Fielding Graduate University News

Fielding Supports Goals of Occupy Wall Street

  

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The gap between rich and poor is greater than ever before in our lifetimes, and we need to stand up for those who are trying to improve their circumstances and provide for their families. As a graduate institution serving a community of scholars and practitioners who are devoted to learning and social change, we stand in support of movements like Occupy Wall Street, which attempt to create dialogue and collective engagement of our citizens at such critical social moments.

Students at institutions of higher education are being forced to pay more for tuition and go deeper into debt because of cuts in state funding and federal aid programs. The Social/Ecological Justice and Diversity Commission of the Academic Senate at Fielding Graduate University applauds the goals of the Occupy Wall Street movement, which continues to highlight the inequity and unfairness of the society in which we live. We strongly support the movement and wish it every success. We are in this together and support activities that foster continuing dialogue around these important social issues and strengthen our democratic engagement.

Richard Leider to present "The Power of Purpose"

  

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Wednesday, January 11, 2012

7-9 pm

Fess Parker’s Doubletree Resort – San Rafael Conference Room

633 East Cabrillo Boulevard, Santa Barbara, CA

Free and open to the public

Richard Leider is a respected life/work planning specialist and author of The Power of Purpose: Creating Meaning in Your Life and Work. The book serves as a jumping-off point for those who’d truly like to combine their “own unique gifts” with “the needs of the world” to carve out a vocational niche that’s both individualized and highly rewarding. According to Fielding founding president, Frederic M. Hudson, “The Power of Purpose teaches you to embrace the complex questions life is asking you. Find your ‘why’ and your ‘how’ will become clear.”

Leider is founder and chairman of The Inventure Group, a coaching and consulting firm in Minneapolis, MN. He works with national organizations such as Ameriprise, Ericsson, Habitat for Humanity, MetLife, and PricewaterhouseCoopers and is ranked by Forbes as one of the top five most respected executive coaches in the country. He teaches executive education at Duke Corporate Education and is a guest lecturer in the Harvard Business School’s general management program.

Two of Leider’s books, Repacking Your Bags and The Power of Purpose are considered classics in the personal development field. Two other books have been referred to as breakthrough books on positive aging.

Fielding Alumni Among Winners of HASTAC MacArthur Stage One Competition

  

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Diana Graber and Cynthia Lieberman, 2010 graduates of Fielding Graduate University’s Media Psychology and Social Change master’s program, recently received the Stage One HASTAC/MacArthur Foundation grant for their proposal in the Badges of Lifelong Learning Competition.  Their proposal, “CyberWise - Digital Literacy for Grownups,” was one of the 60 winners posted at www.dmlcompetition.net.

Adapted from the Digital Media Learning Competition website:

The competition is held in collaboration with the Mozilla Foundation and is part of the 4th Digital Media and Learning Competition funded by the MacArthur Foundation and administered by HASTAC (the Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory). The Badges for Lifelong Learning Competition is designed to encourage the creation of digital badges and badge systems that support, identify, recognize, measure, and account for new skills, competencies, knowledge, and achievements for 21st century learners wherever and whenever learning takes place.

Stage One applicants were asked to submit ideas for compelling learning content, activities, or programs for which a badge or set of badges would be useful for recognizing learning that takes place in a particular area or topic. Winning applications represent a wide array of public and private institutions and organizations from around the world, including museums, nonprofits, after-school programs, research institutions, and for-profit companies.

Stage Two opens on December 12 and seeks badge system design and tech proposals that respond to Stage One winning content or content from one of the Competition’s official Collaborators—including the Department of Education, the Department of Veteran Affairs, Microsoft, Intel, NASA, the American Library Association and more. Full information can be found at www.dmlcompetition.net.

The entire Fielding community extends our congratulations and admiration for this significant accomplishment to our alumni colleagues Diana and Cynthia.

Positive Aging Conference Makes Major Contribution to the Field

  

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Fielding Graduate University delivered on its promise to bring together leading scholars and practitioners to look at new research and practice concerning how to bring meaning, value, and appreciation to the aging process. 

On December 6-9, 2011, in Los Angeles, 170 participants at the Fifth Annual International Conference on Positive Aging gathered to learn and to be inspired by experts and colleagues. 

Among the media with interest in the conference outcomes was Lance Orozco of the NPR station KCLU. He chose to report on what experts say about why so many people are unprepared for the post-retirement period of their lives despite America’s population living longer and seniors being healthier than ever.               

 http://www.kclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/120811.agingconference.mp3

Bateson Receives Fielding Award in Social Change & Positive Aging

  

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Writer and cultural anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson is slated to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award in Social Change and Positive Aging from Fielding Graduate University. The award will be presented during the Fifth Annual International Conference on Positive Aging. Co-sponsored by Fielding, the conference is being held December 6-9, 2011, at the California Endowment Center, 1000 N. Alameda Street, Los Angeles. Bateson will deliver the keynote address, a dialogue about her latest book, Composing a Further Life: The Age of Active Wisdom. The conference schedule is available at www.positiveaging.fielding.edu

Bateson has taught at Harvard, Northeastern, and George Mason Universities, and since 2006 has been a Visiting Scholar at the Center on Aging & Work/Workplace Flexibility at Boston College. She travels extensively to lecture on her model of Active Wisdom, which covers community dialogue, the contributions and improvisations of engaged older adults, and the consciousness of the life cycle through which she explores intergenerational communication and ways of experiencing time. In her memoir With a Daughter’s Eye, Bateson discusses life with famous parents, Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson.

The conference theme, “Innovation in Positive Aging,” invites an exploration of the ways in which people are creating new and more effective answers to the question What does it mean to age well? During dynamic, interactive sessions, presenters and participants will consider issues of community, wellness, creativity, and life transitions as they relate to the aging population – both those in the midst of the experience and professionals working in the field.

New online test preparation is offered for clinical licensure exams

  

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The School of Psychology at Fielding Graduate University and the Taylor Study Method (TSM), the leading online test preparation company for the Examination for Professional Practice of Psychology (EPPP), have formed a strategic partnership designed to strengthen students’ readiness for their future clinical licensure exams. This will be accomplished by TSM working with Fielding to provide early, integrated exposure to EPPP concepts throughout students’ educational experiences while at Fielding. 

This strategic partnership was brought about through the diligent collaborative efforts of both organizations.  Special recognition for this accomplishment goes to Graham Taylor, PsyD, TSM’s founder, and Gerardo Rodriguez-Menendez, PhD, MS Cl Pharm, interim dean of Fielding’s School of Psychology.

Fielding Launches Program in Digital Asset Management

  

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Fielding Graduate University is offering a new online graduate-level certificate in the emerging field of digital asset management. The program’s focus is on what media professionals in the digital asset field (e.g., those working in graphics services, web content, multimedia archives) need to know about managing digital data and the strategic use of those assets and reusable media components. Students will explore the challenges of and systems solutions to managing, rating, grouping, downloading, archiving, and exporting digital files containing massive amounts of data.

Required courses for the certificate are Fundamentals of Digital Asset Management and Best Practices of Metadata. Among the media psychology electives are the courses Global Media and Social Advocacy, Positive Psychology and Pro-Social Media, Media and Political Psychology, and Identity in the Virtual Age.

The curriculum will be completed entirely online over a span of three academic terms and require approximately 10 weekly study hours. Students may apply for admission to the master’s program in media psychology and if accepted their certificate units will be credited toward the degree requirements. Learn more at www.fielding.edu/mpdam.

Fielding offers new course in creativity in organizations

  

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Fielding Graduate University along with Disney Institute is offering a new graduate course on crafting cultures of creativity and innovation in organizations. The course begins at Fielding in Santa Barbara on January 13, 2012, followed by a four-week online seminar that begins on January 23. Registration must be made by November 25 and can be completed online at https://secure.fielding.edu/forms/Imagineering-Process.htm.

Participants can expect to learn to achieve the following in their organizations:

1. Leverage creativity and innovation to enhance performance,
2. Use creative methods in work processes,
3. Apply innovative methods to sustain positive and profitable relationships, and
4. Incorporate principles of creativity and innovation to improve employee engagement and retention.

The January 13 event in Santa Barbara will be a one-day in-depth engagement with Disney personnel and case studies focused on inspiring creativity. The subsequent four-week online seminar series includes sessions on building creativity and innovation through organizational culture, identity, structural systems, and leadership.  Emphasis throughout is on producing an actionable plan to improve a work process, organizational design, technological innovation, marketing and/or sales program, or other real-world need.

The course is offered at $1950 plus travel and lodging expenses. Participants can register for 2 graduate-level or 3 continuing education units or 14 Coaching CEU credits. This relationship between Disney Institute and Fielding Graduate University integrates the unique and profoundly successful strategies for creativity and innovation, which Disney is known for, with Fielding’s thirty-five year history of educating working professionals to deepen their knowledge in support of organizational and social change.

Program for '11 Positive Aging Conference Now Available

  

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Fielding Graduate University has finalized the program for the Fifth Annual International Conference on Positive Aging, December 6-9, 2011, it was announced today by the planning committee led by Katrina Rogers, Fielding’s newly appointed provost and senior vice president. The schedule of events being held in Los Angeles, CA, and the line-up of leading experts who will speak, lead workshops and seminars, and be panel discussants is available at

 http://www.positiveaging.fielding.edu/conference-program.

 Hotel information and registration forms - Early bird registration ends on November 15, 2011 – can be found at

http://positiveaging2011.eventbrite.com/

Harry R. Moody will be the conference master of ceremonies. Moody is the director of academic affairs for the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), which is one of the conference sponsors.

Keynote speaker will be writer and cultural anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson. She will speak about the contributions and improvisations of engaged older adults which she explores in her recent book Composing a Further Life: The Age of Active Wisdom.

Innovation in Positive Aging, the theme of this year’s conference, is an opportunity to explore the ways in which people are creating new and more effective answers to one of the biggest challenges of our times: what does it mean to age well?  This small question has big implications for how we build community spaces, how we take care of our physical health, how we express ourselves through creative processes, and how we tackle life’s often complicated transitions.  In workshops and table presentations, conference participants take up new ideas to forward our understanding of these questions by tackling the conference themes of community, wellness, creativity, and life transitions.  Presentations range across these themes as well as across cultures as we consider how other societies are addressing the challenges and opportunities of aging. 

New dean for Fielding's School of Educational Leadership & Change

  

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Mario R. Borunda, EdD, will assume the position of dean of the School of Educational Leadership & Change at Fielding Graduate University as of January 1, 2012.

In announcing Borunda’s appointment, Fielding President Richard Meyers, PhD, wrote “We are honored that Dr. Borunda has accepted our invitation to assume this vital leadership role in our university. In the relatively short period since it was founded, ELC has established a well-earned reputation as a quality leader in higher education. It is highly regarded for its relevant community-based curriculum for creative change in our nation’s schools. We are certain Dr. Borunda will honor what the school has accomplished and take it to an even greater influential role in educational leadership.”

 Borunda comes to Fielding from Lesley University in Cambridge, MA, where he was dean of the School of Education and led a significant expansion of its programs and enrollment. Prior positions included vice president at the executive search firm Isaacson, Miller and dean of the graduate school at Wheelock College in Boston.

Borunda is a native of southern California where he started his career as an elementary school teacher. He earned a master’s degree in childhood development from Boston University and then a doctoral degree from Harvard Graduate School of Education. During his time there he served as the chair of the Harvard Educational Review and co-founder of the Center for Urban and Minority Education.

He is known throughout the country, and especially in the northeast, as a leading expert in early childhood education and in the K-12 arena, having been active in numerous school reform organizations and private and public boards including the Massachusetts Early Education and Care Council and the Massachusetts Board of Higher Education Assessment and Accountability Committee.

Borunda has a track record for collaborative leadership and working with people and organizations to help them achieve their aspirations. He sees in Fielding a shared passion for using transformative education to achieve the goals of social justice and diversity in our society.