Special Thanks to...

I must start out by thanking the few crucial people that had a significant impact on the development of co-resolution.


The story of co-resolution through its supporting cast members starts with Carly Lane. She unintentionally inspired the idea by complaining about certain aspects of mediation (these events are described in the "Ah-ha moment" blog entry). Her pessimism identified the problem, and my optimism in the innovative potential of ADR took over from there. She then provided indirect emotional support by laughing at my jokes for the next two dateless years as I poured over this dispute resolution process. While she was pursuing her own ADR specialty and often paralleling my efforts, as to co-resolution she took a back seat--not driving, but along for the ride. That is, until the creation of this website--she designed and constructed everything you see here, and I would have been tangled up in the world wide web without her.

My gratitude next extends to Sarah Cole. I came up with the basic idea for co-resolution while in her mediation practicum. The process was embryonic at this point, so her major contribution at the time was not squishing it and sending me to a hospital for the unethically-insane (as others would threaten to do). And because she was always available and helpful, her research suggestions early on probably had disproportionally strong influence on the direction I took. Later, she became the primary supporter of my efforts, inviting me to speak about co-resolution to students and faculty members and helping me organize a simulation of the process.

The next person to impact the co-resolution idea was Nancy Rogers. While Prof. Cole was nurturing to the student that was going to fall on either side of the thin line between innovation and insanity, Nancy Rogers constantly challenged that student. Using her unmatched knowledge of dispute resolution, she forced me to confront the ethical issues I had created and pointed me to extremely useful, yet completely obscure articles. Furthermore, it was her flat-out rejection of the process's original name that led me to dub the process "co-resolution." In the end, my drive to impress her caused me, without a second thought, to turn a 20-page assignment into a 70-page omnibus paper that addressed aspects of co-resolution that I have yet to express anywhere else. I am therefore grateful for her sincere efforts to force me to succeed (also, she deserves thanks for merely reading through 70 pages of my nearly-unedited hypothesizing).



After the big three brought me to conceive, pursue, and develop the co-resolution process, I received crucial support from other members of the ADR community. Christopher Fairman, another professor and a master of the visual aid, met with me once and said something (I do not know what) that inspired me to create the chart that adorns this website and all other descriptions of co-resolution. Next, I am greatly indebted to Susan Raines for allowing me the huge opportunity to submit an article on co-resolution to Conflict Resolution Quarterly. I had been told by others that the journals would not waste their time on student submissions, and the response I received from her readers was a real turning point in my quest for legitimacy (they probably didn't know that I was a student). Credit is also due to Bernie Mayer and John Lande--both big names in ADR who took the time to aid and support me based on near-chance personal contacts. I accidentally ran into Dr. Mayer at a conference in Columbus and I volunteered to drive Prof. Lande to the airport after a symposium, but both were receptive to me as a random person who jumped out and assaulted them with an entirely made-up ADR concept.

Overall, considering the abrasive uniqueness of my idea and the tendency of people to resist change, nearly everyone in the ADR community was willing to listen and politely supportive, if not actually convinced, of my position. My experience, confirmed by my research on the subject, is that everyone claims to value innovation, but is repulsed when actually confronted with it. However, the ADR community (whether dangerously stable or dangerously insecure, depending on your perspective) proved to be a hospitable environment for new ideas.