ODKM Looks Toward 30th Anniversary, Adds New Faculty Member

The Schar School of Policy and Government’s Organization Development and Knowledge Management (ODKM) master’s program is preparing to celebrate its 30th anniversary next year, when it welcomes its 30th cohort to the program. To mark the milestone, the program is launching an ambitious #30in30 campaign, aiming to recruit 30 students for Cohort 30. (The average cohort is 20.)

A bald man with a goatee and eyeglasses smiles at the camera. — Program Director Tojo Thatchenkery: The goal was to ‘create a truly interdisciplinary department which would be one of the first of its kind anywhere.’

“ODKM is the best kept secret at George Mason University, and we don’t want to be a secret any longer,” said program director Tojo Thatchenkery. “It’s a unique program that is preparing working adults for the complex business environment so many are experiencing in this postpandemic reality.”

After three decades of developing leaders in a variety of for-profit and nonprofit industries, “we are focusing a lot of energy on recruitment while celebrating 30 years of this program that has turned out so many influential changemakers over the years,” he said.

New core faculty member Stacey Guenther is up for the challenge. She joins after serving as an adjunct faculty member of the program and is herself a 2004 alumna of ODKM, cohort number seven.

“ODKM is near and dear to my heart. It was deeply transformative for me, and my life changed radically after I entered the program,” Guenther said.

A woman with red hair and wearing a red scarf smiles at the camera in front of a brick wall. — Stacey Guenther: ‘It was deeply transformative for me, and my life changed radically after I entered the program.’

Guenther has been closely connected to George Mason since graduating 20 years ago. She was one of the founding staff members of the university’s Center for Consciousness and Transformation (now known as the Center for the Advancement of Well-Being), worked as a corporate facilitator at George Mason’s team development and experiential learning facility the EDGE, and for five years served as adjunct faculty for the School of Integrative Studies.

In addition to teaching in the program, Guenther will spearhead ODKM’s #30in30 campaign, which will involve a social media push, the development of an advisory board, alumni relations efforts, and relationship-building with local and regional organizations.

“I’m looking forward to telling the ODKM story,” she said. “It is the only program of its kind in the immediate region, and there is no better academic program for leaders and helping professionals in the area.”

In mid-September, the current cohort of ODKM students hosted a daylong learning community in which they became instructors to those from many walks of life and at varying stages of their own careers. The capstone event is traditional in the program as the Schar School students practice what they have learned in the course. This learning community’s theme was styles of conflict and titled “The Art of the Ordeal: Conflict Tools and Techniques.”

ODKM was founded by Thatchenkery as he was completing his PhD dissertation at Case Western University in April 1993.

“I was looking for a job in a business school, but what I was working on—postmodernism and hermeneutics—wasn’t particularly attractive to them,” he said with a laugh.

As it happened, George Mason was beginning a new academic department called Program on Social Organizational Learning (PSOL), with a tenure-track position for researching and teaching hermeneutics. “Within an hour I had sent my application,” he said.

Several people watch as a woman with a nametag writes something on a large poster on a table. — The cohort-based ODKM program features a “learning community” capstone, where students take over as teachers. Photo by Bryan Regalado.

The founders of the program, economics professors Don Lavoie and Jack High, “wanted to create a truly interdisciplinary department which would be one of the first of its kind anywhere,” Thatchenkery said. “As we all know, academic departments have disciplinary boundaries. Economics departments have economists and psychology departments have psychologists. But how about a department with faculty from different disciplines such as sociology, psychology, anthropology, computer sciences, literature, management, and economics?”

That was, he said, “a revolutionary idea at that time and I was sold on it. A few weeks later I would get a job offer from Don Lavoie and my first day on the job was mid-August 1993.”

It wasn’t long after that Thatchenkery was pitching a master’s program in organization learning (OL), which would be the first such program anywhere, he said. After much internal maneuvering around various disciplines and hard-earned approval by the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV), the PSOL degree program launched in fall 1996 with its first 23 students, cohort number one.

The program was rebranded ODKM in fall 2009 and continues to teach mid-career students leadership, creative problem-solving, and analytical skills invaluable to their organization, work, and lives.

For more information about George Mason’s Organization Development and Knowledge Management program, see the program’s website.