WALDEN UNIVERSITY -- A METAPHOR FOR A NEW AGE OR EXCUSE FOR AN OLD AGE?

WALDEN UNIVERSITY -- A METAPHOR FOR A NEW AGE OR EXCUSE FOR AN OLD ONE?

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© April 1, 2011

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A READER WRITES:

With what free time I have left (if we discount The Singularity), I am speculating on taking a PhD at Walden U.

What is your VERY QUICK take on the value of this?

N

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DR. FISHER RESPONDS:

I am aware that today is April Fools Day, but the writer is no fool and the desire for a short sweet answer, I’m sure, is real.  This is the age when no one wants the back-story, but the back-story is the key to the future.  There is no way I can give this person an intelligent answer by leaving out the back-story.  The back-story is why I attended WALDEN UNIVERSITY.

Today, Hall of Fame major league baseball player Reggie Jackson was on the Charlie Rose show on PBS hosted by Jon Meacham, author of AMERICAN LION, about my lion, President Andrew Jackson. 

Reggie said that one thing he knew is that he could hit, and would be able to hit in any era because he could hit the fastball and the change up. 

What I knew about myself when I came back from South Africa was that I could write as well as anyone and think better than most outside the box.  My evidence was my empirical record.  I was a practitioner of organizational development (OD) without credentials, a nascent field I had never heard of, which happened to resonate with my intuitive approach to management.

Always a reader, I read widely and passionately before South Africa, but doing little else than reading and playing tennis when I returned.  I did write one book, that ironically, is the only one that has ever sold well.  I wrote it in six weeks, one draft, and it was accepted without an agent or protocol. 

By the accident of my daughter Laurie’s comment, seeing a home in the neighborhood had similar books to those in my library, I made contact with a man, who was a management consultant with close ties to the American Management Association (AMA).  We talked, and he recommended AMA’s Professional Institute (PI) take me on to do executive seminars across the United States. 

PI branched out into conflict interventions.  I was asked to interview with the Chief of Police and the Command Staff of the Fairfax County Police Department (FCPD) in Fairfax, Virginia after a riot broke out in Herndon, which was within the county.  I wrote my Master’s Thesis at the University of South Florida (USF) on that intervention. 

As mentioned above, I am a writer and a conceptual thinker and have had a knack since quite young for crystallizing ideas.  I got the job at FCPD on the strength of my presentation competing with Ph.D.’s from Wharton School of Business and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 

At the time, I was a full-time student at the University of South Florida having to take several undergraduates as well as graduate courses simultaneously in what I called “mom and pop” presentations of ideas.  At USF, there was no opportunity for discourse on my empirical experience.  I was expected to behave, study the material and regurgitate it without comment. 

In South Africa, flying by the seat of my pants, with no training in intervention strategy, I had successfully facilitated the marriage of three different companies with three different cultures and two different languages (Afrikaans and English) into a new entity. 

My current novel in progress covers that period. 

Success in OD before I knew what OD was can be attributed, I believe, to being a reader of novels, as well as histories, which are novels of a kind, and the pioneers of psychology and  the enlightenment period of philosophy. 

My major reason for going back to school was first and foremost to discover why I was successful doing something that seemed so grounded in intuition, but must have a cognitive dimension. 

My personality is abrasive to institutional authority but empathetic to the minions that institutional authority abuses.  Invariably, this creates problems for me with the power structure but great rapport and support within the troops. 

Moreover, as a listener, an eternal student, sensitive to the nuances of behavior, and a committed outsider, unobtrusive detachment was as natural to me as my DNA.  Stated otherwise, I am comfortable thinking outside the box. 

The University of South Florida, on the other hand, was as conventional as the first pilgrims, and therefore, quite predictably attempted to force me into the box, creating tension for us both. 

The exception to this was a Dr. Billy G. Gunter, who read my massive paper on sociological theory applied to my work in South Africa, and invited me for coffee.  We bonded and have been friends for forty years.  He also guided me through the defense of my Master’s Thesis, and advised me, although I had completed my course work, to go elsewhere for my Ph.D., preferably somewhere unconventional that would appreciate my maverick spirit.  He recommended WALDEN UNIVERSITY.   

I had no idea who or what WALDEN UNIVERSITY was but wrote to the university and received a warm letter from Bernie Turner, co-founder of the graduate institution with his wife, Rita.  In 1976, I attended a summer session in Fort Lauderdale, Florida hosted in conjunction with the University of Miami. 

It was an amazing experience.  Dr. Kant Nimbak of Columbia University was my adviser and I had a Harvard professor and one from the University of Pennsylvania on my dissertation committee.  I was treated as a scholar, an adult, and my empirical experience was valued as it resonated with my academic preparation.  The Harvard professor said my dissertation was one of the best he had ever read, and it was based on my empirical work in several interventions in police organizations across the country, including Fairfax County, Virginia. 

That is the back-story.  In summary, I didn’t go back to school “to get a job,” although the Ph.D. became the only reason I was interviewed and hired by Honeywell, Inc.  It was also the reason I was an adjunct professor over more than a ten-year period at several colleges and universities.  I had no intentions of being a full-time academic.  So, I cannot tell you how the WALDEN Ph.D. would have played in that marketplace. 

In these pages, I have reviewed Bernie and Rita Turner’s story (ASPIRE TOWARD THE HIGHEST) of how they created this growing university on the cutting edge of educational technology.  To their credit, they encouraged renegade spirits who were comfortable thinking outside the box to become credentialed. 

Today, WALDEN UNIVERSITY has moved beyond its founders.  It is fully accredited as much as Harvard or any other institution of higher learning.  Does that translate into immediate access to being able to compete with the movers and shakers?  I doubt it. 

We are still a “mom and pop” society when it comes to education wanting students to behave, not think, to fit the mold, not challenge that model no matter how irrelevant or absurd that model may me.  There is risk involved when you not only think outside the box but attempt to live there.  I would be comfortable in no other place.  How about you?

Be always well,

Jim