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Al's Research Page |
Scholarship:
Ernest L. Boyer’s seminal work, Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate (1990) delineates the scholarship of discovery; the scholarship of integration; the scholarship of application; and the scholarship of teaching. I support a broad view of scholarship and believe the university and the community are best served when scholars are allowed to match their strengths and passions with one or several dimensions of the scholarship agenda.
At this page you will find some links to publications. Some of these publications represent traditional empirical research and are examples of scholarship of discovery. Other papers or project summaries reflect integration, application, or teaching. Dr. Wright’s extensive involvement in training and consulting in the field reflects his passion for professional practice and the need to make connections between knowing and doing. His greatest strength as a scholar is as one who integrates theory with practice and then develops partnerships and teaching opportunities with agencies in the field. He has presented over 100 workshops at professional conferences and done over 150 consultations with specific organizations over a broad range of topics related to leadership development, teams, strategic planning, organizational change, program development, fund development and others.
The world is so interesting who would want to study only one thing. I am interested in multiple subjects that at first glance may not appear to be well connected - but most do have a consistent connection. The general umbrella of my work is asking the question of the impact of experiential education on individuals and groups. In other words, how do we create real change and growth through educational experiences. So one might find a study with experiential designs that use outdoor climbing adventures to impact youth confidence or a major project that uses coaching methods (an experiential pedagogy) to foster development of executive leaders. I hope you will find some value in the material here.
Papers & Books (full text papers will soon be posted but not quite yet - sorry :( - - - a work in progress)
Multicultural Education
Research Topics and Links
Future plans include a series of pages with resource links on some of my research and teaching areas. Topics include:
- Leadership development
- Non-profit organizations
- Team effectiveness
- Youth development
- Executive coaching
- Organizational change
- Outdoor experiential education
- Land conservancy
- Multcultural education
- Spiritual formation
- Marketing and Culture
Past Projects
Lilly Project: Center for Excellence in Congregational Leadership
The Lilly Endowment funded a major national initiative entitled Sustaining Pastoral Excellence. Dr. Wright served as the project director for a 2 million dollar grant from that competition. The grant represented an ecumenical partnership between five Christian denominations in the upper Midwest with the goals of increasing leadership effectiveness in clergy and to create healthier congregations.
Institute for Camp and Conference Ministry
Dr. Wright served as the team leader with a group of four colleagues in the design and delivery of a leadership development and organizational change program. The Institute was organized based on the crisis facing agencies in the organized camp movement. Seven governing principles motivated the curriculum design and details are available from the authors. The innovative program included team based learning, action planning, and follow-up interventions.
The Team delivered 27 training conferences across the country from 2000-2006 and worked with presenters who were national experts in their topics. Outcome measures collected from organizations action plans included positive changes in fund development, visionary planning, board governance, program development, marketing, staff training, and operations.
Adventure Learning Program in the Center for Recreation and Tourism - a part of the RTM Department
The center was an outreach program of California State University Northridge from 1996-2004 providing various community agencies with direct programs in leadership, teamwork, and personal growth through adventure education. The center served over 75 community organizations as well as giving learning experiences for students
The center provided direct service to many public, non-profit and corporate clients and including LA City, LA Unified School District, YMCA, Salvation Army, Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, local faith based organizations, Texaco, JPL, and many other quality organizations.
The Adventure Learning Program is being reborn with new leadership in the coming months.
Future Dream (and/or Current) Projects
Resource book for multicultural education: (Partial manuscript)
Building Bridges: an experiential approach to multicultural education through shared adventure. Manuscript in preparation.
Leadership development textbook: (Dreaming)
The Leadership Path: An experiential approach to developing lifelong leadership competency.
Research Paper on Youth Development: (Active work)
Long Term Effects of Therapeutic Outdoor Programs for At-Risk Youth -
The sabbitical project which began in the Spring of 2016 is collecting the data for this long awaited project. I am conducting interviews from former graduates of adventure based intervention programs for at-risk youth. Details and publications will be forth-coming as we wrap up interviews here in 2019.
Research Paper on Team based Organizations: (Dreaming)
Presence of Team based Organizations in Hospitality Industry
Presence of Team based Organizations in Faith Based Communities
Spin Soccer - A New Spin on and Old Game (Active Work)
This is clearly not traditional empirical research but it is clearly within our recreation field. Having invented a new game, or I should say a new way to play the traditional game of soccer (football to the rest of the world), I have secured a U.S. patent (# 9,533,208 B2) that is slowly moving its way into the market place. Stay tuned.