UMass Boston

Teaching & Training

MOPC is building the next generation of collaborative governance and public policy dispute resolution practitioners through teaching.  

Collaborative Governance Course/Workshop 

In Spring 2022, Associate Director Madhawa Palihapitiya developed and taught Advanced Intervention: Collaborative Governance (CONRES 626-1 OL) for the Conflict Resolution Master’s Program. The office worked with CAPS eLearning and Instructional Support to create this asynchronous online course from a 3-credit in-person course that MOPC had previously taught for the Public Policy master's program (PUBADM 675). MOPC has been teaching this 3-credit graduate course for the McCormack Graduate School since 2015 when it was first approved by the Faculty Council for the Master's in Public Administration. Various versions of the course have been taught for local and international graduate student for the Departments of Conflict Resolution, Human Security & Global Governance and Public Policy & Public Affairs, including as an online asynchronous course and weekend skill-building workshop. State officials, municipal managers, conflict resolution and public policy students have benefitted from this course. The course has also been taught as a workshop at the Kumamoto University in Japan for an academic exchange program.   

Conflict Early Warning/Early Response Trainings 

Through its Associate Director Madhawa Palihapitiya, MOPC has been training conflict resolution practitioners from the United States, Asia, and Africa on conflict early warning and early response (EWER) for many years, including training delegates from the ASEAN Regional Forum on conflict analysis and early warning in Indonesia in 2022; training U.S. mediators in the national TRUST Network on EWER in 2020; and training mediators on EWER at the Interfaith Mediation Center in Kaduna, Nigeria in 2013.  

Evaluation Workshops 

Since 2014, MOPC has trained dozens of evaluators at the American Evaluation Association's (AEA) annual conferences through its Associate Director Madhawa Palihapitiya, including training evaluators in participatory approaches to evaluation using photovoice and sessions on combining needs assessment with asset/capacity-building for hybrid assessments.  

MOPC Contact

Madhawa “Mads” Palihapitiya, Associate Director - madhawa.palihapitiya@umb.edu