Beason honored with Founder's Award from Conflict Resolution Center

March 20, 2017Duke Law News

Senior Lecturing Fellow Robert Beason was honored by the Elna B. Spaulding Conflict Resolution Center (the CRC) with its Ina B. Spaulding Founder’s Award on March 9 at the Durham nonprofit’s Partners for Peace Celebration. The CRC, which is part of the Mediation Network of North Carolina and works with the North Carolina Courts, helps people to resolve conflict through communication, cooperation, and understanding. Its services include facilitating school-based truancy courts and peer-mediation programs and using restorative justice models to address juvenile offenses.

In announcing the honor, CRC called Beason, who teaches Negotiation at Duke Law, “a pillar of the dispute resolution community in North Carolina,” and “a natural peacemaker.” Among other leadership posts and initiatives, the organization cited his appointment as one of two mediators named to the original N.C. Dispute Resolution Commission, his chairmanship of the committee that created and instituted the state’s mediation standards, and his commitment to the training and development of new mediators and advocacy for self-determinative and interest-based mediation. He has taught courses in mediation and negotiation at Duke Law since 1996.

Beason currently serves as a mediator for the Superior Court Mediated Settlement Conference Program in North Carolina and as a mediation trainer for Beason & Ellis Conflict Resolution, LLC, the firm he co-founded in 2002. He has also participated in numerous presentations and panel discussions, some of which were for the North Carolina Bar Association, the American Bar Association, and the ACR International Conferences.