Blog from Sarah Shomstein, Department Chair, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences
I entered GWALA with an open mind, ready to take on the wisdom of colleagues and invited speakers on what it meant to be an effective leader. Having served in various leadership positions within my department (program director, chair) it was important to understand what leadership looks like in other departments and schools within GWU. The Leadership Academy, carefully curated by Sara Melita, created an excellent environment to think about leadership in a more systematic and nuanced way, and to interact and learn from other faculty in various leadership positions throughout the university.
Throughout the program I learned ways of how to establish a positive decision-making environment, and the importance of being able to communicate and implement decisions. Much of being an effective leader is making some decisions very quickly while taking the time with those decisions that allow one to sit with them. The tricky part is to differentiate between them, and to not sit on decisions for too long. The in-depth discussions led by our GWALA leaders, and input from my peers have crystalized the mechanism of a decision-making process. Prior to GWALA it felt like I was leading my unit in a more intuitive manner, but after the thoughtful training program created by the GWALA team my leadership style has become more deliberate.
I also appreciated the opportunity to conduct a leadership project with the support and feedback of my GWALA peers. For my project I chose to survey department chairs from Psychology departments across the country collecting data on whether graduate student scholarly travel was supported by either departments or the University, and what the qualifying requirements are for the support. I collected responses from 30 departments. I will use the collected data to advocate for graduate student scholarly travel within CCAS and across the University.