William Rothwell, professor of education (WFED), said the faculty present webinar topics typically aligned with their research or professional interests.
“Those do represent very up-to-date thinking on the field of organization development, hope action theory and the other topics in the organization development field,” he said.
Webinars are scheduled for noon to 1 p.m. on the last Friday of each month and registration is available here.
The speaker for the Sept. 24 webinar is Jong Gyu Park, assistant professor of management at Penn State. His presentation is titled "Shared Leadership: Bottom-up Approach to Leadership and Change" and will explore the opportunities and challenges of identifying, nurturing and assessing leadership and why organization development practitioners develop shared leadership competencies.
Mark Threeton, associate professor of learning and performance systems at Penn State, will present the Oct. 29 webinar. His topic is "Experiential Education to Advance Knowledge Capital in Organizations." Participants can learn key principles which promote the transfer of education to enhance knowledge and skill development.
The Dec. 17 webinar is titled "Hope-Action Theory for Organizations" and will be conducted by Hyung Joon Yoon, associate professor of WFED at Penn State.
Hope-action theory has been used internationally in the field of career development, facilitating individuals to live meaningful and fulfilling lives. It's an open-systems model with these components: hope, self-reflection, self-clarity, visioning, goal-setting and planning, implementing, adapting and managing environment.
“That's what we're trying to encourage. Even faculty can sign up and participate in those free webinars, and that helps keep their knowledge current,” Rothwell said. “We're promoting and encouraging a community and cross-fertilizing the knowledge of the faculty and external speakers around this field.”
Additionally, a free virtual conference titled "Leading Organizational Change Through Innovation" is scheduled for Nov. 19. While more details will be released at a later date, topics are global and societal change, technology and research, organization development and change, and talent development.
Speakers include Annie Li Long Qiao of Change Mag Consulting Co. Ltd.; Justine Chinoperekweyi, CEO at Centre for Organizational Leadership and Development Zimbabwe; and Angela Rogers, Issa Jalal Al Balushi, and Manar Mohammed Salamah, doctoral students in WFED at Penn State.
Register for the free online conference here.