Master of Science in Leadership

Can I be dedicated to thinking critically with intellectual virtue and still effectively serve my organization as a leader? This may depend on my role. I’ve worked for many organizations throughout my career, and I find that the larger the organization, the more closed off they are to critical thinking and questioning. This could simply be due to the fact that in smaller organizations I've been able to speak directly with the Executive Director and CEO, but in government operations, and corporate business, the top of the leadership chart is often much further away. If I’ve learned anything in my Masters of Science in Leadership program thus far, it is that a strong leader and therefore a good critical thinker, lives in question (Nosich, 2012). Questions are the tool through which we dissect and understand our lives and the world around us. When children ask questions we welcome their curiosity and encourage it, but as we enter the professional world our questions are often met with...

I had standards by which I lived my life before I could explicitly identify them. I found that not every choice I made brought me closer to the person I wanted to be. I make decisions every day that bring me joy, sadness, fulfillment, and yearning for more. In an effort to understand how I make these decisions, and to be more intentional, I recently started a journey to reflect on my own core values. I have made many moves in my life and I wanted to better understand how I can make decisions that align with my core values. To facilitate this introspection I asked myself the questions below. In reflecting on these questions I found patterns. Patterns of behaviors and ways of being that helped me understand how I have lived in and out of alignment with my core values. Now that I am aware of them, and have them written out, these are my standards for decision making. These are the ways of being that help ensure I am living the life I want to live. Questions I asked myself What am I doing ...

Mayor Van Johnson for the City of Savannah gave a press briefing on July 14th 2020 at 11:00 AM as an update to the state of the Coronavirus pandemic in the City (WJCL, 2020). In this press briefing the Mayor made an appeal to the denizens of the city to carefully follow the recommendations of the Centers for Disease Control and to brace for additional recommendations and Emergency Orders by the City if necessary. This writing will be an exercise of going around the 8+ elements of reasoning on the question at issue of the city ordinance requiring face masks in public spaces (Nosich, 2012, p. 49). On June 30th of 2020 the City of Savannah passed an emergency order requiring face coverings in public places within the city limits. The purpose of this order, as stated by the Mayor, was “to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus disease,” within our city (WJCL, 2020). The order was drafted with information from federal, state, and local experts on the disease in mind. This information fr...

My favorite classes in my undergraduate studies related to rhetoric and epistemology. Through my minor in Editing, Writing, and Media I took my first look at critical thinking as we analyzed the origins of knowledge. My personal definition of critical thinking is reflecting on how and why we come to the conclusions that we do in order to ensure we are making the best decision with the information at our disposal. This definition aligns quite closely with Richard Paul’s definition as described in Learning to Think Things Through; “ Critical thinking is thinking about your thinking, while you’re thinking, in order to make your thinking better .” This definition resonates with me as it homes in on the metacognitive nature of critical thinking and highlights the relationships between epistemology and critical thinking ( Nosich, 2012) . This kind of reflection is central to thinking critically. Having arrived at some basic understanding of how critical thinking operates in my studies, my...