Wilms, professor of education emeritus in the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, has spent his career dedicated to finding ways to apply his scholarship and some of UCLA’s institutional influence to advance social justice and equality. After taking a conflict mediation class in 1998 taught by Avis Ridley-Thomas, then-director of the dispute resolution program in the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office, Wilms had the idea to bring that to UCLA. So he invited Ridley-Thomas, now a lecturer in the UCLA César E. Chávez Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies, to partner with him to create a similar course at UCLA. Since 2002, “Restoring Civility” has sent nearly 500 UCLA students into schools in South L.A. to serve as mediators and to teach mediation to parents, teachers and police officers.
Last spring, students in the class had the unique opportunity to take their learning beyond the classroom. Working with Reaser and under the guidance of Wilms, six of the students went into gang territories in South Los Angeles to do work that can mean the difference between life and death.
“While we showed them how to employ various techniques in order to mediate conflict between individuals, they shared their knowledge about the streets and their different experiences utilizing those skills,” Phung said. “After those 10 weeks, I learned just as much as they did from our weekly sessions.”
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