Master of Science in Leadership

While I was in College I applied for a job at the Florida Department of Children and Families Office of Child Care Regulation. This office housed an internal call center named CCTIC focused on child care credentialing and answering questions related to the training required to become a child care professional in the state of Florida. In the interview for that job, I was asked where I saw myself in 3 years. I told them that I was interested in holding the position that the interviewer held as the Call Center Manager. I thought that perhaps it was risky to say that in the interview, but it seemed to sit well with the interviewer. After my hire, I approached the interviewer, who was now my supervisor, and asked them to be my mentor. I really meant that I wanted her job and I knew that she wanted a position at a higher level too. We worked together often, and after a short while I became a Team Lead for our department. As the Team Lead my supervisor worked with me and we developed a close...

In my work with Court Appointed Special Advocates for children in foster care, I get to see the importance of having someone in your corner that you can rely on, especially for children in foster care who can often feel isolated and on their own. The mission of CASA, ensuring that every child in foster care has someone in their corner extended into the workplace. The Executive Director was laser focused on transparent communication and honest feedback, a virtue that stayed with me even after I left the organization. While the role of a coach is different than that of an advocate having someone in your corner is important for all people. When you aren’t sure what next steps to take, having someone who is interested in your success is an invaluable asset to have. I’ve always felt like I could rely heavily on the people in my life to help me advance my career, and overall well being as an individual. I see my partner, supervisor, and even my close friends as my coaches. They all have some...

Deciding to pursue a degree at an institution of higher learning is a serious undertaking that can have several different motivations. For some adult learners, furthering their education is about maximizing earnings; for others, education is about expanding their mind. A student of Leadership Development can fall into either camp. A student who is focused on absorbing the entire body of information about organizational leadership is interested in learning information with the hopes that the new knowledge can help them in the future or in their career. A student interested in learning how to think like a leader may look instead at their studies as an exploration into the systems of thinking that a leader may employ. Each motive for learning will lead to different outcomes and, more importantly, different levels of understanding and capacity to think things through. In Learning to Think Things Through G.M Nosich provides a distinction about the differences between these two ways of appr...

When I first started my journey into thinking about my thinking, I truly thought that I was an excellent critical thinker. My jobs in social services and nonprofits required me to use my best judgement and reflect on the circumstances in front of me. Reading Learning to Think Things Through and The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking empowered me with criteria to use in analyzing my own thinking. The 8+ Elements of Reasoning, and Essential Intellectual Traits are tools I can now use to ensure that my thinking is in fact sound, reflective, and critical (Nosich, 2012; Paul & Elder, 2020). Reflecting on my thinking process when I started this study, my thinking was not in fact critical thinking at all. Just this weekend, I came across an article at forbes.com by Siegel (2020 June 30) that resonated with me:      There’s an old saying that I’ve grown quite fond of recently: you can’t reason someone out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into. When most of us “re...

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 ...

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...