Co-director, SPI: the Summer Peacebuilding Institute
Associate Director of Summer Peacebuilding Institute, CJP
January 4, 2012 – 3:58 pm
After teaching at EMU during the regular terms and at the Summer Peacebuilding Institute (SPI) for a number of years, this past September I began a PhD program at the University of Tilburg in the Netherlands, where my general area of study is Social Construction. This summer I will be teaching again at SPI, facilitating ...More
January 3, 2012 – 2:34 pm
Over the years of teaching faith-based peacebuilding I have met students who are heroes of hope. Among them were: A nurse trainer who educates student nurses from three religious backgrounds to work with patients from the same three religious backgrounds. This nurse came with a vision to incorporate peacebuilding into the education of nurses. A ...More
The sixteenth annual Summer Peacebuilding Institute (SPI) at Eastern Mennonite University came to a successful conclusion on June 17th, just over a week ago. During the course of SPI a few of my colleagues conducted sixteen interviews with students and instructors. (To my knowledge, the recurrence of “sixteen” is a happy coincidence.) Our interview subjects ...More
December 30, 2010 – 6:09 pm
Who would come from half-way around the world to enroll in a program at Eastern Mennonite University that was so new, no college catalog listed it? Sam Gbaydee Doe did. From Liberia. Initially, the plump squirrels running around campus dismayed him: They could be food for very hungry people in his war-torn homeland. He himself ...More
December 30, 2010 – 4:05 pm
Janet Evergreen, MA ’98 Charlottesville, Virginia Janet Evergreen says she was encouraged to enroll in CTP in the late 1990s by her mentor, Louise Diamond, PhD, co-founder of the Institute for Multi-Track Diplomacy, founder of the Peace Company, and now founder and director of Global Systems Initiatives. Janet commuted an hour from her home in ...More
December 30, 2010 – 1:39 pm
Gilberto Perez Jr. ’94, Grad. Cert. ’99 Goshen, Indiana As the founding director of Bienvenido, a program for newly arrived Latino immigrants, Gilberto Pérez Jr. tries to offer resources for health and hope, as well as education and livelihoods, for Latinos in Indiana’s schools, churches, juvenile correctional facilities, and communities. In this quest, Gilberto has ...More
December 30, 2010 – 1:25 pm
Randy Puljek-Shank, MA ’99 Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina Based in Amela’s home country of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Randy and Amela Puljek-Shank have spent the last eight years devoted to healing the harms caused by the horrific warfare that occurred in the early 1990s across what was formerly Yugoslavia, and to preventing such horrors from happening again. They are also ...More
December 30, 2010 – 12:18 pm
Mental health worker – Professor – Schoolteacher – Full-time parent – Mediator – Lawyer – PhD student Administrator – Writer – Consultant – Newspaper editor – Hospital staffer – UN official – Computer engineer – Grandmother – Priest The post-EMU paths followed by CJP’s 36 earliest graduates are as diverse as the 10 countries in ...More
December 30, 2010 – 11:32 am
For CJP’s Future From Early Alumni 1. Preserve the Summer Peacebuilding Institute model of intensive, short-term courses. This model permits students to retain their jobs and not uproot themselves. Some people can’t take the time or don’t have the funds to be a residential student. (Nathan Barge) 2. Keep the door open so that diverse ...More
