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2. How was working for social change important to you before you came to Walden?

I have always been dedicated to the idea of social change on both the macro and micro level. I work as a counselor and a teacher, and for me that combination does both. I can impact individuals at the counseling levels, and teaching sociology, I can impact large numbers of people as I teach my students about the discrimination our society faces. I have been doing both counseling and teaching for nine years now, and I really feel dedicated to impacting my community in both of those areas.

a. Can you give me an example of what you did?

I, uh, I am currently trying out a new theory about counseling, including a biopsychosocial spiritual model in my counseling process to see how that goes.

3. How was the social change mission important to you in making your choice to come to Walden?

I actually earned a Masters in Psychology from Walden in 2007, so I was already familiar with the social change aspect. We worked on that philosophy, but not at the level that it is focused on currently, which is nice. I chose to return to Walden because of the convenience of online learning, but I chose the program because I feel that learning more aspects of how to uh approach a problem, social or individual, will help me to uhm be able to have a more holistic approach to any social problem I choose to attack. I

a. Please describe how it was important/not important to you.

Social change, I feel, can only be brought about by a paradigm shift in how everyone thinks. I need education to be able to understand the current paradigms and how they effect our thinking processes. I think it’s kinda like religion, where each religion has some of it right, but not every religion is 100% right. So, if I continue to study each discipline, I may be able to get a bigger picture of how I can affect social change.

4. From your perspective, what is social change? Well, social change is really just finding a problem in society and trying to change it for the better.

a. Can you give me some examples of what you mean by that? I really love studying collective behaviors and social movements. So, social movements would be a great example of social change. Social movements such as the Civil Rights Movement have impacted our society for the better in ways we can’t even imagine, with all of the individuals who benefitted from it. And not just African-Americans, but

women, the gay movement, and on and on. One movement spawned a whole society’s search for equality. What a powerful thing that is!