Transforming Lives That Transform America
Transforming Lives That Transform America
This three-day group relations conference offers a unique opportunity to study the conscious and unconscious dynamics involved in how groups organize themselves and interact with each other. This conference is not a passive learning event that relies upon lectures. Instead, the learning is experiential. Participants study how leadership, followership, authority, task, boundaries, and roles operate in the different group experiences they enter during the conference. The conference will weave art and other non-verbal forms of expression into the conference events to illuminate unconscious dynamics operating in the system of group interactions that members and staff will create together.
About the Director
Dr. Laura K. Dorsey-Elson
We are delighted about the opportunity to work with Dr. Laura Dorsey-Elson as the Director of this conference. A native Californian and raised in Los Angeles, Dr. Dorsey-Elson is a distinguished Associate Professor of Strategic Communication and Chair of the University Council at Morgan State University (MSU), a historically black institution, with a current mission to enroll a student body that is diverse in its socioeconomic and academic status and to provide the full-range of experiences and services that permits it to successfully serve students with a wide variety of goals and needs. The University awards more bachelor's degrees to African-American students than any campus in Maryland.
In her work, Dr. Dorsey-Elson focuses on leadership development and strategic organizational communication in student and professional populations with a special emphasis on diversity and inter-intracultural issues. Dr. Dorsey-Elson also serves as an Independent Leadership Coach in private practice and a Leadership Consultant in the A.K .Rice Institute for the Study of Social Systems (AKRI). Indeed, Dr. Dorsey-Elson will be joined by a team of fellow AKRI-certified professional consultants in our work together for this conference.
Dr. Dorsey-Elson obtained her PhD in Human Communication Studies from Howard University in 2000 where she completed her dissertation, Sister circles: An exploration of small group communication among African American women. She has several years of experience in the development of this type of curriculum on a college campus, most notably, her annual “Explorations in Leadership™” conference at MSU. She is the author of several book chapters and academic manuscripts on topics related to leadership development, race and diversity in applied communication theory and research, internalized oppression among African American women, and organizational conflict communication.