OS Students, Alumni, and Faculty Rethinking Complexity
By: Aimee C. Juarez
The Organizational Systems program invites all Saybrook alumni to check out its new blog, Rethinking Complexity at www.rethinkingcomplexity.com. OS is also asking for its graduates to consider contributing a post or two that talks about the issues they’re facing as systems practitioners.
“The systems understanding that we bring to the world is much needed now,” said Dr. Nancy Southern, chair of the OS program. “Through their contributions to the blog, our students, faculty, and alumni can help others understand the systemic nature of the challenges that we encounter every day.”
If you would like to contribute a systems-related post to Rethinking Complexity, contact the OS department at: http://www.rethinkingcomplexity.com/contact.
Rethinking Complexity was launched this spring and is produced by a team of 11 OS students, alums, and faculty members. The blog now boasts hundreds of visitors per month on both its website and its Facebook page, www.facebook.com/rethinkingcomplexity. In recent months, it has showcased guest contributions from Dr. Riane Eisler of the Center for Partnership Studies and systems practitioners from Pegasus Communications, a Massachusetts-based publisher of systems and organizational learning materials.
Regular contributor Dennis Rebelo, a Ph.D. student in the OS program who is president of University Business Consultants, said: “Being tapped to write for Rethinking Complexity has been quite a momentum-maker for me. This rich OS blog has pumped additional creative opportunities for me to bridge my Saybrook academic work and consulting work.”
For Saybrook OS alum, Bernice Moore-Valdez, who earned her Ph.D. in ’09 and is now president of ICO Consulting, Rethinking Complexity has been a way to “inspire and renew my commitment to humanistic values.” The blog’s writers “invite and provoke me to evolve my ideas and capacities so that I am better able meet the needs of our increasingly complex world,” Bernice said. OS ’11 graduate Julie Auger echoed Bernice’s sentiments and said the blog’s helped “give voice” to what she’s learned at Saybrook. “Being part of this learning community has been a great experience,” she said.
Dr. Southern welcomes OS alumni to participate as writers for the blog and to share it with their colleagues. “It’s been a great recruiting tool and provides a way to connect our learning community,” she said. “I love being able to direct our prospective students and others interested in Saybrook to the blog so they can get a real feel for the work we are doing. It is much more powerful than our marketing materials.”
To student writer Dennis Rebelo, the teamwork that goes into producing Rethinking Complexity daily demonstrates what collaborative leadership—a theory that’s studied in Saybrook’s OS program—is all about. “We are doing it daily,” Dennis said. “By celebrating our collective interest in furthering human learning, leading, and loving at work through Rethinking Complexity, we are proving to be the spark that many are connecting to the flame of humanistic research and studies, which is Saybrook.”
Visit us:
Rethinking Complexity: www.rethinkingcomplexity.com
Like us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/rethinkingcomplexity</strong>