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Session Details

 
Office Culture, Politics, and Norms
Description:
The Office, the NBC mockumentary style sitcom about a fictitious paper company, has seen a resurgence in popularity in recent years, despite its often cringe-inducing moments. At Aquinas College, The Office fans who happened to also be enrolled in the college's honors program, Insignis, requested a special topics course centered around careers and the workplace, using our friends at Dunder Mifflin as examples of largely what not to do. Career educators Dr. Dana Hebreard and Brigid Avery got to work in developing the course from scratch and have developed a 16 week, three-credit class that incorporates three main components: I. Learning About Yourself II. Culture, Politics and Behavioral Norms III. Application to the "Real World". Students have taken the DiSC assessment, Clifton Strengthsfinder, PathwayU workplace preferences, Cultural IQ, and the Harvard Implicit Bias test. Class discussions and written reflections have helped to unpack the results. With a large focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion, we have invited guests from the Chamber of Commerce, Bissel, Kellogg's and our campus Diversity and Inclusion office to speak to students on issues of implicit bias, mentoring, and office culture. Using two main texts, "Belonging at Work" by Rhoads Perry and "Designing Your Work Life" by Burnett and Evans, we have also interspersed excerpts from various other texts and academic writings. The highlight of each class, however, is when we circle back to Michael, Pam, Dwight, and Jim and show a clip from the show. In “Designing Your Work Life,” for example, the authors teach us how to see what is “really” going on when there is an issue in the workplace. We showed the students the clip of Angela and Oscar arguing about The Baby Jazz Poster and then discussed as a class what underlying issues could be at play. Additionally, students have selected a monthly meeting of our local Society of Human Resources Management to attend via Zoom and will be connecting with alumni for a future assignment. Their final project is modeled after a professional conference presentation. We believe this course is a unique delivery mode, using pop culture as a way to get students excited to learn about their careers. In this presentation, we will simulate some of the activities we have done in class, highlighting clips from the show and discussing connections to the readings. We will provide a roadmap for those who wish to create their own special topics course or seminar to teach at their home institutions. The material could also be updated to fit a workshop model, if an entire course is not feasible. We will also provide evaluations from the class participants and testimonials as well as what we would do differently next time. Here is a link to the syllabus: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Pqsc_pr7yVXrsmxQOTXI4pj_hMbdRuzrFZPool2pOjA/edit?usp=sharing
Audience:
Career Services
Level:
Intermediate
Track:
Coaching & Advising
Type:
Traditional
Main Speaker:
Brigid Avery, Aquinas College
Additional Speakers:
Dana Hebreard, Aquinas College