In course catalogs, it shows up as conflict management and principled negotiation. In the workplace, it might be called dispute resolution. In a courtroom or some other judicial setting, it’s often termed mediation or arbitration.

As director of the master of business administration program, Peter Shedd sees an opportunity to do more strategic coordination among various programs. (Photo by Nancy Evelyn)

Peter Shedd summarizes the focal point of the latter half of his nearly 30-year career in the legal studies of business this way: “What I teach, and therefore what I try to live, is a willingness to handle the tough issues in a positive, productive and humane way, as opposed to running from them.”

This summer, Shedd put the teaching aspect of his negotiations expertise on the back burner to allow for the fourth—and likely final—“interruption” to his career as a UGA faculty member to serve again as an academic administrator. This time the call came from the master of business administration program. Shedd was asked to succeed Mel Crask (who was promoted to associate dean for academic programs) as director of the Terry College’s preeminent, reputation-setting degree program.

Shedd brings to his new title a strong familiarity with the degree program, having served on the faculty’s M.B.A. curriculum committee and having taught in all five places the college “delivers” its M.B.A. degree.

In addition to the long-running, full-time program on campus, the past decade has seen the Terry College add an executive M.B.A., part-time evening M.B.A. in Atlanta and a customized M.B.A. program for IBM Business Consulting Services that is taught mostly through the use of distance learning technologies. The IBM program also was the model for another customized program for managers at the Savannah River Site near Aiken, S.C., that has since disbanded. Shedd taught either the legal environment of business, negotiations or both courses in all five of those programs.

Those experiences, he said, not only added substantial mileage to his odometer but, more significantly, to the perspective he brings to the job of leading the full-time program.

Shedd sees an opportunity to be more strategic about coordinating M.B.A. staff positions and study-abroad opportunities among the various programs. Right now, M.B.A. staff in admissions, student services and career placement are typically deployed to work with a specific program and only that program. It may make more sense to blur those programmatic lines, especially as the enrollment numbers in the newer programs continue to ramp up and support staff are added.

Similarly, the college must have the strength in numbers to add more international travel opportunities. This spring, two planned study-abroad trips to Cuba and another to China will have a combination of full-time and evening M.B.A. students.

“If we get to the point in three to five years of offering multiple travel opportunities— beyond th

e three we’re doing this year in Cuba and China—to places like India, Africa, Latin America, Russia and parts of Europe, then we’ll have to look beyond the enrollment of the full-time program, which is 125 students, to make them feasible,” he said.

Shedd also has opened the door to the possibility of an additional joint ­degree program, similar to the JD/M.B.A. offered with the law school.

“We are updating the JD/M.B.A.,” he said. “And we think there are lots of opportunities within the university—whether it’s with the journalism college, sports management, agribusiness, engineering or some other (area)—to collaborate on building another joint program.”