The Scheinman Institute offers students a number of ways to learn about the field of conflict resolution by combining education, real-world skills, innovative learning experiences, and networking with professionals. See how we do it.
Credit programs
2-day student mediator training the Thursday and Friday prior to the semester starting in both the Fall and Spring. This workshop is free to students, focusing primarily on attracting ILR undergraduates and graduate students, law students, and business school students. This training provides students with an opportunity to learn more about mediation in multiple settings, including informal and formal mediation in campus, community, and workplace settings
Partnering with the Office of the Judicial Administrator, the Campus Mediation Program provides students with the training and problem-solving skills to take a lead role in mediating campus disputes.
The Asian Labor Arbitration Project at Cornell University is a multidisciplinary initiative providing education, training, and consulting services concerning workplace dispute resolution in eastern Asia. Its scope includes internal workplace conflict systems, facilitation, mediation and arbitration of workplace disputes.
The Project has conducted research and provided technical assistance to government agencies and organizations in industrializing countries (China, Vietnam and Cambodia) and industrialized countries (Korea, Japan, Malaysia, and the Philippines). The focus of research and technical assistance has included the attributes, structural fairness, and outcomes of labor arbitration.Click here for additional information.
Degrees
You can earn your degree with a concentration in dispute resolution. Learn more about each of the degrees: MILR, MS/PhD, MPS.
Non-Credit Programs
Meets regularly to offer graduate and undergraduate students exposure to outside experts working in a variety of environments. Students attend conferences, interact with professional mediators, and discuss a variety of opportunities that they find most valuable
The Scheinman Institute has become nationally known for its Intercollegiate Mediation Scrimmages where undergraduate, graduate and law school students compete against students from colleges from around the country in mediation matches. It's a fun and exciting way to put classroom learning into practice.
In the scrimmages, students are led by a coach – an attorney who is typically a prominent alum of the ILR School involved in labor relations. For the students, learning from these experts is invaluable.
Internships, Fellowships and Opportunities
The Conflict Resolution Internship Program
The Conflict Resolution Internship Program provides students with real-world experience internationally and in the U.S.. There’s an annual six-week trip to Asia, working with the government and companies in Vietnam or China; and labor relations internships with state agencies, and with the National Labor Relations Board in Washington, D.C., and in Chicago.
Credit Internship Fellowship
Working together with Brigid Beachler, Managing Director of the Office of Off-Campus Credit Programs, the Scheinman Institute has created a new fellowship designed to support students who have accepted unpaid internships in areas related to labor relations and conflict resolution. This extends the support that the Scheinman Institute provides for summer internships in these fields.
Summer Fellowship Program
Summer Research Fellows will have the opportunity to engage in independent research under faculty members' guidance or serve as research assistants for faculty members during the summer.
Student Research
Scheinman Scholars are a select group of students, published regularly in one of the industry’s leading journals, the Dispute Resolution Journal, produced by the American Arbitration Association. Our students’ articles are so well received that every issue includes at least one story from them, many of them taking a creative approach to conflict resolution analysis. One paper examined the lack of mediation skills exhibited by the office manager on the popular sitcom, “The Office.” Another analyzed Shakespeare’s plays to highlight mediation skills exhibited by his major characters.
There are many opportunities for students to get involved in world-class research, both on their own and in support of our faculty. One example is a study conducted by our organizational consulting practice helping to restructure the heath care system in Staten Island, N.Y., requiring over 650 interviews.
Textbook on Collective Bargaining and Labor Relations
This comprehensive textbook provides an introduction to collective bargaining and labor relations with a focus on developments in the United States. It is appropriate for students, policy analysts, and labor relations professionals including unionists, managers, and neutrals. A three-tiered strategic choice framework unifies the text, and the authors' thorough grounding in labor history and labor law assists students in learning the basics. In addition to traditional labor relations, the authors address emerging forms of collective representation and movements that address income inequality in novel ways.
Harry C. Katz, Thomas A. Kochan, and Alexander J. S. Colvin provide numerous contemporary illustrations of business and union strategies. They consider the processes of contract negotiation and contract administration with frequent comparisons to nonunion practices and developments, and a full chapter is devoted to special aspects of the public sector. An Introduction to U.S. Collective Bargaining and Labor Relations has an international scope, covering labor rights issues associated with the global supply chain as well as the growing influence of NGOs and cross-national unionism. The authors also compare how labor relations systems in Germany, Japan, China, India, Brazil, and South Africa compare to practices in the United States.
All royalties earned from the sale of the textbook go to the Scheinman Institute.
Instructor's Manual
The Instructor’s Manual has a test bank, PowerPoint chapter outlines, mock bargaining exercises, organizing cases, grievance cases, and classroom-ready current events materials.