Robert H. Mnookin, Williston Professor of Law and chair of the Program on Negotiation steering committee, announced Cobb's appointment. "Our steering committee spent close to a year considering many fine candidates for this position," said Mnookin. "We are delighted that our search led to Sara Cobb, and that she agreed to accept the job. She is an outstanding researcher and teacher whose contributions to the negotiation and communications literature are significant. She is also a leader who will bring many new voices and opinions, as well as technological advances to our community."

Students and faculty from the graduate schools of Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Tufts University, and the Simmons Graduate School of Management collaborate through the Program on Negotiation, which was founded in 1983 as an interuniversity, multidisciplinary center focused on negotiation theory and practice. Based at Harvard Law School, the Program on Negotiation is the administrative home to nine major negotiation research projects. The Program develops and publishes books, papers, a quarterly journal, and numerous teaching materials; offers negotiation training opportunities as well as graduate course work; and sponsors a variety of seminars and other colloquia for faculty and graduate students.

Prior to accepting the Harvard post, Cobb served (since 1995) as a faculty member and associate dean for the Human and Organization Development Program at the Fielding Institute in Santa Barbara, Calif. At Fielding, she and her colleagues developed and managed an electronic, mediated learning environment, through which both master's and Ph.D. students completed work toward their degrees. Another of her projects at Fielding was the development of an on-line curriculum in conflict management for managers and other change agents in organizations.

Cobb received a Ph.D. degree in communications in 1988 from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Her dissertation analyzed concepts of power in the context of family therapy. She earned an M.Ed. in counseling from the University of Puget Sound (Washington) an her bachelor's degree (with honors) in English from Albertus Magnus College in 1973.

Prior to her appointment at Fielding, she taught at the University of California at Santa Barbara, the University of Connecticut, the State University of New York at Albany, and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

She was also president of, and a trainer/consultant with, Dialogue International, a private firm specializing in conflict management and organizational change issues. Her clients included a variety of major corporations and organizations in the United States, South America, and Europe.

Among her recent publications are "The Domestication of Violence in Mediation," Law and Society Review vol. 31 (1997); a chapter analyzing women's "victim" narratives in the book Transgressing Discourses, edited by M. Huspek and G. Radford (SUNY Press, 1997); and a chapter in the book Constructiones de la Experienca Humana, edited by M. Pakman (Gedisa, Spain, 1997). Over the years, she has contributed extensively to the communication literature in English and Spanish, particularly as it relates to mediation, conflict management, and human rights. Her current research interests focus on how the construction and transformation of conflict "stories" takes place in both organizational and international settings.

Among her priorities as executive director of the Program on Negotiation will be increasing the variety of scholars and disciplines involved in the organization's work, developing new educational opportunities for graduate students, adding to the collection of teaching materials, and reaching out to dispute resolution practitioners and others who can contribute to the development of negotiation theory.

"We're currently in the process of developing a whole new set of electronic venues for participation in this exciting work," said Cobb. "Technology is helping us invite and add many new, interesting voices to the effort to understand and improve negotiation."