual assessment, and self-reflection.

KROC 513 Program Design, Monitoring & Evaluation (3 units)(McDougal; Spring 2022)

Starting with a solid understanding of the evolution of thinking and practice among key development and peacebuilding actors, this course is designed to prepare students to design, monitor and evaluate peacebuilding programs and project. Students will not only understand best practices in project design and management but also learn the skills and tools necessary to effectively carry out projects.

KROC 514 International System (3 units)(Luna; Spring 2022)

In this course, students will investigate the issues and actors in global governance. In the 21^st century, it has become clear that the earth’s challenges cannot be solved by sovereign states alone. In our globalized and interconnected world, the economy, the environment, conflict, refugee flows, pandemics, violations of internal law and other disasters require a multilateral response. Although nation states remain the dominant actors in the international system, increasingly they are joined on the stage by a plethora of intergovernmental and nonstate and even local actors. Global governance is complicated! Students will be introduced to international organizations and multilateralism, primarily examining peace and security, the global economy, international justice, global health, and climate change. This course seeks to illuminate the strengths and weaknesses of the current system, with a focus on how to make it better.

KROC 522 Impact Evaluation (3 units)(Cordeiro; Spring 2022)

Social innovation must be translated into actionable initiatives to achieve their intended goals. This course is designed to prepare students to design, monitor and evaluate social innovation initiatives. It provides essential knowledge for program design and management, including logical frameworks for monitoring and evaluation. Through this course students learn the skills and tools needed to implement basic methods used in impact evaluation, think critically about the issues involved with evaluating programs and apply various types of tools to systematize the planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of projects throughout the project cycle. This course will include an applied project conducted for a community organization.

KROC 531 Intervention Design (3 units)(Gamaghelyan; Spring 2022)

The Intervention Design course is a required course for the MS-CMR program. It provides a framework for students to synthesize and apply knowledge and practical skills gained during the program to create a specific conflict management/resolution project. The course is also a chance to create a key Kroc School Portfolio item that students can showcase to prospective employers, donors, or partners.

Throughout the course students will learn how to do the following:

1. Conduct conflict analysis
2. Identify and frame a critical need or problem within that conflict context and translate that need or problem into an actionable goal.
3. Develop a robust literature review and theory of change, demonstrating an ability to apply the learning from the program to develop a theoretically-grounded approach to the problem.
4. Recognize various intervention design strategies ranging from program design and action research to applied research and advocacy in order to choose an appropriate one for the particular context.
5. Integrate a number of conflict management and resolution approaches to develop a course of action and recommendations that result in outcomes that culminate in the conceived goal.
6. Create a robust and persuasive written, visual and oral presentation of the intervention.

KROC 532 Negotiations (3 units)(Fryer; Spring 2022)

Negotiation is the most widely used means of conflict management. The aim of this course is to develop your understanding of the principles, strategies, and tactics of effective negotiation in emotionally charged conflict situations. The role of identity – culture, gender, religion, nationality, class – will be mainstreamed throughout the course. Case studies and hands-on simulations will cover a variety of multi-issue, multi-party negotiations involving territorial and ethnic conflict, environmental justice, and post-conflict reconciliation. Each case involves both material concerns and underlying social-psychological interests. This course emphasizes the power of symbols, rules and norms, and regime and relationship building for cooperative ventures, governance and conflict prevention.

KROC 590 Intercultural Competency (2 units)(Roche; Spring 2022)

Based on the extensive research in anthropology, cross-cultural psychology, leadership, and organizational behavior, the course reviews the impact of culture on leaders and their followers at the national, group, and organizational levels.  It provides a thorough review of relevant theories and applies them to helping students develop the cultural mindset that is essential to effective peace leadership in today’s global and interconnected world. This course will focus on building an awareness of cultural differences, cultural biases, and cultural adaptation.  Students will develop cultural sensitivity that encompasses verbal, physical, and emotional differences in cultural expression.

KROC 590 Peace & Spirituality (2 units)(Sharp; Spring 2022)

This course will support students in cultivating a practice of reflection and resilience. Students and the instructor together will explore faith, spirituality, and contemplative practice in the context of their personal experience and work as peacebuilders and changemakers. Spiritual concepts will be accompanied by insights from scientific research including neuroscience and other disciplines. Readings will also include more secular and philosophical perspectives on what it means to live an “examined life.” The course will begin at the micro level with an examination of the self, the nature of consciousness, and other existential introspective themes, before moving to the more meso and macro levels where we will investigate the relationship between inner peace and outer peace. The latter will include (1) the ways in which spiritual faith and practice can both motivate and sustain peacebuilding work, including by helping to cope with issues of stress and burnout; and (2) the ways in which spiritual practices can be integrated into peacebuilding programs. While students will be encouraged to pursue a wide variety of spiritual practices, as a class we will spend a significant amount of time together learning and practicing mindfulness and lovingkindness meditations.

KROC 590 Social Movements (2 units)(Choi-Fitzpatrick; Spring 2022)

The world we want to live in is often very different from the world we find ourselves in. While the goals of peace and justice are laudable, the process of getting from here to there often involves creative struggle. It’s the job of people, prophets, poets, artists, and academics to describe the world we want to live in. It’s the job of social movements to help get us there. It’s the job of formal politics and established institutions to make these changes part of the permanent status quo. This class will introduce you to the Big Five ingredients for every major movement you’ve ever heard of, those you’ve never heard of, and those that failed altogether. The result will be an ability to think about particular movements in their broader perspective, to understand movements’ underlying principles, and to gain a clearer grasp on where you fit in the changemaking process.

KROC 592 WKSH: Stress Resilience: Science and Practice (1 unit) (Hanessian; Spring 2022)

Working with populations exposed to potentially traumatic events, stress is not only unavoidable, but highly transferable. This interactive, experiential workshop, delivered in four modules over four weeks, will explore the science and practice of stress resilience. Developing foundational knowledge about the role of stress and its impact on the brain, body, cognition, and behavior helps practitioners strengthen capacities of critical awareness and flexibility for perspective and agency, and avoid burnout and secondary trauma in the field. A basic understanding of the science of stress processes and protective factors, integrated with individual and group practice of core skill-sets, will provide a framework for developing stress resilience and cultivating personal and professional sustainability.

KROC 592 WKSH: Social Media Marketing (1 unit) (Campbell; Spring 2022)

This course introduces the student to the complexities, challenges, and opportunities that social media creates for marketers. The course covers topics including the role of social media in marketing, conducting a social media audit, creating and managing brand presences on social media, creating unpaid and paid social content, native advertising and influencers, and differences with online video. There is a dual focus on strategic understanding and tactical campaign development.

KROC 592 WKSH: Creativity, Peace and Social Change (1 unit) (Fryer; Sping 2022)

Purely trying to address conflict and social change on an intellectual level is destined to fall short. This workshop will explore how creative approaches to peace, conflict and social change both highlight and help address those limitations. Innovation is rooted in creativity. Examples of how this can have a positive impact on social problems can be found around the world. This workshop will critique and explore such arts-based methodologies and locate them within existing and emerging theoretical frameworks. Students will be invited to reflect on how they can incorporate such approaches into their own areas of interest.

KROC 593 San Diego Practicum (3 units)(Deaton; Spring 2022)

In this field-based practicum, the students will use different advocacy approaches to work on grassroots issues in the San Diego/Tijuana region. The location of the Kroc School at the U.S.-Mexico border provides a plethora of issues uniquely related to the international border.  During the course, the students will be engaged with three hands-on projects that will be student-driven with the supervision of the professor.

The Monday time slot is a space keeper and the hours for this class will be irregular. The students will be working on their projects and/or working in the community at times chosen by the students in collaboration with the group with which they will be working.

KROC 593 Field-based Practicum: Northern Ireland (3 units)(Fryer; Spring Break 2022)

The ongoing challenge of creating a sustainable peace in Northern Ireland has been well-documented and studied over the past 50 years. While the Good Friday peace agreement of 1998 brought about an end to widespread political violence, the challenges facing those working toward making Northern Ireland a more peaceful place remain significant. The fragile status of the peace agreement has been challenged by the emerging and ongoing dynamics associated with Brexit. This course will engage with the people and organizations who’ve been working toward peace and reconciliation since 1965 and the work they’ve inspired. It will engage with the complex realities of attempts to bring about sustainable peace within contexts of a post-industrial economic climate that was shaped by identity politics. It will highlight the pioneering approaches people in Northern Ireland have taken to social innovation, establishing a just and fair society, responding to the challenges of multi-layered, historied distrust and the ongoing challenges of political instability.

KROC 593 Field-based Practicum: Washington D.C. (3 units)(Gamaghelyan; Spring Break 2022)

For decades, the U.S. government, AND Washington, D.C.-based private foundations, academics, and NGOs have played an active role in funding, leading, and supporting hundreds of peacebuilding initiatives across the world. In the past few years, many of these institutions turned their gaze inward, using their resources and extensive experience to address conflicts within the U.S. itself, ranging from troubled race relations to increasing political polarization. This course will look into an array of domestic and international peacebuilding initiatives, ranging from efforts led by the U.S. government to NGOs and academia.

The course will allow Kroc students to test the knowledge acquired through their academic studies in networking with policymakers and leading scholars and practitioners active in domestic and international conflict contexts. The students will conduct a series of meetings and interviews regarding strategies and challenges of peacebuilding.

KROC 594 Business and Social Innovation (3 units) (Roche, Spring 2022)

Is the capitalist system the evil of our time or the savior of our future? Are businesses the cause of society’s most pressing problems or could they be instead part of the solution? How can business and entrepreneurial ingenuity contribute to reduce poverty and wealth inequality, protect the environment and natural resources, create community and social values, provide education and health services, reduce gender inequality and migration issues? Can the capitalist system, which is powered by individualism, ambition and a competitive spirit, evolve to be more humane and conscious of social problems? In a nutshell, what paradigms need to change in the business world and in society to make the market system a pillar for lasting positive peace in the world?

Working with real-life business cases, students in this course will be able to examine and critically analyze the above questions. From big businesses to small entrepreneurial examples, the course will provide tools to tackle social issues using proven and innovative business techniques and models. In short, this course focuses on the recently explored intersection between business and social innovation. Phills et al. define social innovation as “a novel solution to a social problem that is more effective, efficient, sustainable or just than existing solutions and for which the value created accrues primarily to society as a whole rather than private individuals.”  Social innovation is about generating transformative ideas and initiatives that meet unmet needs and attempt to create a “new equilibrium” that is socially superior to the status quo.

By the end of the course, students work in teams to develop a sustainability project for an existing company or a new entrepreneurial venture. The business initiative must create social value for all relevant stakeholders and society at large and show how it contributes to positive peace. All of the projects must be cross-functional in nature, so that students use the full spectrum of knowledge and skills that they have acquired during this course.

KROC 594 Community Advocacy, Organization, and Development (3 units)(Nguyễn; Spring 2022)

Communities are groups of people with shared norms, religion, values, or identity. They may or may not share the same geographical place. In general, community development is the process of discovering and activating individual capacities and assets, organizing them to build power and resources, and connecting them with larger institutions to devise solutions for community identified problems. Community development includes a wide range of issues that include housing, education, employment, business development, health, recreation, transportation, and other related issues. This course will focus on how organizers, advocates, and practitioners can help mobilize people and influence policy decisions to enhance community well-being.

Using the City of San Diego, California as a case study, this course will provide an overview of historical and contemporary urban policies and systems that shape the urban spaces and the people that live, work, and play in them.

KROC 594 Values, Principles, and Practices of Restorative Justice (3 units)(Horrigan; Spring 2022)

Restorative justice is not a list of specific programs or a clear blueprint for systemic change. It is a theory, social movement, and set of practices that requires a radically different way of understanding and responding to individual and community needs. In this course, we will explore restorative justice and the ideas that form its foundation, question its strengths and shortcomings, examine restorative practices, and investigate opportunities to put theory into practice. We will learn together about the Indigenous origins of restorative justice and how it has been shaped by modern systems. We will think about a framework for conflict resolution that asks first who was harmed and thinks broadly about whose responsibility it is to right the wrong. We will then consider this framework as it applies to some of the most pressing social problems in contemporary society, namely racial inequality and gender-based violence. Students will conclude the course by facilitating a learning experience for peers on an area of interest in the restorative justice field.

KROC 594 MAPJ Honors Development Seminar (3 units)(McDougal; Spring 2022)

An MAPJ Honors Project is akin to a Master’s Thesis; the option to craft one is made available to dedicated MAPJ students who wish to produce a piece of in-depth research and have consistently demonstrated high academic aptitude. Accordingly, no student with a cumulative graduate GPA of below 3.6 will be admitted. The MAPJ Honors Project Development Seminar is the second part of a 4- credit, yearlong course to help students in the MAPJ program to design (in the 1-credit Honors Project ProspectusWorkshop) and finally execute (in the 3-credit Honors Project Development Seminar) their Honors Projects.

The purpose of the Development Seminar is to guide and support you in developing your Honors Project proposal (also called a prospectus). Students taking this course must have already completed the Honors Project Prep Seminar and produced a satisfactory prospectus. During the course of this seminar, students will (a) revisit their Honors Project prospectus; (b) design and present an Honors Project outline; (c) produce a rough draft; (d) produce a final draft based on the instructor’s comments; and (e) do a final oral presentation to the class summarizing their project and findings.

KROC 594 Introduction to Restorative Justice: A Global Social Movement (3 units) (Horrigan; Spring 2021)

This course introduces the philosophy and practices of restorative justice. Restorative Justice is a philosophical approach that embraces the reparation of harm and healing of trauma. A central practice of restorative justice is a collaborative decision-making process that includes harmed parties, people who have caused harm, and others who are seeking active accountability by: • Accepting and acknowledging responsibility for causing harm; • Repairing the harm caused to harmed parties and the community; • Rebuilding trust by showing understanding of the harm, addressing personal issues, and building positive social connections; • Addressing root causes, systemic inequalities, and social injustices that creates the conditions in which harm occurs. Restorative justice is a global social movement with applications ranging from the way a teacher responds to minor misbehavior in school classroom to prosecutors support of a crime victim’s desire to confront the offender to a society’s healing approach in the aftermath of war or genocide. Restorative approaches draw upon a variety of justice traditions that, in many ways, challenges the Western legal tradition of adversarial adjudication and punishment. Students will be introduced to the ethical framework that guides restorative approaches and a variety of applications. One leading assumption of this course is that a student interested in applying restorative justice in one particular setting, such as a school, will be most successful when they understand the full range of perspectives and practices.

KROC 595 Wrestling with Wokeness Reading Group (1 unit)(Sharp; Spring 2022)

In recent years, acute awareness of ongoing social, racial, gender, and other injustices—wokeness—has aroused much-needed energy and attention, but has also raised difficult questions: how do we reconcile the at times understandable righteousness of cancel-culture with freedom of speech? Might the push for trigger warnings and safe spaces makes us more fragile and less resilient? At what point does the push to be more sensitive in our thinking and speech actually stymie the very honest and open conversations we need to have in a pluralistic society committed to diversity? How do we assess the tensions and tradeoffs when claims by one group of social justice activists appear to clash with those of another group? In what ways is social justice advocacy fed by political polarization, and it what ways does it contribute to political polarization? Why do so many activists seem to think the world is getting worse and worse when there is evidence to the contrary? In this reading group, we will engage the work of a number of contemporary writers who have wrestled with these and other questions relating to wokeness in various ways. Some writers celebrate the new spirit of activism for social change, while others eye it with a degree of ambivalence and worry that it may lead to backlash. This will include readings from both the left and right of the political spectrum. You are also almost guaranteed to agree with some, while vehemently disagreeing with others. You may find some writers challenging, engaging, thought provoking, and even offensive all at the same time. In such cases, a thoughtful critique of the critique will always be welcome and encouraged. We will try to keep the discussions open and informal with enough chocolate and coffee to fuel dialogue.

KROC 595 Race and Place Reading Group (1 unit) (Nguyễn; Spring 2022)

This course will provide an overview of the complex dynamics of race and ethnicity and how these have shaped rural and urban places in America. It will examine historical and modern-day literature and multimedia to probe the ways in which race and ethnicity have contributed to the culture of rural and urban areas in the United States. The course will draw upon multiple knowledge systems to cover a multitude of topics including colonization, social construction of race and class, immigration, residential segregation, and climate change. In each class meeting, there will be a discussion on how these topics contribute to inequality and conflict in space and the potential for change.

KROC 597 Professional Portfolio (1 unit) (Cordeiro & Choi-Fitzpatrick; Spring 2022)

The Kroc School equips changemakers. This course will help you to link the concepts, skills, and work-products developed in your time here with the professional requirements of the sector you wish to enter or return to upon graduation. In particular, this course will provide the time and support required to compile a professional portfolio composed of the items specified by your degree program.

Central to the Portfolio is a Curriculum Vitae highlighting your accomplishments to date. The Portfolio will also include a Reflective Essay, which serves as a coherent framework for drawing together lessons learned from your graduate studies at the Kroc School, and articulate your professional goals and trajectory. It should build upon your CV and draw upon a body of coursework and critical reflection. The essay should explain why the projects and documents completed in core courses and electives and/or practicum were selected for inclusion in the portfolio and how they are illustrative of the student’s learning.

The rest of the Portfolio consists of work products specified as eligible to include in guidelines for the MA in Peace and Justice, MA in Social Innovation, and MS in Conflict Management and Resolution. These can include policy memos, strategy memos, blogs, newspaper or magazine articles, grant applications, or book reviews.

Over the course of seven class meetings we will work to identify and refine these work products, such that they showcase your best work for a professional audience. Upon completion, students will be able to:

1. Articulate a clear narrative about their time at USD, and its connection to their professional objectives.
2. Highlight their accomplishments through a polished resume.
3. Showcase professionally valuable skills and abilities