Hello members of the Management Education and Development Discussion Listserv,
A large, fascinating and very diverse group of people has already registered for the OB T-group, a pre-conference event prior to the Organizational Behavior Teaching Conference, held this June at Brock University near Buffalo, NY. However, we still have room for a few more. We would love to have you join us!
See our original announcement below for more information. Please visit the conference registration site at www.OBTC.org to register for both OBTC and the OB T-Group.
Hope to see you at Brock University!
Vanessa
Vanessa Druskat
Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior
WhittemoreSchool of Business & Economics
University of New Hampshire
Phone: 603-862-3348
Vanessa.druskat@unh.edu
Original Announcement
If you areplanning to attend the OBTC Teaching Conference for Management Educators at Brock University this year, please consider attending the OB T-Group as a pre-conference professional development activity. All attendees are enthusiastically invited, but we'd like to issue a special invitation to those who are new to OBTC and to doctoral students.
Participation is an excellent way to make connections with members of the OBTS community. Some T-group participants attend their first pre-conference OB T-group as doctoral students; some attend as newcomers to the OBTC conference; and some more senior faculty attend periodically because it continues to be an invaluable developmental experience for them. No matter why one participates, the OB T-group experience has allowed a great many members ofOBTS to develop lasting friendships with colleagues who have been supportive over the years, both professionally and personally.
What is a T-Group? It is facilitated experiential learning, focused on the here and now, in an unstructured small group setting.
While the T-group was invented in the 1940's, the T-group, as a learning technology, has adapted to the demands of the modern world and today is still a unique, vibrant, powerful learning structure. T-groups are double loop learning in action.* Learning comes from analysis of participants' own experience, including feelings, reactions, perception and behavior. A T-group is the most significant part of a learning laboratory design that also includes brief theory presentations and experiential exercises.
Quality teaching depends on the ability to interact effectively with others, to have sufficient emotional awareness and competence to handle difficult interpersonal situations, and to create emotional intimacy - all of which are skills you can develop in the OB T-Group.
The OB T-Group has been an OBTC pre-conference activity for the past 22 years. This year's OB T-Group will take place immediately prior to OBTC, from 6:00 pm on Sunday, June 17 to3:00 pm on Wednesday June 20.
T-group technology is at the foundation of organizational development and management education. Its chief limitation lies in that it is very difficult to train persons in its effective and responsible usage. OBTS has among its members a few who are excellent T-group facilitators and are willing to provide this service to the OB T-group with no remuneration and out of dedication to their field. This year the facilitators will be Esther Hamilton and Bill Torbert.
The founder and Dean of the OB T-Group is Esther Hamilton. She has facilitated T-Groups for the NTLInstitute for the Applied Behavioral Sciences for years, is a former JME editor and OBTS Board member, received a 1994 David L. Bradford Award for Excellence in Teaching, and in 2000 she won the national OBTS Distinguished Educator Award. In 2009 she was honored as an OBTS Fellow. In 1985, she received the William Jerome Arnold Best Paper Award from the Academy of Management. She received her doctorate from Harvard and taught at Northeastern U. and the Naval Postgraduate School. Then, at Pepperdine University, she was a tenured, full Professor of Organizational Behavior and Management, receiving their 1994 Distinguished Educator Award.
William Torbert is Professor of Management Emeritus of the Carroll School of Management at Boston College as of July 2008. He earlier served as the school's Graduate Dean and Director of the Ph.D. Program in Organizational Transformation. He taught at Yale, Southern Methodist University, and Harvard prior to joining the Boston College faculty in 1978. He won the Outstanding Professor Award at SMU in 1972, in 1989 won second place nationally as Distinguished Educator in OB, and in 1991 won the first Carroll School MBA Alumni Distinguished Teaching Award. Bill received a Ph.D in Administrative Sciences from Yale University, holding a Danforth Graduate Fellowship during his graduate years.
You can register and pay for the OB T-Group at the OBTC website (www.OBTC.org ).
The cost for the T-group is $495. That cost figure includes the T-group, housing in a singleroom (sharing a bathroom with one other) and meals. That is truly a bargain when you consider that a comparable NTL T-group (called a Human Interaction Lab) costs $3300 for tuition alone plus hotel, meals, and travel. Please note that the cost of the T-group is in addition to the cost for registering for OBTC.
In addition to registering and paying online, registration with the OB T-group requires you to go to the OB T-Group link on the web page, download our online, in-house registration form, and email it to Esther Hamilton, OB T-group Dean, esteken@aol.com and to Vanessa Druskat, OB T-group Administrator, vanessa.druskat@unh.edu.
Do not hesitate to contact the OB T-group Administrator with any questions: Vanessa Druskat, OB T-group Administrator, AssociateProfessor, University of New Hampshire; Mobile Phone: 603-285-3227; HomePhone: 603-659-2916; Email: vanessa.druscat@unh.edu
Remember, space in the OB T-Group is limited.
You are only assured of a place in the group if you register on the website (a process over which we have no control), and send in our online, in-house registration form.
*For a discussion of T-Groups as double-loop learning, see Ed Batista's
essay entitled, 'T-Groups, Feedback and Double-Loop Learning' on his website at: http://edbatista.typepad.com/edbatista/page/9/
See you at the T-group and OBTC!!!
Best regards,
Vanessa Druskat and Esther Hamilton