News Article

Students in Gonzaga University’s Doctoral Program in Leadership Studies are contributing their scholarship to audiences in half a dozen national and international conferences. In locales from Abu Dhabi to San Diego, 14 of the university’s doctoral students are sharing papers and presentations on such diverse topics as women in prison, leadership in the Hmong population within the United States, and servant leadership within physical therapy.

Women as Global Leaders, a conference held March 12-14 in Abu Dhabi, included Pamela Aden participating in a round-table discussion titled “Women in Prison: An International Issue”; as well as Mai Moua, Lois Melina and Alicia Crumpton presenting a panel discussion on “Community and Societal Change: Female Leadership, Capacity Building, and Social Capital.” Also at that conference, Moua presented the paper, “Leading Change in Indigenous Communities.”

In Vancouver, British Columbia, the Society for Applied Anthropology Annual Meeting, held March 28-April 2, included a panel discussion titled “The AHANA Project” which was conducted by Deb Albert, Joshua Tabor, Charlotte Lamp and Mark Beattie; as well as a panel on “Qualitative Research Methods” by Lisa Prochnow, E.V. Vanderweil, and Moua, Engineering Professor John Dacquisto, and Leadership Studies Professor James Beebe.

Moua also presented two papers at the 11th Hmong National Development Conference, held in Minneapolis March 17-19. Those papers are: “Appreciative Inquiry: A Strategy for Cultivating Organizational Leadership Success” and “Hmong Leaders, Perceptions of Hmong Leadership: A Study of Leadership in the United States.”

In addition, “Leadership Development: A Critical Component to Advancing Hmong Society in the United States” by Moua was accepted for presentation at the first International Conference on Hmong Studies, held March 10 and 11 at Concordia University, in St. Paul, Minn.

Presenting at the Second International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry in Urbana-Champaign, Ill., May 4-6, will be Melina, with a paper titled “Ethnodrama: The Personal Is Political: Women's Voices from the 1970s,” and Rich Cummins, with a paper titled: “Heroism, Justice, and the Browning of America.”

The National Women's Studies Association conference, to be held June 15-18 in Oakland, Calif., has accepted Melina’s paper “Across Generations: Stories of Women in the Seventies.” The conference also accepted one of Melina’s essays, “Center Stage with the Hot Flashes,” in its Creative Writers series.

Additionally, Melina’s essay “Putting on Airs” has been accepted for an anthology to be published by the University of Oklahoma Press. This volume is one in a series of anthologies by Idaho writers on water, fire, air, and earth.

In February, Meryl Gersh presented “Servant Leadership: A Philosophical Foundation for Professionalism in Physical Therapy” at the National Combined Sections Meeting of the American Physical Therapy Association in San Diego.

Four Gonzaga doctoral students presented qualitative research methods at the Spokane Intercollegiate Research Conference held April 7-8 at Whitworth College in Spokane. Those students are Lori Matthews, Robert Buckham, Chadron Hazelbacker, and Tabor. Also, Tabor and Melina presented at the Kravis Leadership Conference on Followership in February at Claremont McKenna College. Melina presented “Followership in the Women’s Liberation Movement” and Tabor presented “An Exploration of Undergraduate Perceptions of Followership Using the Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique.” Tabor also will present the paper, “Appreciative Inquiry as a Means of Organizational Innovation” at the Academy of Management Conference in Atlanta in August.

Finally, the project that Beattie completed for his qualitative research class has been turned into a book chapter titled, “Workplace Violence in Hotels,” co-authored by Jacinta Gau, which will be published in the text, “Hotel Management and Operations,” (4th Edition; Denney G. Rutherford and Michael J. O'Fallon, Editors; John Wiley & Sons, 2007).