The Organization Development and Knowledge Management (ODKM) program came to my attention by chance. After telling the Vice President of my department that I wanted to study some kind of ‘corporate anthropology,’ he mentioned that his wife did a program at George Mason that sounded like what I wanted. After checking out the website and speaking with Professor Ann Baker, I was sold.
OD and KM are very hot industries right now, particularly in my field of international development. A lot of the OD work in my field focuses on local capacity building to ensure the sustainability of interventions. In addition, every organization, all the way from the UN down to local organizations, is realizing that they need better ways for capturing, sharing, and creating knowledge. And regardless of your field, ODKM also touches on how to better organize people and manage processes, which is useful in any job, but especially for moving into management. From a job market perspective, ODKM is a great choice.
I also love how the program is incredibly interdisciplinary, covering sociology, anthropology, psychology, political science at times, international affairs, organizational behavior, leadership studies, etc. You constantly get to understand topics from various academic angles and perspectives.
More than anything, I would say ODKM has helped me (both personally and professionally) ask better questions, uncover hidden assumptions in conversation or in readings that I may not have noticed before, and understand group dynamics. It has also made me more self-aware, and given me the space to figure out how I want to show up and make my way in the world.
Monalisa Salib
Current ODKM Student