Dr Boje: I wanted to thank you for the important part you played in my doctoral journey.
Dr Alana James, Dr Tojo Thatchenkery and Dr Ken Wall approved my dissertation and defense at Colorado Tech on Oct 6, 2011and have booted me out onto the road to begin the next phase of my journey: applying whatever it is i know and find in service to others.
As I was preparing for the defense I took some time to reflect on all the important ways in which you have stretched me by asking really good questions, listening carefully, and providing me enough of a nudge to keep me moving. I will strive to follow your most excellent example, because you have made a very important difference in my life that i want to share with others.
Although I have never taken a class with you nor had you on my committee, I count you as a mentor without portfolio, from a distance. I am still reading your works carefully, in small pieces, because you put so much into each sentence.
I examined how my military college (US Army Command & General Staff College, Ft Leavenworth) was adapting to an increasingly uncertain world, and through your offered lenses, saw the power of sense-making, story-making, story-telling influenced everything the organization and its it people believed, avowed, asserted and became.
Your work influenced me so much that fully a third of my dissertation became what I humbly called Critical Narrative Inquiry: and it constituted my systematic examination of every sense-making session, from the baseline participatory action research projects and meetings where the work gets done, to the councils of senior leaders who receive reports and certify our next steps based on their preferred storylines. I became aware for the first time of just how fragile these webs of meaning are that we co-create each day by choosing how and when we speak, and for what purpose.
I am thinking hard about what you have said about materialty in AR, and am reminded that our humanity is part of that materialty in the same unspoken yet knowing way your horses offer their horse-sense to our reality
Best wishes, and thank you for the opportunity to work with you, and for all the good you do for others. I am always amazed at CTU residencies at the vsheer number of people who have your name on their lips. You have a gentle way of telling powerful stories from the heart and you are making an important difference in the world.
Keep going!
