Master of Arts in Organizational Development
Unique Offering/Advantages
Engaging with and Leading Collaborative Groups to Create Healthy, Vibrant Organizations, and Workplaces
In this multidisciplinary program you engage with graduate students from different disciplines and exercise your growing organizational development knowledge systemically. Theory and practice are based on the belief that we construct knowledge and actions through conversation and experiences.
- Gain a solid theoretical and application-based foundation for working with individuals, groups, and organizations
- Learn through extensive collaboration experiences such as: course team projects, large-group decision making, capstone change project
- Receive 1:1 attention by experienced, informed OD faculty
General Requirements
- Bachelor’s degree
- At least two years of relevant work experience
- Ability to work collaboratively with other students and faculty in an interdisciplinary learning environment
- Ability for reflection, self-awareness, critical thinking and sustained inquiry
Tuition & Fees
- Tuition: $662 per credit
- Required fees: $145 per quarter
- $6,765 tuition and required fees per quarter, full time (10 credits)
- $27,060 typical annual tuition and fees
Annual tuition and fees based on 2013-14 rates for four quarters. Antioch University Seattle students typically attend classes all year.
Length of Program
You can finish your degree in 21 months when you enroll full-time. You have up to six years to complete your degree. Designed to complement your real-world priorities, the program offers a convenient class schedule with all courses offered in a four-day weekend module just once a month.
The program begins in October or April.
In addition to your master’s degree, you earn certificates in Integrated Skills for Sustainable Change and Organizational Dynamics.
Career Opportunities
An M.A. in Organizational Development may lead to a promotion with your current employer, a job in a new business, or a stronger competitive advantage for your own entrepreneurial venture. Graduates work in diverse roles for businesses and corporations, colleges and universities, social service agencies, and government agencies.
Some possible areas include:
- trainers and executive coaches
- facilitators and change agents
- human resource and labor relations experts
- organizational development consulting practitioners
- managers and program directors
- marketing specialists
Recent sampling of alumni jobs:
- entrepreneur, start-up nonprofit
- director, Greenbank Farm, Whidbey Island
- organizational consultant/leadership development, The Boeing Company
- human resources project and training manager, PATH
- program director, Sightlife
- holistic life coach
- project manager, Microsoft
- health and wellness manager, city government
- leadership director, Canada public utility
Program Summary
Engage with
and Lead Collaborative Groups Committed to Creating Healthy, Vibrant Organizations, Workplaces, and Communities
Engage with
and Lead Collaborative Groups Committed to Creating Healthy, Vibrant Organizations, Workplaces, and Communities
In the Organizational Development graduate program, you learn to work with others to create healthy organizations and workplaces. You develop collaborative teams, assess organizational strengths, and design and implement interventions that lead to greater organizational resilience and productivity.
Through this program, you:
- Gain a deeper understanding of yourself as a practitioner and organizational change agent
- Use that knowledge to inform your practice
- Develop an understanding of organizations as complex and dynamic systems
- Design and implement interventions-based assessments that take into consideration the components and dynamics of the system…people, mission, goals, and structure
- Develop skills to design and facilitate meetings using multiple approaches
- Acquire the practical skills to lead systemic change in organizations
The Center for Creative Change Graduate Student Symposium features your graduate research and community-focused change project. Your work may be published on Antioch University websites and in the community as well.
Building on Antioch University Seattle’s tradition of experiential education and socially engaged citizenship, the Center for Creative Change offers degree and certificate programs so you can become a leader for
- organizational, social, and environmental sustainability
- social justice and
- transformative social change
All Center for Creative Change programs are based on the understanding that creative change requires a fundamental shift in peoples’ awareness and behavior. Solutions to the complex social and environmental challenges of the 21st century require new ways of thinking. This perspective recognizes the dynamic, interdependent nature of human and environmental systems and honors diverse perspectives, traditions, and ways of knowing. As a student in C3, you will learn skills, attitudes, and perspectives to be a change leader.
Curriculum
The Gathering, a two-day retreat before the first residency, begins the process of building your learning community.
Interdisciplinary Core Courses
- Communication Design
- Critical Inquiry
- Global Pluralism
- Systemic Thinking for a Changing World
- Sustainability
- Transformative Leadership and Change
- Methods for Sustainable Change
- Applications of Sustainable Change
- Organizational Development Caucus
- Overview of Organizational Dynamics
- Intervening in a System
- Practitioner Development
- Group Dynamics and Facilitation
Sample Elective Courses (4 courses)
- Coaching
- Conflict Management
- Multi-stakeholder Collaboration
- Specialization and elective courses from other Center degree programs
- Independent Studies
The MA Organizational Development is 66 quarter credits and can be completed in seven quarters.
Faculty
Click here for to read about Center faculty. For adjunct faculty who teach in the Center for Creative Change, click here.
Katherine S. Davies
DPhil
Center for Creative Change
Farouk Y. Seif
Professor Emeritus
Center for Creative Change
Barbara J. Spraker
MBA
Center for Creative Change
Britt Yamamoto
PhD
Center for Creative Change
Angie Wolle
M.A. Organizational Development , 2006
She knew she wanted to integrate the pockets of her career to manifest social change and address larger social needs. As she went through the program, she says she was able to integrate these parts and apply them immediately.
James Sasongko
MA Organizational Development, 2009
A Fulbright Scholar from Indonesia, he was drawn to Antioch Seattle's Center for Creative Change for its practical and experiential learning opportunities.
Jonakan O'Steen
M.A. Organizational Development , 2007
He was particularly curious about individual and team effectiveness through the lens of leadership development and says he got much more than he bargained for at Antioch.
