This course examines the relationship between and nature of organizing and communicating processes in a global context and how they impact on our ability to find, create and experience, ‘good work.’ As a result, some of the questions this class considers include: How do our definitions or understandings of ‘work’ and ‘workplace’ influence what we want to do, how, where and why?  What is ‘good work’ for me? What kinds of conditions or environments enable me to do good work?  How does good work become disabled for me and for others? What kinds of organizational and communicative structures, process and forces create a world where it is difficult to find and do good work?  How can we create good work and good workplaces in the future? What will they look like? What do we need to do and know? How can a communication degree play a role in creating and sustaining good work and good workplaces?

In this course, students examine the concepts of creation, organization, promotion, management and risk of ownership, to wit: entrepreneurship. This is done in the context of “good work.” Using a combination of relevant case studies, readings, guest lectures and discussion, each participant builds a theory and framework to explore what defines innovative and meaningful engagement during one’s working years.

This course focuses on how good work (in professions, including both legal and non-legal comparisons) is defined, through readings of several books, including literature, social science, and journalistic approaches. How do we define what ”good” work is, in terms of satisfaction to the performer of the work, contributions to society and “ethical” practice? What makes for productive work that makes the world better and is personally and professionally rewarding and enhancing to the individuals who both “perform” the work and “receive” benefit or service from the work.  Readings include: Ishiguro’s Remains of the Day (about butlers); Gardner, et.al., Good Work (about journalists and geneticists); Paine, Value Shifts (about work in the corporation and business). For the last book, students may choose from: Grisham, The Street Lawyer; Scott Turow, Reversible Errors; or Anthony Trollope, Orley Farm (about lawyers), or Eliot, Middlemarch (about doctors).

This course asks: Which personal, social, and cultural factors affect whether a worker (e.g., doctor, journalist, actor, or teacher) or a field of work (e.g., medicine, media, theater, or education) exhibits Good Work, work that is both excellent and ethical? Such Good Work is at a special premium today in light of the fast pace of change, new communication, and information sources (e.g., the Web); other technological innovations; transient employment patterns; and the assertion of powerful market focus in the relative absence of once powerful ideological, religious, or governmental counterforces. In this course we examine how Good Work occurs in various domains, including established professions (e.g., medicine, higher education), aspiring professions (e.g., K-12 education, journalism), non-professions (e.g., business, the arts), and blue-collar work. We explore the role of professionalization, morality, expertise, intelligence, and creativity in supporting or thwarting Good Work.

What is a good journalist?  Is a “good” journalist one who frequently gets her stories on the front page, even if her tactics are questionable?  Or, is a ”good” journalist one who will not compromise professional standards even if this means her stories garner less attention?  In this mini course, we will explore what it means to be a “good” professional and we will explore a unique educational approach to prepare young students, our future workers, to become “good workers” in school-related contexts and other professional settings. Participants will be involved in a variety of individual and group tasks that will offer them an opportunity to reflect on their own practices as educators while presenting a set of materials that they might also use in the classroom: for example, participants will consider how to negotiate personal and professional responsibilities, values, and standards when
faced with ethical dilemmas.  These materials encourage educators and their students to think about their approaches to work, to reflect on work that interests and excites them, and to consider the locus of meaning in their work.

As young people today spend more and more time online—playing interactive games, blogging, creating and posting content, and socializing on Facebook and MySpace—questions are being raised about the takeaways for them as learners, future workers, and citizens. A growing community of researchers is studying the social skills and cultural competencies nurtured through participation in online spaces. In the GoodPlay Project, we are exploring the ethical issues at stake. Among the questions we are studying are: What kinds of identities do youth construct online and what are the ethical implications? How do they manage issues of authorship and ownership in a sphere in which much material is easily acquired via “copy and paste”? How do they establish their credibility, and assess others, online? How do they conceive of privacy as they participate in “networked publics” online? Together with Project New Media Literacies (University of Southern California), we have developed classroom activities that encourage reflection about the ethical issues raised by youth participation in digital, networked publics. In this interactive course, participants explore the conceptual problem space addressed by the GoodPlay Project; learn about research findings and curricular activities developed to date; and consider the kinds of strategies (curricular or otherwise) needed to support youth’s digital lives.

This liberal studies course examines connections between the aims and purposes of liberal education and the nature of good work.  To address the nature of “good work,” the course explores the following questions: What is good work and why it is important?  What kind of person-worker am I and what do I want to become? What does it take to do good work?
What are factors that challenge people in carrying out their best work? What can one do to prepare for these challenges? What are the standards by which work is judged?  What are my own personal standards or markers of success?  These questions are examined through readings and cases of professionals in a variety of fields.

In this course, students are provided a broad platform for the purpose of integrating the fundamentals of science and technology as presented, for example, early in the Engineering concentration (or its equivalent) with the spectrum of learning needed to continuously create, capture and sustain value in the face of a constantly changing world. Challenges and demands such as: renewable energy sources; causes and effects of global warming; sufficient drinking water; green buildings; and infrastructure needs in developing countries are examined from an entrepreneurial viewpoint using multiple approaches in a variety of cultural settings in the greater context of “good work.”

In this advanced interdisciplinary and comparative graduate seminar students will be learn about Good Work in the Global Era by delving in basic social science work in research anthropology and research psychology. We shall do so critically examining various basic texts on globalization and various notions of the good life.  After a series of lectures introducing advanced graduate students to the Globalization and Learning project led by Professor Suarez-Orozco and the Good Work Project led by Professor Howard Gardner of Harvard University—who will co-lead this seminar—and we will turn our focus to basic scholarship in different regions of the world. We shall focus on two broad areas of the world—Asia and Europe and one or two areas of work (such as journalism and medicine) will be probed in some depth. At the conclusion of the seminar, we will consider how educational institutions can mediate and modulate the potent forces of globalization.

The GoodWork team, based at Harvard University’s Project Zero, and staff from The Institute for Global Ethics, headquartered in Camden, Maine, piloted a course at Colby College, under the sponsorship of Professor Sandy Maisel and the Goldfarb Center.  This course, entitled “Meaningful Work and a Meaningful Life,” focused on our common interest in an essential understanding of “good.” Research from both our groups indicates that achievement of good means operating beyond the realm of “merely excellent” and well into the realm of ethics.  Our goals were threefold: 1) To provide a series of experiences and provocations that will help young people think about what is important and/or meaningful to them as they embark on a life of work; 2) To identify a series of issues that students will need to reflect upon in order to make work and life as meaningful as possible; 3) To help students develop a practical “Toolkit” of concepts they can use in the transition from education to work and in work-related decision making.

This course examines technological, global, interpersonal and ethical dimensions of professional communication. The class will examine what it means to be ‘professional’ as well as the issues surrounding communication in specific professions and how these become flavored differently in diverse organizing and cultural contexts. We are not taking a prescriptive approach in terms of what you should do, rather, this class assumes that ‘being professional’ is the ability to communicatively evaluate the situation at hand, your audience and their requirements, and based on this assessment, craft professionally sensitive and sensible communicative performances. Working from a position of conscious communication (as opposed to strategic or instrumental transmission of information), this class encourages you to engage a ‘communicative consciousness’ or a way of being that rests on respect for the self, respect for the Other and respect for the communicative context. Specifically, this class will help us with the following questions: What are the central concepts and processes of communication in the professions? How do issues of our own morality intersect with others to form ethical dilemmas interpersonally and organizationally? How do we develop professional codes of conduct for working in teams and larger groups?  Who has an ethical responsibility to others, when, regarding what and how? What constitutes sound, professional and ethical communication in our global context and workplaces?

This course is for educators at all levels, in all disciplines, and in all types of institutions who are interested in carrying out their work “wisely.” We call this type of wisdom “generative wisdom”: the thoughtful linking of positive principles with actions. Teaching grounded in wisdom is about strengthening this link within ourselves as we seek to enable the next generation to develop to its greatest potential.  Through structured interviews, group reflection and supportive feedback, participants identify their individual strengths and challenges, perceive a deeper understanding of their goals and values, and provide a foundation and context to apply generative wisdom in the classroom.