Director of Curriculum Development Named

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Melissa Manwaring has been appointed the Director of Curriculum Development. She assumes her duties at a time of transition for the Program on Negotiation Clearinghouse. Its distribution function has been outsourced to a commercial firm specializing in the distribution of educational materials. Its role at PON is being shifted in a more pro-active direction, toward the development of comprehensive curricula. In addition to overseeing the Clearinghouse distribution, the Director of Curriculum Development will focus on writing and reviewing new materials and on designing syllabi for negotiation-related courses.

A 1994 graduate of Harvard Law School, Melissa has been a teaching assistant for the Winter Negotiation Workshop and for several of the Basic and Advanced Negotiation Workshops offered through the Program of Instruction for Lawyers. While working for six years as an intellectual property lawyer with Pillsbury Madison & Sutro in San Francisco and Fenwick & West in Palo Alto, she continued her involvement in negotiation, working part-time as a negotiation trainer and consultant. Subsequently, she became a full-time negotiation trainer and consultant for clients such as Thoughtbridge (formerly Conflict Management, Inc.) the Consensus Building Institute, SERA Learning, Mediation Works, Inc., and SquareTrade.

From 1997 to 1999, she also served as the first San Francisco Bay Area Activities Coordinator for the Program for Young Negotiators, training middle-school teachers and administrators in the PON-based “Young Negotiator” curriculum and co-teaching several negotiation classes to middle-school students.

Melissa is happy to be back in Massachusetts, working closely with negotiation scholars and teachers. She said, “I’ve worked with PON off and on for many years and am thrilled to join the PON community on a full-time basis. This is a unique opportunity to work with some of the best thinkers in the negotiation field in an effort to contribute positively to negotiation research and pedagogy.” Drawing on this wealth of resources, she will serve as a resource for teachers and trainers by providing pedagogical recommendations for curricula and materials.

In the past year, the role and function of the Clearinghouse has been changing. In August, 2000 the distribution function was taken over by bookTech, a Woburn-based firm specializing in customized course pack production. The company’s ability to produce just-in-time educational materials is well suited to meet the traditional needs of Clearinghouse customers, and to take them in new directions, particularly electronic distribution of materials. BookTech personnel have handled the two peak periods of annual Clearinghouse—prior to fall and spring semester–sales with no loss of efficiency and slight improvements in sales. The new Director, freed of day-to-day concern with distribution, will focus on curriculum and materials development, in an effort to more widely disseminate the ideas and pedagogical approaches of PON faculty members.

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