Imagine Urban Studies
Mardi Hughes
Worcester State College
Worcester, MA United States
2004, Jun
Annotation: Urban Studies department at Worcester State College
In January 2003 a group of 10 students, all of who were juniors and seniors in Urban Studies at Worcester State College, came together for a new course. The course was designed around an organizational development process called Appreciative Inquiry. AI is used in many settings to create the desired future for an organization. The art of appreciation is the art of discovering and valuing those factors that give life to an organization or group. The process involves inquiry and storytelling to draw the best of the past to set the stage for effective visualization of what might be. Appreciative Inquiry is an effective tool for assessments, planning and developing a positive organizational culture.
The first semester was spent studying the theory behind organizational change using Appreciative Inquiry as the methodology while giving the students an opportunity to apply their learning. We used the Urban Studies Department as a laboratory for implementing this action research process. The objective was to use Appreciative Inquiry to gather stories of peak experiences in Urban Studies to uncover the positive core of the department (that which makes it unique and exceptional), to create excitement, a clear vision and a strategic plan for the future.
Two months into the semester we invited the Urban Studies faculty to a topic selection workshop where we spent 3 hours inquiring, discussing and extrapolating numerous common themes that emerged from our time together. We used those themes to develop a series of topics. The topics became the focus of the students’ inquiry and were crafted into a series of questions related to people’s memories, ideas and visions regarding the Urban Studies department. The students used those questions to have conversations with Urban Studies majors and minors, faculty, alumni and Worcester State College staff and administrators. The goal was to speak to as many people as possible and use their stories, quotes and ideas to create the foundation for the summit. The summit was then held with 110 students, faculty, staff and alumni engaged in appreciative conversations, discovering, dreaming and designing the future of Urban Studies.
The early part of the Fall 2003 semester was spent planning the summit workshop. The questions we used during the Spring semester and the information that came from the students’ conversations told us that, for the most part, the questions were well crafted and effective. We decided to modify a few of them and use them at the summit.
The information contained in this document includes the questions, the workbook used at the summit, great quotes that emerged during the discovery process and the vision statements that people shared that day.
Resource Files:
Full Case Study and Summary Document (doc )
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