“Exciting, but a little strange.”

That’s how Larissa Fast describes the prospect of working alongside some of the professors who taught her. Fast, class of ’95, will teach conflict transformation starting in the fall. She will be the fourth graduate of the Kroc Institute’s M.A. in Peace Studies program to join the faculty or staff at the institute.

The alumni-employees believe that tapping their experience as Kroc students makes them more effective. “We occupy a unique vantage point to be able to fully empathize with both sides of the educational process, teaching as well as learning,” said research program coordinator Rashied Omar,
class of 2002.

Here is a quick look at the current alumni working at the Kroc Institute:

A. Rashied Omar, coordinator of the Research Initiative on the Resolution of Ethnic Conflict (RIREC) and the Program in Religion, Conflict and Peacebuilding (PRCP).

Omar came to the Kroc Institute from South Africa, where he was a well-known Muslim religious leader. He entered the master’s program intending to get a doctorate as well. He took a course in comparative fundamentalism from Kroc Institute director Scott Appleby, whose research interests dovetailed with his own. At the time, the PRCP program was just taking off, and it also intrigued him. Omar was offered the program coordinator’s job upon graduation.

“Suddenly I was a colleague among my former teachers,” he recalled. “People saw me as a student, but gradually they began to appreciate me as a full and equal partner.” For his part, Omar added, it took some adjusting to think of himself fully as a staff member and stop relating primarily with the students.

Omar is working to complete his Ph.D. from the University of Cape Town, specializing in religion and violence. Meanwhile, he coordinates both major research programs at Kroc. It’s a lot to handle. Fortunately, he said, PRCP’s annual conference is held in the spring, and RIREC’s in the fall.

Hal Culbertson, associate director.

Culbertson, class of ’96, already had a law degree and a master’s in philosophy when he was accepted as a peace studies student at Kroc. What inspired him to apply was his three years spent as a program administrator with the Mennonite Central Committee in Bangladesh. After graduation from Kroc, he stayed in South Bend and worked as an attorney, waiting for the right conflict resolution job to come up. Meanwhile, he did some editing for the institute.

In 1997, Culbertson was hired as Kroc’s publications editor and grant writer. That job grew into associate director. As “right hand” to Director Scott Appleby, his responsibilities range from budget oversight to the planning of office renovation. In 2003, he took on another: teaching NGO management.

“Being on the research side of the program, I didn’t see as much of the students,” he said. “My empathy with them is what made me want to teach a course.”

The dual role of alumnus and employee, he said, “is always an advantage, never a disadvantage.” He’s enjoyed watching the master’s program grow and gain recognition. When Culbertson was a student, he knew John Paul Lederach as the author of conflict transformation text books; now, Lederach is also a Kroc faculty member.

Felicia Leon-Driscoll, internship coordinator.

What do Kroc’s peace studies students do after graduation? Leon-Driscoll, class of ’89, remembers well the need to answer that question. When she was about to graduate, in the second year of the program’s existence, there was no one on the staff assigned to help students prepare for the next step in their lives. The faculty and staff could only offer informal career counseling as their demanding schedules allowed.

It took a year of searching after graduation, but Leon-Driscoll did find the kind of job she wanted, coordinating a peace studies program at Iona College in New York. Her husband’s studies eventually brought the family back to Indiana, where she worked as family services director for the South Bend Center for the Homeless. In 2000, she agreed to serve as the Kroc Institute’s internship coordinator, advising students on post-graduate opportunities. It’s a part-time position that fits nicely with her role as mother of four young children.

Some things have changed since Leon-Driscoll graduated. “People are more sophisticated at a younger age,” she said of the students and their approach to job-hunting.

Another difference is that employers are more familiar with peace studies degrees. So is the public. Leon-Driscoll recalled that, when she was in school, “it was a pretty obscure degree.” Her mother’s card-club friends wondered about this agriculture degree that Felicia was getting ? in “pea studies.”

Julie Titone

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Home > Publications > Peace Colloquy > Issue 5 (Spring 2004) > Alumni Staffers