Lipscomb University has named Steve Joiner new managing director of its four-year-old Institute for Conflict Management. Joiner succeeds Larry Bridgesmith, who led the institute since its founding.

Bridgesmith has transitioned out of his leadership position to focus on teaching and promoting the ICM within the legal community regionally and nationally in his new role as senior fellow for conflict management.

Lipscomb's three-year-old ICM specializes in minimizing the costs of unresolved conflict and offers graduate courses and professional mediation training to students, lawyers, managers and judges.

Joiner joined the Lipscomb faculty and became associate director of the ICM in 2008. He teaches negotiation, conflict in religious settings and leadership. He has in the past served as a university dean and has taught conflict management and leadership skills in Germany, Brazil, Uganda and throughout the United States.

Bridgesmith established Lipscomb’s master’s degree in conflict management and built relationships with the University of Tennessee College of Law, Vanderbilt University Law School and Southern Methodist University Center for Dispute Resolution. Currently, he serves as president of the Tennessee Association of Professional Mediators and chairman of the board for the Center for the Public Trust.