The operations within universities have become increasingly complex and challenging for various reasons. Notably, some of those challenges have been combated by developing talent within the organization. Although many professional development opportunities abound at Arizona State University and within the ASU Foundation, the options for developing competencies such as collaboration and resilience were lacking. Thus, the purpose of this action research project was to develop several specific competencies for my team to be successful in their current roles and to develop skills affording success in future roles. The setting for this study was Arizona State University, a four-year, public institution. The specific unit under examination was the Arizona State University Foundation, the unit dedicated to raising resources for the university through philanthropy. The intervention consisted of four professional development workshops including the topics of collaboration, resilience, leadership, and a concluding workshop to debrief the three topics and how participants’ new understandings had been incorporated into their professional roles. Prior to each workshop, participants observed a professional development video specifically associated with the topic of the workshop. During the workshops, participants were actively engaged through facilitated discussion on the topics, proposed scenario narratives, and guided participant activities. Following the workshops, participants reflected on their understandings and use of the skills as they engaged in nine weeks of reflective journaling based on standardized prompts. The prompts alternated among the topics of collaboration, resilience, and leadership. I used a concurrent mixed-method action research approach for this study, where I gathered quantitative and qualitative data over the course of the intervention and at its conclusion. Results centered around the themes of collaboration, resilience, leadership, and meta-topics, which included theme-related components such as asking for help, having a shared goal, locus of control, resilience in the workplace, leadership styles, leadership qualities, comfort zone, learning and growing, relationships, and so on. In the discussion, I explained the outcomes relative to theoretical perspectives and previous research that guided the study, presented limitations, proposed implications for practice and for future research, and reviewed personal lessons learned.

Utilizing action research and a qualitative research study design, the purpose of this study was to glean how participation in the Building Community Through Discourse Intervention (BCTD intervention) influenced the cultural and social awareness of six Development and Alumni Relations (DEVAR) managers at The University of California, Davis (UC Davis). To investigate DEVAR managers’ comfort, knowledge, and skills discussing and advocating for diversity and inclusion (D&I), the BCTD intervention featured four topical units: racial issues in the workplace, privilege issues in the workplace, identity issues in the workplace, and applying theory to practice. Over ten weeks, DEVAR managers were required to read assigned chapters from So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo, watch proposed videos related to D&I, maintain a participant journal to reflect on their experiences throughout the study, and engage in bi-weekly focus group discussions hosted via Zoom to review the prescribed learning material. Guiding the study were two theoretical frameworks: Communities of Practices and a Pedagogy of Discomfort. Through narrative analysis, a storytelling approach was used to present the findings of the study based on four themes derived from the data: the impact of fear on managers’ willingness to advocate for D&I, the importance of dialogue and the role of time in the learning process, and the need for more skills to adequately apply learning to practice. The study discovered that the BCTD intervention improved the comfort and knowledge of DEVAR managers to discuss and advocate for D&I. However, the study did not favorably affect their ability to transfer their increased understanding of the challenges of diverse staff to their managerial practice. Subsequently, as academia and private businesses alike begin to place a greater emphasis on social justice, implications for future research entail: expanding the length of time to conduct a similar situated or designed study to focus on providing participants with enhanced learning opportunities to improve their ability to apply their learning to practice, in-person focus group discussions as opposed to Zoom, and increased representation amongst study participants to enhance the richness of shared experiences.