Warm Greetings, OBTS Colleagues!
If you are planning to attend the OBTC Teaching Conference for
Management Educators at Brock University this year, please consider
attending the OB T-Group as a pre-conference professional development
activity. All attendees are enthusiastically invited, but we’d like to
issue a special invitation to those who are new to OBTC and to doctoral
students to participate.
Participation is an excellent way to make connections with members of
the OBTS community. Some T-group participants attend their first
pre-conference T-group as doctoral students; some attend as newcomers to
the OBTC conference; and some more senior faculty attend periodically
because it continues to be an invaluable developmental experience for
them. No matter why one participates, the T-group experience has allowed
a great many members of OBTS to develop lasting friendships with
colleagues who have been supportive over the years, both professionally
and personally.
What is a T-Group? It is facilitated experiential learning, focused on
the here and now, in an unstructured small group setting.
While the T-group was invented in the 1940’s, the T-group, as a learning
technology, has adapted to the demands of the modern world and today is
still a unique, vibrant, powerful learning structure. T-groups are
double loop learning in action.* Learning comes from analysis of
participants’ own experience, including feelings, reactions, perception
and behavior. A T-group is usually the most significant part of a
learning laboratory design that includes brief theory presentations and
experiential exercises.
Quality teaching depends on the ability to interact effectively with
others, to have sufficient emotional awareness and competence to handle
difficult interpersonal situations, and to create emotional intimacy -
all of which are skills you can develop in the OB T-Group.
The OB T-Group has been an OBTC pre-conference activity for the past 22
years. This year's OB T-Group will take place immediately prior to OBTC,
from 6:00 pm on Sunday, June 17 to 3:00 pm on Wednesday June 20.
T-group technology is at the foundation of organizational development
and management education. Its chief limitation lies in that it is very
difficult to train persons in its effective and responsible usage. OBTS
has among its members a few who are excellent T-group facilitators and
are willing to provide this service to the OB T-group with no
remuneration and out of dedication to their field. This year the
facilitators will be Esther Hamilton and Bill Torbert.
The founder and Dean of the OB T-Group is Esther Hamilton. She has
facilitated T-Groups for the NTL Institute for the Applied Behavioral
Sciences for years, is a former JME editor and OBTS Board member,
received a 1994 David L. Bradford Award for Excellence in Teaching, and
in 2000 she won the national OBTS Distinguished Educator Award. In 2009
she was honored as an OBTS Fellow. In 1985, she received the William
Jerome Arnold Best Paper Award from the Academy of Management. She
received her doctorate from Harvard and taught at Northeastern U. and
the Naval Postgraduate School. Then, at Pepperdine University, she was a
tenured, full Professor of Organizational Behavior and Management,
receiving their 1994 Distinguished Educator Award.
William Torbert is Professor of Management Emeritus of the Carroll
School of Management at Boston College as of July 2008. He earlier
served as the school’s Graduate Dean and Director of the Ph.D. Program
in Organizational Transformation. He taught at Yale, Southern Methodist
University, and Harvard prior to joining the Boston College faculty in
1978. He won the Outstanding Professor Award at SMU in 1972, in 1989 won
second place nationally as Distinguished Educator in OB, and in 1991 won
the first Carroll School MBA Alumni Distinguished Teaching Award. Bill
received a Ph.D in Administrative Sciences from Yale University, holding
a Danforth Graduate Fellowship during his graduate years.
You can register and pay for the OB T-Group at the OBTC website
(www.OBTC.org ).
The cost for the T-group is $495. There will be a $50 discount for
registration by April 1 by inputting the coupon code TGROUP2012. That
cost figure includes the T-group, housing in a single room (sharing a
bathroom with one other) and meals. That is truly a bargain when you
consider that a comparable NTL T-group (called a Human Interaction Lab)
costs $3300 for tuition alone plus hotel, meals, and travel. Please note
that the cost of the T-group is in addition to the cost for registering
for OBTC.
In addition to registering and paying online, registration with the OB
T-group requires you to go to the OB T-Group link on the web page,
download our online, in-house registration form, and email it to Esther
Hamilton, OB T-group Dean,
esteken@aol.com and to Vanessa Druskat, OB
T-group Administrator,
vanessa.druscat@unh.edu.
Do not hesitate to contact the OB T-group Administrator with any questions:
Vanessa Druskat, OB T-group Administrator, Associate Professor,
University of New Hampshire; Mobile Phone: 603-285-3227; Home Phone:
603-659-2916; Email:
vanessa.druscat@unh.edu
Remember, space in the OB T-Group is limited, especially this year when
we will only hold one T-group. We can almost fill the OB T-group now
with the people who have firmly expressed their intention to register as
soon as online registration was available. If you are interested, don’t
wait!
You are only assured of a place in the group if you register on the
website (a process over which we have no control), and send in our
online, in-house registration form.
*For a discussion of T-Groups as double-loop learning, see Ed Batista's
essay entitled, 'T-Groups, Feedback and Double-Loop Learning' at:
http://edbatista.typepad.com/edbatista/page/9/
See you at the T-group and OBTC!!!
Warm regards,
Vanessa Druskat and Esther Hamilton