#MediaPsy2020 Be a part of the conversation that builds a better post-pandemic future.

Jun 23, 2020

1 min


We are facing a new normal—a global cultural reset. Media and technology have become the lifelines to work, healthcare, education, entertainment, social and interpersonal ties, and commerce. They also expose social disparities and challenges.


Scholars and practitioners at the nexus of psychology, media, and technology have a unique opportunity to redefine normal and promote the role of psychology, social justice and human flourishing in the structures and content that support recovery.


Keynote speakers include:


  • Bettina Sherick - SVP, Worldwide Consumer Insights and Audience Analytics on the Digital Marketing team for Warner Bros.



  • Ellen Peters, PhD - Director of the Center for Science Communication Research




The Media Psychology Symposium is a virtual conference. Participants can take part July 16 and 17 from anywhere online and from anywhere.




Interested in learning more?


Jerri Lynn Hogg is a media psychologist and the Director of Fielding Graduate University’s Media Psychology program. She is the 2015 president for the American Psychological Associations’ Society for Media Psychology and Technology, and co-author of Mad Men Unzipped: Fans on Sex, Love, and the Sixties on TV.


Dr. Hogg is available to speak with media about Fielding’s virtual media psychology symposium – simply click on her icon to arrange an interview.

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5 min

FIELDING GRADUATE UNIVERSITY: Deeply Rooted in Our Community

An interview by Monica Lenches and Claudia Rucker for Hope Ranch Living Dr. Katrina Rogers and I first met in a professional setting, and while our conversation was primarily focused on all things professional, there was a strong undercurrent of kindness and authenticity in everything she spoke about. Over the years, I have grown to admire and deeply respect her dedication to social and environmental change and the meaningful and effective ways in which she engages with our community and beyond as President of Fielding Graduate University. By way of a short introduction, Katrina’s impactful career has included varying roles in the international non-governmental and educational sectors including executive, board member, teacher, and author of many articles and books on organizational leadership in sustainability. For a decade, she led the European campus for Thunderbird School of Global Management in Geneva, Switzerland, working with international organizations such as the Red Cross, World Trade Organization, United Nations Development Program, and the European Union. She also serves on the Boards of the Toda Institute for Global Policy & Peace Research and the Public Dialogue Consortium. She received her B.A. from Albertus Magnus College, M.A. from Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen, Germany and her Ph.D. from Northern Arizona University. ML: Tell us about Fielding Graduate University. KR: Fielding is a home-grown institution, founded in Santa Barbara in 1974 by faculty at UCSB and other places. It is a graduate institution focused on adult learners, that is, generally early to mid-career professionals who would benefit from a graduate education that enables them to craft professional and personal lives that make a positive difference for others. We have doctoral programs in clinical psychology, early infant and childhood development, media psychology, organizational leadership, and education. Our learning model is distributed, which means that our students and faculty are in different parts of the country and work and learn together. Once the internet was invented, we incorporated virtual learning tools into our mentor-based model. ML: What brought you to the non-profit world, and what is it about this space that keeps you here? President Katrina S. Rogers, Ph.D. President Katrina S. Rogers, Ph.D. KR: When I was young, I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, then known as a chronic and debilitating illness. During a long process of making meaning of this difficult experience, I decided that, if I were to get better and be able to participate in life, I wanted to live a life of meaning by making a positive difference for other people, either through education or non-profit work more generally. ML: As I’ve gotten to know you over the years, it’s not surprising to me that you would be associated with an organization that is strongly mission-driven and value-based. What are your Fielding’s mission and values? KR: We believe in an education that puts learners at the center of their experience and values the power of transformation through learning and a graduate education as a vehicle for positive social change. Our mission is to provide exemplary interdisciplinary programs for graduate students that is founded on a mentor-based learning model that is student-centered. Our programs are grounded in the following values: Academic Excellence: We commit to the highest quality scholarship, research, and practice. Community: We support a collaborative learning environment built on inclusion and mutual respect. Diversity: We commit to having a faculty, staff and student body that is diverse and inclusive. We embrace and celebrate the wisdom, knowledge and experiences of our diverse community. Learner-centered Education: We create an interactive experience that responds to the interrelated personal and professional lives of our students. Social Justice: We commit to advancing equality and justice in our University, and ­­­­in the local, national, and global communities impacted by our work. Transformational Learning: We inspire a re-examination of one’s worldview and underlying assumptions to enable a deeper understanding of self and society. ML: Can you give us some examples of what it looks like to operationalize or live those values on a daily basis? KR: Every day, our faculty strive to create a personalized learning environment for our graduate students. Through building community across time and distance, our students become adept in their fields of expertise and learn the skills to take on life’s greatest challenges, whether it be in clinical settings, organizations—both corporate and non-profit–, or educational systems. For example, our faculty offer intensive seminars in which students can work with local non-profits to identify challenges and map out solutions to difficult organizational issues. In other programs, faculty support students during their clinical training. ML: Among the many educational institutions in Santa Barbara, what makes Fielding different? KR: Santa Barbara is awash in great educational institutions, all of which serve different constituencies. Fielding’s piece is that we focus on adult learners who want a graduate educational experience that both teaches them a set of skills and broadens their perspective as they develop themselves and decide how they may best serve in their communities and in their work. Over the years, Fielding has partnered with many local organizations, such as the Fund for Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara Education Foundation, and CALM. Our alums have gone on to establish the Pacifica Graduate Institute and Antioch University, Santa Barbara, and many of our students and alums work in mental health, education, the nonprofit sector, and government and are business owners in our community. ML: What’s your vision for the future of Fielding, and how can the community get involved in supporting that vision? KR: Fielding is on the move! More and more people see graduate education as an important factor in their success. Please join us for our public presentations and other community events offered January locally in Santa Barbara. Now that groups are reconvening, we hope to see community members at an event in the coming year. For those who may be interested in supporting our efforts to create social change in the world, please visit us at www.fielding.edu. To learn more about the benefits of a Fielding education or ways to contribute to Fielding’s mission, please feel free to reach out to Elena Nicklasson at 805-898-2926 or President Rogers at president@fielding.edu. Reprinted by permission from https://www.monicalenchesre.com/communitymattersmay2023/

3 min

Op-Ed: Act on this Earth Day and throughout the year for ecological justice 

Growing up on a small farm in New England, my family was tied to the rhythms of the seasons and the land. We guided our calendar and lives by when to plant tomatoes, harvest corn and seed the winter rye. The connection to the natural world felt timeless, and the land, ever enduring. Each summer, Red would show up on our doorstep and stay a few weeks. Red was a giant in my child’s eyes, certainly more than 6 feet tall -- and he had a wagon like Professor Marvel in the opening scene of “The Wizard of Oz.” Red may have been one of the last of the itinerant “rag men” that would go from farm to farm, offering services like repairing pots and pans, fixing farm implements, and telling stories for food and shelter. He always showed up — like the seasons — and we treated him like the friend he was. Most of all, I remember Red’s stories. He would say to me, “The world is a precious place, and we need to take care of it. It needs us to reuse everything, reduce what we use and cycle as much as we can back to Mother Earth.” I didn’t have the language then for what he was talking about, but now, I see him as an important figure in my life because he instilled in me a lifelong commitment to change our human relationship to the planet. We simply must do better. I became a teacher, and eventually, a leader in nonprofit and educational organizations dedicated to ecological and social justice values. Everyone, including the earth, deserves the fair division of resources, opportunities, privileges and more. Imagine if we could set aside half of the earth for biodiversity and use the other half to power human society. In 2017, renowned biologist E.O. Wilson proposed this idea in his book, Half-Earth. Furthermore, what if the for-profit sector paid for it? The current planetary generation could ensure the viability of the planet for future generations. We know from scholarly research that it only takes a small number of people to create the conditions for positive social change. When people take collective action, their communities benefit.  We are collecting stories this year, but more importantly, we are showing the impact that our students, alums, faculty, staff, Trustees, and other stakeholders have on their own communities. Like the butterfly effect, even small actions can have a large impact. Fielding Graduate University acts to secure the sustainability of our biodiverse ecosystem, health equity, society, and culture. Fielding was founded in Santa Barbara 49 years ago upon the idea that graduate education can be a vehicle for positive social change that leads to social and ecological justice. In 2023, the President’s Sustainability Advisory Council designated this year as our Fielding Ecological and Social Justice Service Year. Fielding is also committed to justice, diversity, equity and inclusion through access and success for our students and, more expansively, to our community partners and colleagues. We believe that we walk together with others and strive for harmony, which means seeking mutual understanding across differences. We specifically affirm and honor our Indigenous communities, both in Fielding’s headquarters in Santa Barbara and across the world. We recognize the deep history, ecological knowledge, expansive scholarship and critical sovereignty of our Indigenous peoples. Our human society is at a moment where we can choose the path that honors both our ancestors and descendants. Each of us is responsible for enacting change, no matter how large or small the effort. We know that simple changes can significantly reduce our impact, and cumulatively, give the natural cycles around us time to recover. Reduce the amount of meat you eat, reduce your own food waste, fly less, buy less, re-use more. It’s not complicated. On this Earth Day, I encourage you to act. Participate in a cleanup in your community, create a natural lawn, participate in a neighborhood bird count, plant a tree. You could also volunteer for any nonprofit organization. As for Fielding, we remain steadfast in our resolve for ecological and social justice so we can leave the world in a better place than we found it. Like Red and so many others before us, I invite you to do the same. Katrina S. Rogers, Ph.D., is president of Fielding Graduate University in Santa Barbara, CA, a distinguished graduate school known for adult learners in the fields of clinical psychology, organizational leadership and change, and education. Learn more at www.fielding.edu.

3 min

Op-Ed: A New Kind of Education for Urban Leaders in America

By: President Katrina S. Rogers, Ph.D., Fielding Graduate University, and President Ronald Mason, Jr., J.D., University of the District of Columbia Urban communities large and small face more new and complex challenges as well as more opportunities than ever before. For example, consider racism, violence, climate change, population mobility enhanced by faster and more economical transportation options and sophisticated technologies that enhance quicker transmission of larger bodies of information, much of which includes disinformation and is leading to greater cultural divisiveness along political, racial and economic lines. Urban community leaders must therefore be attuned to these changing realities and understand how to successfully address them with the interdisciplinary acumen required to recognize their complexities and interactions with one another, as well as the capacity to craft strategies to manage them effectively and equitably. In addition, preparing urban leaders must include a firm understanding of established and interdisciplinary leadership principles through a lens grounded in social and cultural diversity within an urban context. At the University of the District of Columbia (UDC), the nation’s only urban land grant college, and Fielding Graduate University, an independent graduate institution that invented distributed learning, the UDC-Fielding Urban Leadership and Entrepreneurship graduate program does just that. While the fields of leadership studies and urban studies have made significant strides in recent decades, they have been largely male-centric, white-dominated and limited to narrowly focused topics, e.g., urban transportation, urban education, urban planning, etc. The partnered urban leadership and entrepreneurship doctoral program at UDC-Fielding seeks to produce a new generation of scholars and practitioners. Graduates emerge from their program with capabilities to not only address the changing realities of urban America (and possibly elsewhere in the world) but to also generate new knowledge and new approaches to urban leadership through a cultural and interdisciplinary framing that considers the changing, social, environmental and technological realities of the 21st century. The UDC-Fielding Ph.D. program leadership recognizes that the complex nature of the type of urban leadership and entrepreneurship program described herein requires a cadre of interdisciplinary and multicultural faculty. However, such a faculty is typically unlikely to reside within a single department, let alone one institution. The disciplinary and culturally diverse faculties at Fielding and UDC significantly expand the program’s intellectual boundaries far beyond the either institution’s fiscal capacity can accomplish alone. Moreover, the two faculties’ demographic and interdisciplinary diversity provides enormously broad learning and research opportunities to students. The two institutions’ faculty capacity brings together scholars and practitioners from diverse fields like psychology, political science, law, gender studies, leadership studies, business, management, environmental science, urban sustainability and urban agriculture. The Ph.D. Program in Urban Leadership and Entrepreneurship is unique in several ways: The program is committed to the work of the scholar-practitioner who expressly places their research at the service of the community to make a difference in everyday lives. The program is unique in its commitment to having students define their own research interests for their dissertation rather than having them join a research project in which the university is engaged. The program emphasizes the research tools necessary to conduct relevant research that stresses collaboration with local experts and credentialed experts. The program links theory and practical application not only to be relevant but also to advance theory and improve what we know and how we know it (i.e., questioning the lenses through which we filter knowledge). The program stresses inter, cross and transdisciplinary knowledge and builds strong research and communication skills to work effectively across a wide range of fields and cultures. The program stresses systems thinking, which is required in virtually every field and every profession given our interconnected world. With the focus in the news these days about all that is wrong with urban America, let us move away from a deficit mindset towards a worldview about what is possible in the urbanscapes where most of us live and work. The Urban Leadership and Entrepreneurship doctoral program aims to do just that—to foster current and emerging generations of leaders’ ability to tackle the seemingly intractable problems facing us. As education often reminds us, the first step to change is to believe in it. This article first appeared in The EvoLLLution on Feb. 7, 2023.

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