Partners Kitty and Art Lusse are professionally trained and nationally accredited communication and conflict resolution experts. Montana Mediators has been in business for almost 20 years. Both are seasoned mediators. Art is a lawyer, Kitty an educator. Art taught at the University of Montana School of Law, Masters of Communication, MBA, and other Graduate School programs for thirteen years before "following the grandchildren" to Billings in late 2008. Presently he is an Adjunct Professor at Rocky Mountain College teaching Mediation and Negotiation.
Art taught four different alternative dispute resolution courses and directed the Law School's Mediation Clinic. His negotiations course was adopted by the School of Business for their MBA program. In 2005 the Board of Regents approved a Certificate In Alternative Dispute Resolution and Art shepherded over 25 students through that program through the graduating class of 2008. In 2008 Art was honored with the "Outstanding Adjunct Professor Faculty" award. Art was honored when named by the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board and U.S. Department of State as a Fulbright Senior Specialist teaching Alternative Dispute Resolution since 2002 in South America.
Kitty has been an accredited mediator for 20 years, specializing in organizational conflict from small companies to large government agencies. For ten years she has mediated a myriad of cases for the U.S. Forest Service, the City and County of Missoula and various corporations. Kitty also specializes in family and divorce mediation and school peer mediation and peacemaking programs. Together, they founded the Community Dispute Resolution Center of Missoula County in 1995. The Center currently has 40 volunteer mediators offering a wide variety of mediation services to the Missoula Community. Kitty and Art remain "emeritus" members of the Board of Directors.
Montana Mediators was the principal consultant to "The Schools and Communities Coming Together Project" of the Division of Educational Research and Service (DERS) at the University of Montana, being selected to develop Peacemaking programs on the Northern Cheyenne and Flathead Reservations and to provide Peer Mediation programs at the Middle and High Schools.
Montana Mediators mediation training programs are nationally accredited. They have trained hundreds of mediators over the past 20 years to become professional mediators in business, divorce, parenting plans, government entities, civil courts, and private practice.
