ODEI Launches New Skill-Building Series 

Empire State University’s Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (ODEI) has announced a new skill-building series slated to kick off this fall. Titled “Emotional Intelligence for Constructive Conflict,” the multi-part civil discourse program examines the role emotions play in conflict resolution.  

“This topic came out of a training we did with our peer mediation student organization, which George Lopez and I co-advised. Something that kept coming up is this idea of emotions, the role emotions play in conflict, and how bad we are at talking about emotions,” says ODEI Assistant Director Ade Byron. “We don’t want to talk about emotions in the workplace, but they are inherently a part of conflict. So how do we explore emotions in a way that allows us to identify them and move us forward in conflict instead of holding us back in the moment and stuck in that conflict?” 

Set to launch in four monthly installments on September 22, the program will be led by Byron and Lopez, SUNY Empire’s assistant director of student leadership and civic engagement. The pair will lead participants through hour-long sessions, each centered around a specific subject. In one session, for instance, attendees will explore how emotions influence behavior and work on techniques for managing and expressing emotional reactions during difficult conversations. 

The sessions will feature 20 minutes of learning, 20 minutes of skills practice, and 20 minutes of discussion. They are open to all faculty, staff, and students.  

“We encourage everyone to come. It’s something that’s really helpful in the university—in any place where you’re exploring different ideas and different opinions,” Byron says. “The goal really is to help us learn from and engage with each other in a way that fosters a sense of belonging in the community and allows us to grow [together].”