Telling the World about Leadership Research at TWU
Prague, in the Czech Republic, was the epicenter of the “Velvet Revolution” in 1989, a process of dramatic transformational change for Czechoslovakia and beyond. What a fitting city for the International Leadership Association (ILA) to choose for its 2009 annual conference, with the theme, “Transformational Leadership.” Revolutionary leader Václav Havel welcomed the ILA conference participants to the event, and was awarded the 2009 distinguished leadership award.
Five faculty members and two alumni from the MA Leadership program at TWU traveled to Prague to participate in the November 11-14, 2009 ILA conference. These included faculty members Jeanine Parolini, Angie Mays, Paul Kariya, Melanie Humphreys, and Stan Remple and alumni Candy O'Conner and Shawna Lafreniere. Remple, Mays, Kariya and Lafreniere all presented academic papers at the conference, informing leadership practitioners and educators from around the world about the research and instruction going on at TWU.
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“I have known for a time that our program has a story to tell about its impact on students for the past ten years, but we have said little,” explains MA Leadership director Stan Remple. “More people know of our story today. Thank you, team!” Remple collaborated with Mays to present a one hour session at the conference entitled, “Teaching Transformational Leadership: Content, Process, Modeling & Global Contextualization.” They explained how the MA Leadership instructors at TWU have gained expertise in contextualizing their leadership instruction for students from around the world, and for instruction in other countries like China and Kenya. |
| "The ILA conference was a great opportunity for me to interact and rub shoulders with leadership practitioners and researchers from around the world,” says TWU professor Paul Kariya. “I met others pursuing similar research to me." Kariya presented research and helped moderate a round table discussion at the conference on the topic of “Indigenous People and Leadership.” He extols the benefits of participating in an ILA conference. "The academic enterprise can be very solitary; academics each doing their own research,” explains Kariya. “Conferences like ILA in Prague permit researchers to come to get and share their work with each other." |  |
For more information, please see the ILA website describing the 2009 conference: http://www.ila-net.org/Conferences/Past/index.htm or contact Dr. Angie Mays at angie.mays@twu.ca