OBTS: Teaching Society for Management Educators
announces the second in its new series of professional development webinars
Friday, 22 February 2008
2:00 p.m. EDT
http://www.obtc.org/webinars
Reprising superb learning: still co-inquirers after 38 years
Peter B. Vaill and David S. Fearon.
Please join us for the second of our OBTS webinar series to be held on
Friday, 22 February, at 2:00 p.m. EDT. This initiative is designed to connect prominent management scholars with colleagues in a technology-mediated format that can serve many purposes. Not only will we learn more about these scholars’ work and have the opportunity to interact with them, we also may make new connections among our colleagues that can lead to future study groups, research initiatives and other professional development activities. Continuing conversations certainly also can be part of our OBTC 2008 at Babson College, June 11-14.
In planning the series, we thought that not only learning more about what people do would be important but also how they got to where they are today. We are very pleased that
Peter B. Vaill and
David S. Fearon will share their story and work with us.
Our webinar focus is reflected in the title -
Reprising superb learning: still co-inquirers after 38 years. We have become management educators today most likely because great teachers found us among their OB course-takers. He or she thought and said something to this effect, “You get it. You see what I want to know and understand about all sorts of behavior in organizations and don’t mind at all that I have a lot more questions than answers.” Consequently, you became
co-inquirers. Those were unforgettable moments when the learning was just plain
superb. It was not the teacher telling and learner hanging on every word; instead, both of you waded intellectually into messy, thorny problems, coming out delightfully exhausted, but only momentarily satisfied with fresh answers and then more questions.
No matter how many years pass or how accomplished we each have become in our own right, the next conversation we have as former teacher and student reprises for both of us those moments of superb learning. We find each other still looking for better ideas, still trying out more fulsome ways to foster learning, still ready to dive into today’s great conundrums.
Peter B. Vaill, well known and highly regarded by management educators for his evocative writings and exemplary teaching, was
David Fearon’s first OB teacher in the first course he took in his doctoral program at the University of Connecticut. It was 1971. Thirty eight years later, David is coordinating the program of OBTC 2008 at Babson College and is in his 35th year of teaching, now Professor of Management at Central Connecticut State University. Peter is University Professor of Management at Antioch University. Then it was teacher and student. Now it is veteran OB teacher to veteran OB teacher, still enjoying the rich mutual learning that comes from periodic visits, calls and e-mail exchanges, happily grappling with a whole new generation of imponderables.
Join the conversation between Vaill and Fearon, moderated by
Joan Weiner, to recall and examine with them the abiding bond of great teaching in your own careers. Explore what is it about the mutual richness of a co-inquiry model of teaching that evokes the entrepreneurial teaching and learning theme of this June’s OBTC at Babson College.
At OBTC 2008, renowned author, teacher, and consultant
Noel Tichy and his former doctoral student
Leonard Schlesinger, the new President of Babson College and another great management educator in his own right, offer a similar dialogue live in the opening Plenary. Carrying through, the next Plenary features another teaching and writing luminary,
William Torbert, whose former students will acknowledge their own career-shaping moments of superb learning.
| This webinar will be held on Friday, 22 February, from 2:00 – 3:00 p.m. EDT. Please pre-register at http://www.obtc.org/webinars. We will reserve your space and also send you a reminder email a few days before the session. And, for more information about OBTC 2008, please check OBTC.org. |
The OBTS webinar connection is co-sponsored by Drexel University's Lebow College of Business, Center for Teaching Excellence.