In this episode of Restorative Works!, host Claire de Mezerville Lopez welcomes guest Melkam Tesfaye for a grounded conversation on restorative practices in higher education and student affairs. Tesfaye draws on her background in law, mediation, and conflict resolution to explore how approaches that are rooted in restorative practices take shape inside complex university systems, particularly within the context of Gonzaga University.
Tesfaye emphasizes that restorative practices is more than just an initiative, it is culture-building, relational leadership, and sustained engagement. She highlights a common challenge across both K–12 and higher education settings: not resistance to restorative practices, but the ongoing difficulty of finding time to implement and sustain them. From onboarding conversations to cohort-based training models, she illustrates how institutions can move beyond one-off workshops toward long-term relational learning.
Melkam is the assistant director of student conduct and conflict at Gonzaga University, where she works with resident directors on student conduct cases and manages conflict resolution services, such as educational conversations, mediation, and restorative justice conferencing. She is a trained restorative practices facilitator and serves on a divisional task force implementing restorative practices within Student Affairs. With a background in law, Melkam brings extensive expertise in mediation, adaptable dispute resolution, and restorative practices, along with a multidisciplinary perspective to conflict resolution. Melkam is a member of the Restorative Justice Network of Catholic Campuses (RJNCC) national planning team. She has led trainings on de-escalation and restorative practices in the workplace and is an active community mediator.
Tune in for stories and examples of everyday practices that are foundational to building trust, compassion, and shared accountability in academic environments.
Transcription
Claire de Mezerville Lopez
Hello and welcome to Restorative Works!, a podcast where learning, practice, and research open new paths for transformation. My name is Claire de Mezerville Lopez, and it is a joy to introduce our guest today, Melkam Tesfaye. Melkam, welcome. Thank you so much for being on the podcast today. How are you?
Melkam Tesfaye
Good. Thank you, Claire, for having me. I'm doing well. How about you?
Claire de Mezerville Lopez
I'm looking forward to learning from you this morning. I'm happy to be here. Before getting started, allow me to introduce you to our audience. Melkam Tesfaye is the Assistant Director of Student Conduct and Conflict at Gonzaga University, where she works with resident directors on student conduct cases and manages conflict resolution services, such as educational conversations, mediation, and restorative justice conferencing. She is a trained restorative practices facilitator and serves on a divisional task force implementing restorative practices within student affairs. With a background in law, Melkam brings extensive expertise in mediation, adaptable dispute resolution, and restorative practices, along with a multidisciplinary perspective to conflict resolution. Melkam is a member of Restorative Justice Network of Catholic campuses, national planning team. She has led trainings on de-escalation and restorative practices in the workplace and is an active community mediator. And I'm really looking forward to learning from you today. Melkam, welcome again to the podcast. Let's start with this. When we know about your expertise and experience, it is different to implement restorative practices in higher ed in comparison to K to 12. How has this experience been for you?
Melkam Tesfaye
Yeah, so I just want to start with a bit of a context there because when my work with K through 12 has not been direct in that I wasn't primarily in schools implementing restorative practices. Instead, what I was doing was working with a committee of folks from the district as well as restorative practices professionals and board members of a nonprofit dispute resolution center, trying to figure out ways on how we can implement in K-12 restorative practices widely. So, in that sense, I cannot give my own direct experience of it. But what I will say is that while my perspective is derived from those who are actually doing the work, there's actually quite a few commonalities in how restorative practices is being implemented in K-12 and higher end. And also some of the same challenges that people see. And one of the common challenges that I have seen play out in K-12 and higher institution is the time, it's getting the time, people's time to actually implement the work. So it's not even resistance to the practice now as it used to be maybe many years ago when restorative practices was sort of an unknown element that came through. But now it's more the challenges, finding the time, how do you incorporate it in terms of training and also keeping up the skills, right? So it's not a one and done training. How do you sustain it over the long term? So I would say that's kind of the issue that you see in higher ed as well as in K-12.
Claire de Mezerville Lopez
And I am curious because you have a lot of experience, not only from law, but also from mediation and from conflict resolution. And I can guess that if you know that you're working in conflict resolution, that is going to take time and it's going to take cost, but you are implementing this in student affairs. I imagine that takes a little bit more of an induction, does it?
Melkam Tesfaye
It does, but it also just takes people. It's finding your people, to be honest. It's not a one-person job. You can't just be like, I'm interested in this or I'm trained in this and let me do this. So, it's finding like-minded people who aspire for the same things and then taking it from there. And it's also about understanding that you're not going to get there very quickly. It's about the buildup. So when we started at Gonzaga, we didn't just say: okay, let's implement restorative practices at Student Affairs. It was more of an introduction to Student Affairs, what restorative practices is, how it can be used. It's also soliciting from our colleagues, how would you like to see your workplace? What does community mean to you within the core, in the workplace? What does it look like to you? Right? And so we heard back from them. And it, honestly was moving and what we just asked those simple questions and people responded from, you know, moving from reactivity to intentionality, creating a compassionate, engaged and less change-resistant culture. And these are some of our colleagues who didn't necessarily know what restorative practices is, but this is the sort of what people wanted. And then it was about saying, well, look at this, how restorative practices marries well with everything that you hope and dream your workspaces can be, both for yourselves, but also for our students, right? So, modeling for our students what we want to see in our community. So yeah, it wasn't a one-person task. As you said in the intro, I'm part of a task force. I have brilliant people who I work with, brilliant supervisors who champion the work, people all across up and down our division who are rooting for us to be this one big community that cares about one another, that looks out for one another, and that wants to see each other succeed.
Claire de Mezerville Lopez
I love that. And that is so wise. Community work is done BY the community. Now, I always like to take these opportunities as I mentioned often in the podcast. I also work in higher ed. So whenever I get the chance to do these interviews, I want to take it all in. I want to learn. So I wanted to ask you to go a little bit in the weeds of doing this work in higher ed. Academic environments have very particular dynamics beyond teaching, there's research, there's publishing, other elements that might influence the way that relationships develop among staff or create more individualistic environments. What has been your experience with staff embedding restorative practices in this particular school community where you're at?
Melkam Tesfaye
Yeah, so, you know, Gonzaga is a Jesuit university. And one of the advantages that I always talk about is that when you are part of an institution that has high values in terms of what does it mean to be a person for and with others, what does it mean to value each other's humanity and dignity, it's actually easy because people are already saying the words; people are already in their own ways actually living it out, but maybe not explicitly, right? But definitely doing it in their day to day. So now we're just using restorative practices. And this is actually a saying that I got from my mentor from IIRP, Kaleigh Mrowka. She said, you know, it's the plate. We're not adding any something new to your plate, it's actually the plate itself, right? So we already had these amazing Jesuit values that we're trying to live into, but now what we're trying to do is saying, hey, you can actually use restorative practices, the tools within it, whether it's the social engagement window, whether it's the impromptu conversations, all of that, you can use that to actually live into those values that we all cherish, right? So it's the heart, mind, spirit and all of that. So it wasn't as challenging to get the message across or for people to buy in. Again, the challenge has been time, right? Because everyone's doing 100 plus things. And so how do we find time? But also being intentional, right? So it's not just about taking those skills and practicing them on your little things, but it's also about building community and that takes time and that takes being intentional. So, we designed it, at least our program, our pilot program, we designed it in a way it's not a one and done training, right? That's a 14-week journey that we take as a cohort. And then beyond that too, we have, you know, intentionally set time aside to come together.
Melkam Tesfaye
And so that's where the friction is, but that's also where we have seen our colleagues, our supervisors lean in and say, this is important. We'll make the time. And so it's actually been inspiring. And we started with a small pilot group. This will be our second year. I'm sure we'll fail, face similar challenges, some new challenges, but one of the best things about the school I'm at is people actually do value good relationships, not just doing the work and getting up.
Claire de Mezerville Lopez
And I think that's so inspiring, especially when you think about creating this counterculture where everything needs to be automated and really fast and really immediate. And just to say, well, higher ed is a space where we're going to invest on human, you know. So I think that's so inspiring. We're going to take a short break so we can continue to learn from Melkam's experience. Please stay tuned.
Welcome back to Restorative Works! Melkam, I'm loving and learning from everything that you're describing. Would you please share with us a couple of stories or anecdotes about how restorative practices can be integrated in higher education?
Melkam Tesfaye
Yes, I think one of the low threshold ways that it can always be integrated and I say this is when you're walking into your office or when you're, you know, walking across campus, it's actually taking the moment, that one minute or two minutes that you have intentionally when you see a colleague and checking in on them. How are you? And actually taking in the response, right? And also offering up how you're doing, right? So it's not just about soliciting. But one of the basic ways that within, at least within our department that we do it every week is during our team meetings, we have about 15 minutes, what we call opening ceremonies, where we each take turn to actually intentionally create some activity, some way of engaging with one another. That is not about the project has X, Y, B been done or about work related stuff, but intentionally about finding out how we are doing or what are the values that we cherish? What are the things that are interesting us? What are the challenges that we're facing? We're bringing on our day to day, learning from each other's experience. And I think that has helped us, at least within our department, build a level of trust, a level of compassion towards one another that has carried us through some challenging times, right? And so that's one easy way that you can incorporate it during team meetings. It could be you see a person, you check in on them. Other way is what we have done with some of my task force colleagues, Ayaka Dohi and Sierra Pankoast, offered listening circles when tough things happen, whether it's on campus, whether it's...you know, on the larger scale, at the national scale, and we see it, we create spaces for people to come together, for colleagues to come together and have a moment where we can share what we're feeling, what we're thinking, what is weighing on us. And those are simple ways. And this is a lunchtime. It's not, you don't need a whole lot. You just need a room with chairs, with people, a team's message that you shoot to everyone. We're here.
This is a space for you, for us to come together. And so those are some simple, low-hanging things that do not require financial requirement of having money to fund it or things like that, that can be quickly and easily implemented. Because part of it, I think, for me, is everyone's story, whatever that may be, brings us together, right? That shines our humanity and that when you let someone in, it's very hard to kick them out. And I think that's an important thing that in this time and age, where it is so easy to sort of swipe left or right or disengage with someone over social media, that you build in that relationship that it makes it harder to give up on, that we are worthy of that.
Claire de Mezerville Lopez
I keep remembering about this Parker Palmer quote where he said that community is that place where that person that you really don't like is not going to go away. And I think that people before tasks is so important. Relationships are hard. And when we don't have time, I can anticipate the resistance of saying, “why are we investing time on this? This is common sense. You know, say hello to people, check in with people. That's common sense”. It's not. It really is not. And creating time and making space for it, it is really a counterculture. And I will just say this before going into the next question. You mentioned, and I think you're absolutely right, what we need seems pretty simple, a room and people in the room. But how precious is that? When do we have that? When are we in a room present with the other people? That is it really is precious. Melkam, as we get closer to wrapping up this conversation, I would really love to learn from you about what is something you would like to see at other higher ed communities in the United States and around the world. What would you like to see them try on their attempt to bring in restorative practices into their own educational cultures?
Melkam Tesfaye
Wow, that is a big question, Claire. And my mind went into ten different directions immediately. But I think to be honest, what I would like them, I had any saying, giving any bit of advice would be to simplify, right? We are all being, we get so many trainings and they're great trainings on being able to resolve conflict or how do you manage difficult situations and all of those things which are important. I think that, you know, growing your skill, I'm a lifelong learner, sign me up for any training, any workshop. But I think we have to bring it back down to the basics of, who are we to one another? To go beyond the transactional to the intentional way of being with one another and cherishing our humanity. And that comes from providing spaces and ways for people to connect that naturally foster that, right? And that starts with modeling. And there are people who'll say, well, you can get together. There's no issue. You go for it. But then you see if your leadership is not modeling that, if your leadership is not sitting with you through the hard times and sharing and being open, which only comes with the trust that you've built, right? You can't borrow from the favor bank if you have not put favors in, as it were. And so we need to build up that bank. We are depleted in society for many reasons. We are run down. We have so many things going on. And with the new cycle being 24 seven on, there's so many things coming at us, so many social justice issues that we're seeing within our country and abroad. And so, all of that is coming at us and there's very little time to sit and reflect by ourselves or sit and reflect as a community. What do we mean to one another? And so that's where I would encourage some time being spent, you know, creating the culture that we want to live in, that caring society that we want to see. And that just takes time in actually being together. That's all I have.
Claire de Mezerville Lopez
I was thinking when you mentioned that your mind went into ten different directions. And I was just thinking about all those different directions where this work needs to be taken. If I were to ask, well, should this work be bottom up or should it be more top down? It and it kind of needs to be both, especially if we're going to have time and space. We need leadership to create those spaces, but it cannot just be top down. So it makes me very curious and it makes me recognize about the importance of working with the immediate team in the very room where you are at. And I'm so happy to hear about the work that you are doing. And I also learned so much from Kaleigh.
Melkam Tesfaye
Oh, she's amazing. She's given me so much in terms of when we were building our program, can't tell you how many times I've told her “what do think of this?” And she's come back with wisdom again and again.
Claire de Mezerville Lopez
And I think it brings us back to what you mentioned before. This is a work that is done in community. Community work is done in community. So yeah. Melkam, thank you so much for being on the podcast today.
Melkam Tesfaye
You're very welcome, Claire. Thank you for having me, actually. I appreciate it. Thank you for your time.
Claire de Mezerville Lopez
And thank you all for tuning in to Restorative Works. To learn more about our guests, log on to IIRP.edu and let's continue to build transformation through dignifying relationships, kind conversations, and stronger communities. Until our next episode.