The chancellor’s office this week announced the appointment of Susan Kee-Young Park as the campus’s first ombudsperson, to provide confidential and independent conflict resolution services to faculty and staff.

Park

Park previously served as ombudsperson at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and the University of Hawaii, Manoa. For the last year, she has taken intermittent assignments with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, going to disaster sites to help FEMA employees problem-solve and deal with workplace conflict.

“Several campus groups recommended that we create an ombuds office; I strongly believe we need one, and we are very happy to open this office with such an experienced and effective ombuds,” Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi said.

“Susan has a strong track record in mediation and conflict resolution in universities, for the courts, for the public and for the federal government,” Katehi said, “and now she will bring her skills to UC Davis.”  

Park is due to start her new job on June 3. She will report administratively to the chancellor’s office, but will operate independently to resolve conflicts in an informal and impartial manner.

As an attorney, hearing officer and judge for many years, Park participated often in the “formal” process of dispute resolution. Eventually, she found the “informal” process more to her liking — and became an ombudsperson.

“The parties tend to have their fundamental interests better met, and the solutions are more enduring and more creative,” Park said by phone from New York, where she is on a FEMA assignment.

She is a member of the International Ombudsman Association, which has four guiding principles for ombuds work: informality, confidentiality, impartiality and independence.

“People can feel safe in speaking with the ombudsman, because what they say is held in confidence,” Park said.

The ombudsperson, she said, helps people in identifying their options, making their own choices — and moving forward. The ombudsman also presents training sessions “so people can become more conflict-competent.”

In a university, Park said, the ombudsperson deals with a wide range of conflicts and communication issues in a wide variety of ways, with individuals and teams.

UC Davis joins all its sister schools but one (Santa Cruz) in having an ombudsperson.

Katehi announced last November that an ombudsperson’s office would be established, saying at the time: “Faculty and staff need and deserve to have this important resource available to them.”

While the campus encourages all members of the UC Davis community to express themselves freely in an honest, candid and respectful manner, the chancellor said, there are times when those expressions result in conflict.

Now, with an ombudsperson, there will be an established and effective way to resolve those issues in a constructive fashion.

The ombudsperson will not replace the university’s formal grievance, investigative and appeal processes. Rather, the ombudsperson will offer an alternative for resolving complaints, concerns or problems in a timely and private manner.

If a matter cannot be resolved through the ombuds office, the ombudsperson will advise of other options and resources. Student Affairs and Graduate Studies will continue to assist students in resolving their concerns.

A trainer in ‘Ombudsman 101’

Park, a native of Hawaii, earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology, with distinction, from the University of Hawaii, and stayed there for law school, serving as associate editor of the law review en route to receiving her Juris Doctor degree. Subsequently, she received a Master of Laws degree from Yale Law School.

She worked primarily in business bankruptcy and commercial litigation for a number of law firms in Honolulu and elsewhere, and ran her own office as well, before starting her ombuds career at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2006-09. During that time at Manoa she served as a national trainer for the International Ombudsman Association’s “Ombudsman 101” program.

After leaving the university, and before going to the MD Anderson Cancer Center, she served as a mediator for the Mediation Center of the Pacific, Honolulu, and helped in the training of other mediators there; and served on the U.S. Bankruptcy Court Mediation Panel for Hawaii and the Hawaii Supreme Court’s Appellate Mediation Panel.

She previously served the state of Hawaii as insurance commissioner, and as a hearing officer in the Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs.

She has served as an adjunct faculty member in business law at the University of Hawaii and Hawaii Pacific University. She also has been affiliated with Creighton University Law School’s Werner Institute, developing and teaching a course on organizational ombuds principles and practices, and conducting a “train the trainer” webinar on bullying in academia and the workplace.

Park is a practitioner member of the Association for Conflict Resolution and a member of the American Bar Association’s Dispute Resolution Section.

She is certified as an organization ombudsman practitioner and has tallied more than 250 hours of training in alternative dispute resolution training, covering such topics as mediation, facilitation and coaching skills.

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