For a more streamlined read, note the following:

–links to each CJP program are omitted. To learn more about the specific programs named here, please visit the .

— a faculty or staff member’s title is listed once, on first reference. To learn more about individual faculty and staff members, visit the .

Our alumni are accomplished people and a wonderful resource, which is why we include a link to each personal profile on the . This information is provided and updated voluntarily.

September 2019

• A class of 22 new graduate students begin their first semester of studies.
• The new graduate students participate in CJP’s Grounding Day: an opportunity to begin to ground students in the history and current social, political, economic and environmental justice realities in Harrisonburg.
• Fidele Ayu Lumeya MA ’00 returns to the Democratic Republic of Congo to direct the Congo Ubuntu Peacebuilding Center.
• Talibah Aquil MA ’19 performs “Ghana, remember me…,” a multimedia production that sprung from her 2019 travels in Ghana as part of her capstone project on the themes of identity, race, trauma and healing.
• Twenty-one participants join STAR 1 on campus with Lead Trainer Katie Mansfield and Ayman Kerols MA ’16.

October 2019

• CJP’s 25th anniversary year kicks off with a “TenTalks” event at 91����Ƶ’s Homecoming and Family Weekend featuring Tammy Krause MA ‘99, Darsheel Kaur MA ‘17, and John E. Sharp, father of Michael J. Sharp ’05.
• Donna Minter, founder and executive director of the Minnesota Peacebuilding Leadership Institute and STAR Trainer, is honored with the Melanie Greenberg U.S. Peacebuilding Award of Excellence.
• Professor Johonna Turner, co-director of the Zehr Institute for Restorative Justice, gives the keynote address at a symposium on restorative justice hosted by the University of Richmond Public Interest Law Review. Attorney Brenda Waugh MA ’09 provides a talk on restorative lawyering and Suzanne Praill MA ’10, director of restorative justice at the Fairfield Center, contributes to a panel discussion.
• In collaboration with , CJP hosts Community Criminal Justice Days conference, bringing together community stakeholders for discussions and planning around reducing incarceration and recidivism in the local area.
• Howard Zehr, distinguished professor of restorative justice, is the featured speaker at the 2019 Vernon M. and Minnie I. Lynch Lecture at George Mason University.

November 2019

• CJP co-sponsors a conference in Mexico City on the intersection of gender and peacebuilding: “Construcción de Paz con Perspectiva de Género” at the University Iberoamericana, a Jesuit-affiliated institution. Alena Yoder, CJP’s program development associate, was a panel moderator. Vernon Jantzi, emeritus professor, and Jayne Docherty, CJP executive director, presented papers. 
• STAR trainers facilitate a workshop for the Grand Canyon National Park’s Public Lands for all Inclusion Summit to explore principles of restorative justice, trauma awareness, resilience, and truth and reconciliation and how those principles might be applied in the organizations and the workplaces. Read about STAR’s ongoing relationship with the National Park Service.
• Kajungu Mturi MA ‘18 facilitates a day of trauma and resilience training for 91����Ƶ’s Intensive English Program staff and instructors.
• Gilberto Pérez Jr. ’94 GC ’99, vice president for student life at Goshen College, wins his bid for a city council seat in Goshen, Indiana. He will be the first Latino council member in a city that is 33-34% Latino.
• A Zehr Institute for Restorative Justice features multiple speakers on engaging communities of faith in promoting restorative justice, along with specific avenues and resources for collaborating with Catholic parishes and ministries.
• Eighteen people participate in STAR 2 with Katie Mansfield and Lisa Collins.

December 2019

• Katie Mansfield and Jon Swartz MA ‘14 facilitate three days of STAR-based training for the Department of the Interior’s Office of Collaborative Action and Dispute Resolution, including Sigal Shoham MA ’13.
• 91����Ƶ recognizes Dawn Curtis-Thames MA ’20 and David Nyiringabo MA ’20, then second-year CJP students,  for their outstanding contributions to CJP and the larger university community. Read about their practicum studies.

January 2020

• Wayne Marriott MA ’18, a conflict coach and mediator based in Christchurch, New Zealand, receives the Resolution Institute’s 2019 Michael Klug Award for his support to the local community after the mosque shootings there last year.
• The 10-episode Peacebuilder podcast launches, featuring faculty and staff members reflecting on the program’s history and their own peacebuilding work.
• Twenty-two people, including 11 CJP MA students, participate in STAR 1 on campus with Katie Mansfield and Johonna Turner.

February 2020

• The fifth annual SPI Community Day welcomes about 100 participants to get a taste of Summer Peacebuilding Institute classes and hear from speakers on racial justice, including Chief Kenneth Branham of the Monacan nation and Frank Dukes, a professor at the University of Virginia.
• Professor Emeritus Barry Hart is the keynote speaker at a seminar organized by Initiatives of Change Sri Lanka in Sri Lanka, discussing the role restorative justice could play in restoring and healing wounded people to create a more just society.
• The Zehr Institute for Restorative Justice hosts a webinar on Equal Justice USA’s approach to the relationship between community and police in Newark, N.J., and how trauma-informed responses to violence that are community-driven can reduce harm for those most vulnerable and marginalized.
• Ten people join Kajungu Mturi MA ‘18 and Katie Mansfield at a STAR 1 training on campus.
• Katie Mansfield presents on a panel titled “Healing and Resilience: Taking a trauma-informed approach to delivering assistance” sponsored by the Peace and Security Workgroup of the Society for International Development-Washington Chapter. 

March 2020

• CJP staff and faculty start working remotely and moving academic classes online due to COVID-19.
• STAR provides three days of training for the George Washington Memorial Parkway.
• The 25th Anniversary Celebration, planned for the summer, is postponed for a year. The new dates are June 4-6, 2021. Alicia Garza, John Paul Lederach and sujatha baliga are among the scheduled speakers who plan to attend.
• Katie Mansfield launches the virtual community Dancing Resilience, through which participants all over the world meet via video conference multiple times a day to dance together. 
• The Zehr Institute for Restorative Justice hosts a virtual book launch for (Skyhorse Publishing, 2020), by Lindsey Pointer, Kathleen McGoey, and Haley Farrar.

April 2020

• SPI announces its move to an all-online format.
• Donors help to meet two $35,000 matching grants set up by two couples and gave generously during Lov91����Ƶ Day in honor of CJP’s 25th anniversary.
• Cole Parke MA ’12 and Emmanuel Bombande MA ’02 are named as 2020 Peacebuilder of the Year honorees.
• STAR releases the Care “Together” video series: conversations between Katie Mansfield, STAR trainers and practitioners. 

May 2020

• SPI 2020 marks the 26th year of gathering peacebuilders for mutual learning and support – online this year using video conferencing and other digital tools. Eleven courses are offered to more than 180 people across 60% of the world’s time zones. Read general news coverage here, and more specific articles about creating community online and the digital peacebuilding class.                       
• Sixteen CJP graduates representing nine countries receive their degrees. 
• Johonna Turner is one of the three faculty presented with 91����Ƶ’s annual Excellence in Teaching Awards.
• Christine Kindler MA ’17 receives the Berlin Fellowship from Humanity in Action.
• The new Master of Arts in Transformational Leadership is launched earlier than expected as CJP moves online. The degree with online, hybrid and residential options for working professionals includes courses in business and leadership and will continue to add courses from other programs at 91����Ƶ as electives.

June 2020

• SkyHorse Publishing releases a new edition of Carolyn Yoder‘s Little Book of Trauma Healing.
• STAR provides a webinar for Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency’s Service Coordinators and Case Managers on trauma and resilience.

July 2020

• STAR trains campus ministry professionals at the National Association of Campus Ministers virtual conference.
• An advisory group of STAR trainers and practitioners work with Katie Mansfield to recreate STAR for online delivery. The group includes Donna Minter, Crixell Shell, Ram Bhagat GC ’19, Lisa Collins, Meenakshi Chhabra, and Johonna Turner. Elaine Zook Barge MA ’03, Vernon Jantzi, and Carolyn Yoder provide additional input and insight.
• STAR announces registration for STAR online.
• Johonna Turner contributes a chapter to Colorizing Restorative Justice: Voicing Our Realities (Living Justice Press, 2020), a collection of 18 essays penned by practitioners and scholars of color.

August  2020

• STAR wraps up four webinars for National Park Service staff.
• CJP welcomes 30 new students for orientation. This includes nine students in the new MA in Transformational Leadership program, with online, hybrid and residential options.
• Planning continues for the CJP “25+1” anniversary celebration.

Across video conference screens, Lead Trainer Katie Mansfield and Kirby Broadnax MA ’20 sit down together. Their topic of discussion: learning from our pain. 

“For me, there’s not a moment or a particular event that I think about, but just a continual deepening of my understanding of the ways that structural traumas like racism and sexism in particular, have impacted, continue to impact my life and my body,” Broadnax says. “So working to understand how internalized oppression is a trauma response, and how to dismantle that within myself.”

“Thank you for naming those painful realities,” says Mansfield. “What are some of the things that help you build resilience for facing those things?”

“I really love music, and so I often turn to music to accompany me through the variety of feelings that I experience. And I also like to sing, and singing helps me move energy through my body in a way that feels really helpful,” Broadnax replies. 

Broadnax then leads the pair in an energy meditation. This short, six-minute interaction – listening to and sharing about healing journeys, and finding ways to physically practice trauma resilience – is part of the Care Together video series published by the STAR program.

In each of the 11 short videos, Mansfield sits down with a different STAR trainer, practitioner, or former participant to share that healing space. STAR Director Hannah Kelley says the video series began in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“When COVID-19 was declared a pandemic and we started working from home, we knew we had something to offer the world. The pandemic, its implications, and the inequities that it unmasked were traumagenic for many people,” Kelley says. “We wanted to provide a way for people to recognize trauma responses and understand all of those responses as natural and normal. In addition, we wanted to focus on resilience and practices that foster resilience.”

Each Care Together guest brings a different practice to the table to help those watching get “unstuck” from our trauma responses, Kelley explains. 

The featured guests in the series are:

• Joy Krieder, independent trauma consultant, in “Creating and Breathing Resilience,”
• Meenakshi Chhabra, professor at Lesley University, in “Opening our Bodies to Healing Historical Trauma,”
• Marisabel Kubiak Sanchez, chief executive officer of a public health consulting firm, in “Starting with Health and Wellness to Help Others,”
• Professor Emeritus Vernon Jantzi, in “Moving and Stretching in the Face of Violence,”
• Letitia Bates ’16, a certified life coach, in “Healing the Pain of the Past,” [read more about Letitia]
• Crixell Shell, assistant executive director of the Minnesota Peacebuilding Leadership Institute, in “Unpacking Experiences of Systemic Racism,” [read more about the institute’s work]
• Tyler Goss MA ’19, in “Acknowledging that All Trauma is Significant,”
• Katia Ornelas MA ’13, founder of Ornelas Konsultant, in “Sharing our Healing Journey,”
• Kirby Broadnax MA ’20, in “Learning from Our Pain,”
• David Nyiringabo MA ’20, in “Believing in the Therapy of Laughing, Singing, and Dancing,” and
• Kajungu Mturi MA ’18, in “Using Power for Justice & Peace.” 

“It takes courage to try to address harms at the systemic level, such as the land theft that is at the foundation of the service; at the institutional level, like culture and climate issues faced by employees throughout the service; and the individual level, things like interpersonal bullying and harassment. None of our organizations is a shining example of doing this well, so it’s a gift to be part of the process of struggle toward change.”

STAR Lead Trainer Katie Mansfield

The National Park Service is focusing on improvement of its workplace culture and climate – and calling in the help of restorative justice and conflict transformation professionals from 91����Ƶ’s Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience (STAR) program.

Most recently, STAR trainers conducted a training and facilitated discussion over four days in Philadelphia for 20 federal workers, including five park service superintendents. Its goal? To engage with trauma and resilience experts to help shift workplace culture and build employee satisfaction throughout park service offices in the Northeast.

The event was the second time STAR has worked with the park service and more trainings are being planned, according to STAR Program Director Hannah Kelley.

The inclusion of STAR programming has provided a way into addressing systemic issues within the park service’s unique context, said Rebecca Stanfield McCown, director of the host agency, the National Park Service . “I’m still amazed at the impact of the December workshop, which not only connected each of us to the personal and human side of trauma awareness and restorative practices, but helped us begin to develop a common language around these principles.” 

NPS explores the potential of RJ

The Stewardship Institute is dedicated to helping NPS leaders “move the organization in new directions” through collaboration and dialogue. It began exploring the potential of restorative justice for “employee wellness in the face of harassment and hostility” about two years ago, McCown said.  

At about the same time, Grand Canyon National Park hosted a STAR training. Park administrators were connected with STAR by Sigal Shoham, a 2013 alumna of the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding and an organizational omsbudsman with the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Office of Collaborative Action and Dispute Resolution (CADR). 

Administrators at The Stewardship Institute were especially interested in the beneficial outcomes of the training in Arizona. “When we were looking to understand what role restorative practices could have in addressing harassment and hostility, we reached out to STAR because of the good things we had heard from the staff at Grand Canyon,” McCown said.

She added: “It had been challenging to communicate the potential alignment and benefits restorative practices could bring to the NPS because most of us lacked the language and strong understanding of how it might be applied to our workplaces.”

With STAR programming shaped to that educational goal and outside experts brought in for the facilitated discussion, the Philadelphia training helped the Stewardship Institute shine light on the way forward. 

Positive outcomes

The training was facilitated by STAR Lead Trainer Katie Mansfield and Jonathan Swartz, a restorative justice practitioner and Center for Justice and Peacebuilding alumnus. The participants, including Shoham and other CADR employees, spent 2.5 days learning about the personal and organizational impacts of trauma, concepts and applications of restorative justice, self care, and secondary traumatic stress. 

The remainder of the third and fourth days focused on a facilitated dialogue, during which participants could ask questions of experts in restorative justice, trauma awareness and resilience, truth and reconciliation, and organizational anthropology, including the STAR trainers themselves. 91����Ƶ professors Johonna Turner and Carolyn Stauffer, who bring expertise in trauma awareness, resilience and restorative justice, contributed to this discussion, which also included cultural anthropologists and other specialists.

One outcome of the final session was strategies and action items to create awareness, implement practices, and build a new culture. 

“I could feel the combination of struggle and inspiration and care among the participants,” said Mansfield “It takes courage to try to address harms at the systemic level, such as the land theft that is at the foundation of the service; as well as at the institutional level, like culture and climate issues faced by employees throughout the service; and the individual level, things like interpersonal bullying and harassment. None of our organizations is a shining example of doing this well, so it’s a gift to be part of the process of struggle toward change.”

The December workshop, McCown said, equipped park service staff to begin “to implement trauma-aware and restorative practices in our individual parks or program culture,” such as developing workshops for more staff. The participants are also working to “identify ways that park leadership can foster workplaces that include restorative practices and trauma-aware leadership.”

“My key learning at CJP is the importance of embodied learning in peacebuilding, which is new to peacebuilding education here but also in Korea,” she said.

This month, Ahn did just that – hosting a five-day course at 91����Ƶ on “Building Resilience for Body, Mind and Spirit” for 18 visiting South Korean K-12 educators.

The “arts-based, embodied learning experience was developed to revitalize creativity for working in nonviolent social transformation,” said course creator Katie Mansfield, the lead trainer of the Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience (STAR) program.

Offered in past years at CJP’s , the course was tailored for this group by Ahn and Mansfield. Goals included an understanding of how systemic and cultural violence affects individual trauma, building resilience in body, mind, and spirit through arts-based, embodied learning, and empowerment for making social change, Ahn said.

“It was an honor that Eunkyung chose to bring her colleagues to CJP and 91����Ƶ,” said Hannah Kelley, STAR program director. “CJP has been hosting a growing number of US and international groups for short-term trainings like this one. We learn from the people who attend our trainings: the problems in their work, their careful analysis of their context, and their creative and innovative approaches to RJ, trauma awareness and resilience. This group was no exception! These teachers are thoughtful and creative peace-builders, and we were excited to work together for a week.”

Working to transform South Korean educational systems

The educators are members of the Center for Restorative Justice in Education, an affiliate of the Movement for Good Teachers, a Christian teachers association in South Korea. The movement is “a grassroots effort by Christian teachers to transform Korean education with justice, peace and love,” Ahn said. Formed in 2011 in response to a rise in school bullying, the teacher-members are working to promote nonviolence and peace in the school environment.

Course participants Inki Hong, Eunji Park and Byeongjoo Lee are senior teachers at schools in urban neighborhoods near Seoul. Hong and Park teach elementary school in Sang-tan and Gwan-ak, respectively. Lee teaches middle and high school English in Sin-neung; he has also worked in reform schools and in China. All learned about circle processes and restorative justice in different ways, including teacher academies and international workshops, some involving Jae-Young Lee MA ‘03, founder of the Korea Peacebuilding Institute.

Before he learned about restorative justice, Hong says he played the role of a judge with his students.

“Before, when children fight, I would have to decide who is wrong and who is right,” he said. “Now, I don’t decide. I help you figure out what happened and how to make things right. The circle makes equal power and equal power is not usually found in classrooms.”

Children in Korea “do not know how to express themselves,” said Park. “In the circle, they know how. It really develops metacognitive skills.”

Lee, who teaches older children and teenagers, said with a smile that if he used the circle process in class, “my students might think I was crazy.”

“Apart from application,” he said more seriously, “I am learning how the philosophy of RJ can be shaped into many circle styles. The format and philosophy of RJ has emerged to me in a more concrete way, which I find very inspiring.”

All three educators work with newcomer teachers in their home settings and plan to share their learnings in hopes of contributing to culture and systemic change in the educational environment.

Visit to 91����Ƶ fulfills ‘a dream’

The Center for Restorative Justice in Education has offered international learning opportunities in the past. With other center members, Ahn traveled to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, five years ago. A visit to 91����Ƶ has been “a dream” for the group, she said, and shortly after she arrived at CJP for graduate studies, she began working with CJP faculty and staff.

“I am most appreciative of the supportive efforts of CJP executive director Daryl Byler, Jayne Docherty, Bill Goldberg, Hannah Kelley and Katie Mansfield, who made it happen,” she said.

Docherty is CJP’s academic programs director. Goldberg directs the Summer Peacebuilding Institute, an annual program that offers similar short courses on a range of topics. 

Mansfield brings years of experience leading STAR trainings around the globe, many of which are specially adapted to meet specific needs of the hosting group.

The “Building Resilience” course invites learners “to exercise their creative muscle, a critical foundational practice for challenging violence,” she said. Participants engage in visual artistry, music making, movement exploration, poetry and short story development, and final presentations. A session with visiting co-facilitator Ram Bhagat involved drumming and contemplative practices.

Mansfield appreciated the group’s engagement: “I was so impressed at how deeply and directly the educators connected the various expressive arts exercises to the challenges they face as educators, restorative justice practitioners and citizens of Korea.”

Facets of their resilience were expressed, she said, through connections made to the ongoing civil rights journey in the US, “a moving percussion and movement performance about confronting and transcending violence,” and an arts-based lament of/transformative response to the 2014 Sewol Ferry disaster, in which 299 people died, many of them high school students.

Spreading the word

After graduation in May 2018, Ahn will take STAR II. She looks forward to seeing what she has learned since taking STAR I at the beginning of her studies two years ago. Then she’ll take some months to travel and visit spirituality-based peacebuilding communities before returning to her teaching position in South Korea.

“I am so passionate about growing as an educator and helping to educate others about valuing our whole beings,” she said. “It is so important to live with our true selves in our individual and communal lives, and I hope to share that with my students and their parents and other educators in the future.”

Contributors to the “Changing the Narrative on Sexual Harms” (CTN) project include STAR trainer Katie Mansfield, program director Hannah Kelley and practitioner Joy Kreider. The project will be housed under the at 91����Ƶ’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding.

STAR has facilitated trauma and resilience trainings with thousands of participants from more than 60 countries. The CTN project and resulting curriculum will deepen the program’s work addressing sexual trauma specifically and will engage all affected parties – from individuals to institutions – in proactive, preventative and restorative approaches.

“Worldwide there is a growing admission that the topic of sexual harms is quickly moving from invisible peripheries to conspicuous center stage,” Stauffer said. “The CTN project provides a viable way to be visibly present at a critical time in this important conversation. This proactive approach frames the paradigm shift opportunity offered by CTN.”

The grant includes funding for assembling focus groups in local and international settings, interviewing global practice leaders, and accessing expertise at institutions such as Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand.

The project will collect input from survivors across diverse communities to ensure the inclusion of voices from marginalized and underrepresented communities. In addition to the harmful impacts of sexual violence on individuals, the curriculum will address how power disequilibriums can foster cultures of violence in communities and organizations.

“Many organizations do not have processes in place to support individuals in a trauma-sensitive manner nor the impetus to push for proactive policies that prevent sexual violence in the first place,” Stauffer wrote. “Daily we hear of ‘sexual misconduct’ that gains notoriety precisely because institutions are non-compliant with current legislation and ignorant of trauma-sensitive intervention protocols. Such gaps not only compound the profound harms already done to victims, but they also put the integrity, legality and legitimacy of organizations at risk.”

The focuses on individuals and organizations working for effective change through innovative approaches to societal challenges relating to gender, environmental and/or economic justice. It is administered by through the Everence affiliate, Mennonite Foundation.

“This project is the heart of what JustPax is all about,” said Teresa Boshart Yoder, managing director for Everence in Harrisonburg. “We want to reach out to the underserved or vulnerable and begin programs that will bring about effective change.”

This $6,600 grant is the second Stauffer has received from JustPax. A 2016 grant of $10,200 supported a project called “Silent Violence,” which studied strategies of resilience among domestic violence survivors from within communities of homeless women, undocumented Latinas, and Mennonite women from Old Order or conservative church communities.