MSLOC Faculty to Discuss Revolutionizing Industrial-Organizational Psychology Curriculum
This year’s annual Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP) Conference (April 27-30, Seattle) will feature Northwestern’s Master of Science in Learning & Organizational Change (MSLOC) faculty members Dr. Kimberly Scott, executive director of MSLOC/ELOC and assistant professor at Northwestern’s School of Education and Social Policy, and Selena Wilson (MS12), chief executive officer of East Oakland Youth Development Center and head of learning & transformation for Decolonize Design.
Scott will moderate a panel discussion between Wilson and three additional panelists: Dr. Nikita Arun (University of Maryland College Park), Dr. Afra Ahmad (George Mason University), and Dr. Chanelle Wilson (Bryn Mawr College). These scholars and practitioners will focus on the challenges of ‘decolonizing’ syllabi by discussing the experiences of faculty members who have taken steps to critically examine and reimagine their curriculum. During the 50-minute session, the panelists will address issues related to course content, pedagogical practice, and institutional context.
“It is always the right time to have this conversation, one we’ve been having in MSLOC for a while. We are looking forward to this session to not only discuss new ideas, but also to share what is already working in courses that effectively engage learners using an inclusive and critical lens,” said Scott.
In 2021, Wilson joined the instructional team for MSLOC 441 Designing Sustainable Strategic Change, alongside Dorie Blesoff and Maggie Lewis. This course focuses on utilizing components of design thinking to develop organizational changes that can be sustained over time or evolve effectively in rapidly changing complex environments. Wilson and her co-instructors modified the syllabus and learning experience to feature greater diversification in the change management and design frameworks students learn and practice in the course.
Blesoff shared, “Selena helped us rethink the curriculum with the goal of consistently integrating the dimension of equity - in curriculum content, assignments, examples and case studies, how the class discussion was centered, and what perspectives and role modeling we embodied as instructors. Agreeing upfront that we all wanted to incorporate the DEIJ lens to our previous course design meant revisiting assumptions, deconstructing prior content, constantly clarifying and reclarifying intention, and addressing in a conscious and empowering way any differences in perspectives we discovered along the way. The learning community was deeply enriched as a result."
MSLOC began offering a Leading Equity and Inclusion in Organizations Certificate (LEIOC) in 2019, supporting change leaders who aspire to create organizations that embrace an ethical imperative to strive for belonging and equity in all of their practices. The four-course, one-year LEIOC program blends research-backed change leadership and design principles with identity development theories and contemporary DEI practices. In addition, MSLOC’s diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice (DEIJ) curriculum is not isolated to one area of the program. MSLOC faculty work to continuously evolve syllabus material and learning experience design. Alongside collaboration effectiveness, problem-based learning, and design thinking, DEIJ is one of the key learning domains used throughout the MSLOC program.
Additionally, MSLOC community members (faculty, staff, alumni, and students) are participating in a global project to create a massively authored free open source textbook that re-frames the principles of Industrial-Organizational Psychology from an anti-racist and anti-oppression perspective. Scott is engaging more than two dozen collaborators inside and outside the MSLOC community to write a chapter about organizational change that will inform both MSLOC course curricula and scholars and practitioners across the broader field.