2012 OBTC Conference Call for Papers

The 39^th OBTC

Teaching Conference for Management Educators

June 20-23, 2012 – Brock University

The mission of the OBTS Teaching Society for Management Educators is to enhance the quality and promote the importance of teaching and learning across the management disciplines with a focus on the dynamics within and at the interface of individuals, groups, organizations, and cultures. Find out more information about the society here.

 Conference Theme

Sustainability: 

Sustaining Ourselves, Students, Community, and Global World

 When we speak of sustainability, we often think of “green” or the environment these days, but truthfully, sustainability is all around us and impacts us daily at multiple levels, so much so that we often are not mindful of it when we act.   In times of economic downturns and turbulence, we need to ask ourselves at what cost do we try to maintain our way of life?  We as educators need to continuously ask ourselves how is it possible to sustain our passion for learning and teaching when a new idea can get old pretty quickly?  Often the concept of sustainability goes unrecognized and untapped, due to our own oversight or lack of deep thinking.  In this conference, we encourage participants to engage in an ongoing dialogue that has the potential to allow each of us to exchange new ideas, approaches, awareness, and practices to enhance our lives and our work.

A few of the possible areas we might explore are:

• How can we sustain our passion for teaching, given external constraints and obstacles?
• How can we sustain our enthusiasm for helping our students, given their changing needs and our changing demographics?
• How can we sustain our educational pedagogue (e.g., active learning, experiential learning) when alternative educational models (e.g., distance learning) move away from traditional classroom learning?
• As we find ourselves at different career stages, what do we need to do and who do we need to be as professionals to sustain us in our engagement?
• How can we effectively sustain our learning relationships in communities, given our diversity?
• What can we do to ensure our continued interaction of our local communities to enhance our students’ learning, when their existence might be threatened?
• How can we help students to sustain their passion for learning beyond our classroom?
• How can we ensure that we can sustain our global connectedness and collaboration when potential human conflicts increase uncertainties?
• How can we sustain quality of our educational programs or institutions given potential budget reductions during our economic downturns?

Conference Site

 Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada and the Faculties of Applied Health Sciences and Business are pleased to host the 2012 Organizational Behavior Teaching Conference (OBTC) on June 20-23, 2012.

For OBTC 2012,  we will take every effort to ensure the natural environment is safeguarded for sustained use by the next generation. Every attempt to “green” OBTC 2012 and minimize waste and material use (i.e., use either reusable or biodegradable materials) will be implemented.

 Conference Submissions

Conference submissions (up to 5 pages, .doc or .docx format) should be uploaded to the central submission website (https://obtc.org) by the December 15, 2011, priority deadline.  Acceptance notifications will be sent by February 15, 2012.  For further information regarding the program, contact Kenneth Rhee at obtc@obtc.org, or for information regarding the site, contact Kirsty Spence at kspence@brocku.ca.