Autonomous and Cooperative Leadership is a practice which blends community studies and leadership studies while focusing on the disciplines of organization development, communication, psychology, and sociology.
The big questions examined were:
- How can we build healthier practices, communities, and technical systems?
- How do we increase ethical thought and action at the organizational level?
- How do we create cooperative work cultures? How do we foster autonomy at work?
- How can educational theory be applied to grow processes, practices, and people?
- How do we create more inclusive paths for diverse candidates to have high-impact careers?
- How do you work within large systems to improve outcomes for underindexed workers?
In this program I learned about differential health outcomes for disabled or queer people and people of color. I learned the phrase “competing access needs” to describe situations where disabled people have conflicting needs. I learned the intervention-outcome model, a simple mode of analysis which allows us to recognize change in systems and reason about how to craft new interventions which may result in different outcomes. Through critical lenses of biopower and necropolitics we learned about the political construction of race and how that racialization process creates deep inequities.
In the summer of 2019 I took two classes and an independent study project. In Trauma and Repair I learned the polyvagal theory of trauma, studied first aid and educational responses to trauma, and created a lesson plan which integrated embodied cognitive techniques in its preparation. In Human Development I learned about psychological development from birth to death. This course covered topics including in utero development, birthcare, deathcare, education, and living. In my independent study project I conducted a corporate ethnography of npm. I captured a half dozen personal accounts from former wombats about their experience in a startup work culture as a way of studying the behavior of a company as a social system.
In this program for future counselors and other helping professionals I developed general cross-cultural competency, used concrete exercises to develop awareness of bias, and learned to identify binary, linear, and hierarchical thinking as common modes of inappropriate thought. A core component of this course was working with a project group on discussing topics around difference, including conversations around gender, race, class, and many other axis of difference. In addition, our group volunteered to support Stonewall Youth, a drop-in center for queer youth in Olympia, and compiled photographs taken by all group members into a collage as an artistic final project reflecting on belonging.
In this program I studied social movements that advocate for cultural change. Key concepts I took with me include negative epistemology, which is the construction of privileged peoples’ ignorance of oppressive conditions, and the social change model of leadership, which presents leadership not as a positional role, but a set of behaviors any can adopt to create more leaderful organizations.
This program focused on developing a critical understanding of social media. Using lenses from anthropology and media studies we examined how the social internet functions. Key concepts included social capital, parasocial relationships, and affective publics. I created a short podcast for this program wherein I interviewed a friend about her experience of the social internet as a queer Irish parent living in Germany.
This program used board and card games as a framework for discussing active learning education. A key takeaway from this course is how deeply an educator’s affect can impact a student’s ability to learn. The deficit model or dynamic model was the educator’s mindset distinction made by Trujillo & Tanner in “Considering the Role of Affect in Learning,” where educators thinking with a deficit model believe struggling students are intellectually inferior to their peers while dynamic model educators believed any student could succeed with the right environment and support. In adopting a dynamic mindset, this program helped me understand the Evergreen value of inclusive excellence. Inclusive excellence is a value which simultaneously maintains a high standard of excellence while refusing the elitism excellence sometimes confers. To truly achieve excellence we have to create environments which allow everyone to do their best work.
In this introductory program which ran concurrently to Social/Media and Learning Games I learned the history and technique of making music with electronics. Over two quarters I learned the fundamentals of sampling and synthesis. In my second quarter I advocated for curricular change, resulting in more artists of color being integrated into our materials and discussions and a seminar on the history of dub which I led. I developed a personal artistic practice that reduces my stress and helps me connect to others over a shared interest. This practice has also taught me new ways to view disability as an advantage, as my audio processing disorder, which distracts me in other contexts, is an asset when recording electronic music.
In this class I studied the history and values of cooperative organizations. A key text was Dean Spade’s Mutual Aid, which I used as a prompt to examine my personal leadership style and reflect on how I can evolve into a more cooperative leader.
My work at Evergreen helped me become a better version of myself. On a personal level, I came to Evergreen in response to the onset of my trauma disorder. The person I was when I arrived was reactive, in both physical and psychic pain, and highly sensitive. Today, I am conscious, comfortable in my body and mind, and aware. At an intellectual level, I acquired new modes of analysis and comfort in my personal identity, increasing my resilience while sharpening my capacity to consider multiple perspectives and be more patient and kind.
When I came to Evergreen I was not thriving. I had recently developed a trauma disorder causing intense sensory issues, and had been adult-diagnosed as autistic a few years prior, and was still doing the identity formation work to figure out what that diagnosis means for me. When I left, I was thriving and resilient, having not only significantly reduced my sensory issues, but also having developed more coherent thinking.