James Beebe
Doctoral Program in Leadership Studies
Gonzaga University
beebe@gonzaga.edu
Contact Information
December 21, 2001

I am a social scientist, practitioner-scholar, and social activist, with 20 years experience living and working in developing countries.  I am always looking for new opportunities, consistent with being a university professor, where I can use my expertise to be of service to others.

Since 1996 I have been a full Professor in the Doctoral Program in Leadership Studies at Gonzaga University.  For four years I was the program director/department chair. Since the Fall of 2001, I have also been the director of the Gonzaga Institute for Action Against Hate.  Between 1979 and 1996, I was a Foreign Service Officer with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and had long-term assignments in Sudan, Philippines, Liberia, and South Africa and short term assignments in nine other countries.  Other significant employment has included being a college professor, consultant, and Peace Corps Volunteer.  My areas of expertise and the areas in which I teach or conduct research include (a) Technology and Society, (b) Qualitative Research and Rapid Assessment Process (RAP), (c) Farming Systems Research, and (d) Leadership and Higher Education.


CAREER SUMMARY:

1996-current Professor Doctoral Program, Gonzaga University
1996-2000 Program Director, Doctoral Program, Gonzaga University
1979-1996 Foreign Service Officer, United States Agency for International Development
1994-1996 Director, Office of Economic Development, USAID/South Africa
1992-1993 Chief, Agricultural Policy Division, R&D/USAID/Washington
1990-1992 Professor (USAID-RJCC assignment), Oregon State University
1989-1990 Director, Office of Resource Development, USAID/Liberia
1987-1989 Director, Office of Agricultural Development, USAID/Liberia
1985-1987 Chief, Agricultural Development Division, USAID/Philippines
1983-1985 Agricultural Projects Officer, USAID/Philippines
1981-1983 Agricultural Development Officer, USAID/Sudan
1979-1980 Human Resources Development Officer, USAID/Liberia
1979 Consultant and Planning Specialist, Community Association for Retarded, Palo Alto, CA
1977-1978 Assistant Professor of Education, Monterey Institute of Foreign Studies, Monterey, CA
1977-1978 Principal Investigator and Project Director, Filipino Association of Mountain View, CA (U.S. Dept. of Labor grant).
1976-1977 Dissertation Research in the Philippines, Stanford University
1974-1975 Teaching and Research Assistant, Stanford University
1968-1973 Peace Corps Volunteer, Philippines

EDUCATION:

1978 Ph.D., International Development Education, Stanford University.

1976 M.A., Anthropology, Stanford University.

1976 M.A., Food Research (International Agriculture Development), Stanford University.

1971 Graduate Work, Anthropology, University of the Philippines.

1968 B.A., Politics, New York University.

1966 A.A., Gulf Coast Community College, Panama City, Florida.
 

Expertise and Research Interests: Technology and Society

I was introduced to the power of computers as a graduate student at Stanford in the early 1970s and made extensive use of computers for statistical data analysis for my dissertation. Since I purchased my first personal computer (a KayPro II) in 1982 I have been fascinated by the potential of computers to radically change the way we work and relate to each other.  In 1982 I had one of the very first personal computers in the Sudan and my use of computers and computer related technology in Sudan, the Philippines, Liberia, and South Africa has afforded me a unique perspective on the special challenges of trying to maintain hardware and to keep up to date with software developments while living in developing countries.   In 1995, while living in South Africa, I offered one of the first courses at Oregon State University delivered largely by email.  I team-taught with Maria Beebe a course on “World Food and the Cultural Implications of International Agricultural Development” to students in Bend Oregon, as part of a Distance Degree Program.  A major focus of research and teaching since becoming a Professor at Gonzaga has been the application of qualitative research to better understand issues related to technology and society especially "second generation" technology and society issues.  These include (a) understanding current trends in the development of technology with a special focus on the use of technology to facilitate education, (b) examining the impact of technology on the workplace with a focus on the use of technology to facilitate the creation of "learning organizations," (c) promoting the development of communities and e-governance with attention to virtual leadership and virtual teams, (d) using technology to address problems resulting from the information explosion, (e) exploring the historical relationship of technology to society, and (f) better defining technology related ethical issues such as the "digital divide" and "bogus empowerment."

In 1998 I proposed adding an elective course for students in the Doctoral Program in Leadership Studies dealing with Leadership and Technology.  I first taught the course in Spring 2000.  This course was selected by the editors of the Journal of Computer Enhanced Learning at the Wake Forest International Center for Computer Enhanced Learning (ICCEL) for inclusion in the “Gallery of Courses Taught with Technology.”   The gallery is “intended to give visibility to the uses of technology and their innovators, to promote sharing among professors, and to emphasize best practices.”  The course was further selected for the “Best Practice Honor Roll,” a designation “given to those vignettes that are judged most likely to be useful models for others.”  Based on the experience teaching the course in 2000, I revised Leadership and Technology and offered it again in the Spring of 2001.   This course was included in the list of university-level “Courses in Cyberculture”  prepared by the Resource Center for Cyberculture Studies at the University of Maryland.

In the summer of 2000 I was the recipient of a grant from the Global Technology Corps for travel to South Africa between August 10 and 24. The Global Technology Crops is a U.S. State Department sponsored public-private partnership that recruits high tech volunteers for short term public diplomacy project that are designed to facilitate partnerships between U. S. organizations and organizations overseas.  The partnership between the Doctoral Program in Leadership Studies at Gonzaga and the Ph.D. program of the School of Public Management and Administration of the University of Pretoria was only the third partnership between universities that had been approved by the program.  The activity in South Africa focused on strengthening the ability of the University of Pretoria to address leadership and technology issues and covered materials from the Leadership and Technology course.  Since then, a faculty colleague from the University of Pretoria and I have experimented with using a shared syllabus for courses we teach.

At Gonzaga University I developed and maintain the web site for the Doctoral Program in Leadership Studies and participate in an “early innovators” working group of faculty who use technology to enhance their teaching.  I was one of the early users of BlackBoard courseware.  Some of my courses with online syllabi include: Policy Analysis Summer 2001, Leadership and Technology Spring 2001, Qualitative Research: Theory and Design Summer 2001, Literature Review for the Dissertation Fall 2000, Proposal Seminar Fall 1999, Computer Analysis of Qualitative Data Summer 2000, Special Topics-Leading Change in Higher Education Fall 1998, Instrument Design Spring 1999.  I am currently participating in a Technology and Teaching Project funded by the Murdock Trust that involves Gonzaga University and Heritage College.

In 2000 I was the dissertation advisor/committee chair for Jan Strever who wrote her dissertation on “The Experience of First Year Online Composition Instruction: The Student Perspective.”  In 2001 I was the dissertation advisor for Matt Mitchel who wrotehis dissertation on "Exploring the Future of the Digital Divide through Ethnographic Futures Research." I am currently the dissertation committee chair for a student doing his dissertation on students’ perceptions of factors associated with quality of online college courses.
 

Expertise and Research Interests: Qualitative Research Methodology and Rapid Assessment Process (RAP)

When I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Philippines I quickly learned that I could not assume others assigned the same meanings to words that I assigned.  This was the beginning of my interest in anthropology. I started graduate work in Anthropology at the University of the Philippines but after two courses I knew that despite the useful tools anthropology offers, I wanted a graduate degree that would prepare me to be a practitioner-scholar as opposed to a traditional, academia-based scholar.  I then enrolled in the interdisciplinary Ph.D. program at the Stanford International Development Education Center (SIDEC).  While working on the Ph.D., I also completed a strong MA in anthropology, with the same number of credits in anthropology as required for their Ph.D. (and another MA from the Food Research Institute at Stanford, with a focus on international agricultural economics and world food policy).  My graduate work, including a year of fieldwork in a village in the Philippines provided me with expertise in qualitative research methodology.  Long-term assignments in Sudan, the Philippines, Liberia, and South Africa reinforced the need to pay attention to the meanings other attach to words especially when outsiders and insiders attempt to collaborate on the design of an intervention.  I knew that qualitative research could improve the collaboration process.  I also knew that often neither the time nor other resources are available for traditional approaches to this type of research and there was a need for a qualitative approach that can be done quickly.  Thus began my interest in rapid qualitative research methods such as Rapid Assessment Process (RAP).

My experience has convinced me that, in a relatively short time, a multidisciplinary research team, including insiders as well as outsiders can make significant progress toward understanding a problematic situation.  The approach is called Rapid Assessment Process (RAP) and is defined as intensive, team-based qualitative inquiry using triangulation, iterative data analysis and additional data collection to quickly develop a preliminary understanding of a situation from the insider's perspective. The defining characteristics of this qualitative approach are listening intently and helping others identify constraints that prevent them from solving their own problems.  My research has shown the relevance of RAP in situations as diverse as state farms in central and eastern Europe and community colleges in the United States. In July of 2001, AltaMira Press will publish my book Rapid Assessment Process:  An Introduction. The introduction and chapter one of the book are already online.

One of the courses I teach at Gonzaga is Qualitative Research: Theory and Design.  The course is designed to provide students with a thorough grounding in both the theory and practice of qualitative research.  The course makes extensive use of web based resources and provides students with an introduction to software for the analysis of qualitative data.  The course is included in the Nova Southeastern University's journal The Qualitative Report list of “Qualitative Research Online Syllabi”.

Expertise and Research Interests: Farming Systems Research

For much of my career with USAID I was involved with agricultural development and provided technical oversight to projects dealing with agricultural research, extension, agribusiness, and policy.  My initial work on rapid research methods involved agricultural research projects based on Farming Systems Research.  In addition to the work I did on rapid research methods, I also did research, made presentations, and published articles on Farming Systems Research focused on identifying the implications of variability for agricultural research and extension. At Oregon State University in 1991 I was part of a team that designed and taught an experimental research design course for agronomy graduate students that focused on the people involved in agronomy.  My article on the "Concept of the Average Farmer and Putting the Farmer First" (published in the Journal of Farming Systems Research-Extension, 1994) continues to generate interest.

Expertise and Research Interests: Leadership and Higher Education

I have more than 20 years of progressively responsible administrative experience including supervisory positions with USAID and program director/department chair responsibilities at Gonzaga.  During my career with USAID I developed an effective collaborative leadership style.  During my five years at Gonzaga University I have become familiar with conceptual models of leadership that have helped me refine my style and to adapt it to the specific requirements of an academic setting.  The approaches to leadership that I have found most relevant include “servant leadership” associated with Robert Greenfleaf, “adaptive leadership” associated with Ronald Heifetz (Leadership without Easy Answers), and the “fifth discipline” associated with Peter Senge (The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization).

In the Fall of 1998 I developed and taught a special topics course on Leading Change in Higher Education.  This course explored many of the topics that are most relevant to higher education including (a) diversity and affirmative action, (b) keeping higher education affordable while improving quality, (c) maintaining identity and mission of institutions while ensuring academic freedom, (d) balancing the roles of university administrators and boards of directors, (e) distance education, (f) for-profit higher education, (g) tenure, and (h) roles of college presidents.

A complex ethical issue faced by leaders that has particular fascination for me is decisions about what, when, and to whom information is released.  Sometimes the management of information results in deception and sometimes it does not.  I interviewed six leaders in higher education in the Spokane area about their experiences managing information.  They discussed situations involving personnel, students, budgets, or combinations of these factors and identified numerous rationales for their actions.  I wrote up the results of this research as a resource for my students and presented them at the international meeting of the Society for Applied Anthropology in Puerto Rico in April 1998.

It is obvious to me that the underlying attitudes associated with qualitative research, with special attention to intensive listening and sensitivity to the possibility that others are using similar words but with different meanings, are absolutely essential for leadership.  Now two of my students are working on a paper that argues that learning to do Rapid Assessment Process provides students with an opportunity to develop teamwork skills critical for leadership.

Career Details:  Gonzaga University:  Professor

Gonzaga University, founded in 1887, provides “humanistic, Catholic, and Jesuit education.”  The University has approximately 4,700 students.  Gonzaga is nationally recognized for academic excellence and is ranked as one of the five best comprehensive university in the Western United States.  The interdisciplinary Doctoral Program in Leadership Studies provides mid-career, working professionals the opportunity to develop personal, academic, and professional competency for expanded leadership roles.  Since the program was established in 1980, there have been more than 250 graduates.  There are five full-time faculty members and about 110 students in the program including students who are working on dissertations.

Professor August 1996-present
I have always wanted to teach and enjoy teaching. I especially enjoy developing courses and finding ways to improve the learning experience of my students.  I teach numerous courses that build upon my expertise and reflect my research interests.  For the past five years I have focused my Policy Analysis course on the issue of gender equity in higher education and have helped the students in this course develop a Gender Equity in Higher Education Resource Page.  My teaching consistently receives very high evaluations from my students.  I also serve as the advisor to students and have been the chair of dissertation committee for 13 students and have served on the dissertation committees of numerous other students.  I have provided opportunities for students to participate in research and presentations at professional conference such as the Society for Applied Anthropology and the Northwest Anthropological Association.

Career Details:  Gonzaga University: Program Director/Department Chair

August 1996-May 2000

The Doctoral Program in Leadership had a well-deserved reputation for quality and student service that was widely recognized before I arrived.  I was, however, very successful in facilitating numerous incremental changes that have helped make a strong program even stronger. I believe that my most important contribution to improving the quality of the Program was my success in doubling the number of students of color starting the program as well as increasing the overall diversity in the backgrounds of the students.  In addition to my role in improving diversity, I take special pride in my role in (a) better articulating the vision of the program, (b) stabilizing the number of students and credit generation,  (c) improving the academic quality of the Program, (d) adding a faculty member, and (e) changing the name of the degree and the administrative home of the program.

Career Details: USAID:  Foreign Service Officer

United States Agency for International Development (USAID)
USAID is an independent federal government agency within the U.S. State Department that conducts foreign assistance and humanitarian aid to advance the political and economic interests of the United States.

Foreign Service Officer July 1979-August 1996
During my career as a Foreign Service Officer with USAID I was involved with the administration of foreign assistance programs.  I spent most of my career with USAID in long term assignments in the Philippines, Sudan, Liberia, and South Africa and had a two year assignment to Oregon State University and a year and a half assignment in Washington DC.  My assignments with USAID were characterized by progressively more responsibility.  During my assignment to South Africa, I was the Director of the Office of Economic Development and supervised units responsible for housing, small-business development, and economic policy.  The Office of Economic Development was larger than most USAID country missions and at one point I supervised a staff of 22 and provided oversight for a project portfolio with USAID funding in excess of $370 million.  While working for USAID, I had extensive experience dealing cross-culturally, supervising a multi-national staff, negotiating with multiple levels of government, working collaboratively with the private sector, not-for profits and non-governmental organizations, managing budgets, strategic planning, responding to U.S. congressional issues, and dealing with both friendly and less-than friendly press. In earlier assignments I focused on activities dealing with agriculture and education but was also involved in projects dealing with energy, appropriate technology, and transportation.  I worked on USDA and World Bank activities dealing with the privatization of state farms in Poland and Romania.  In 1996 I retired from USAID in order to return to higher education.
 

International Experience

Twenty years experience living and working outside the United States as a Peace Corps Volunteer, graduate student, researcher, U.S. Foreign Service Officer (United States Agency for International Development), and Global Technology Corps Volunteer.  Long-term assignments in the Philippines, Sudan, Liberia, and South Africa with short-term assignments in Egypt, Kenya, Sierra Leone, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Poland, Romania, Indonesia, and Thailand.

Selected Publications

Beebe, J. (2002). Basic concepts and techniques of Rapid Appraisal.  In J. McDonald (Ed.). The applied anthropology reader. (pp. 70-87). Boston: Allyn & Bacon/Longman.

Beebe, J. (2001). Rapid Assessment Process: An Introduction. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira.

Beebe, J. (2000). Rapid assessment and response: Sound methodology for producing timely responses.  International Journal of Drug Policy, 11, 29-32

Beebe, J. (1995). Basic concepts and techniques of rapid appraisal. Human Organization, 54(1), 42-51.

Beebe, J. (1994). The concept of the average farmer and putting the farmer first: The implications of variability for a farming systems approach to research and extension.  Journal of Farming Systems Research-Extension, 4(3), 1-16.

Personal Information
Family.  I am married to Maria Beebe who does international consulting focused on linking African universities.  She is the Program Advisor for the Knowledge Exchange Linkage Project.  We have two children, Ligaya who is a junior at Reed College in Portland and David who graduated from Wesleyan University (with a B.A. in dance) and is currently a computer consultant in Boston.
Hobbies. My other hobby in addition to computers is working on my house.  The house was build in 1912 and among other things I have built in benches to cover duct-work in the attic, installed a yard light, and worked with a carpenter to remodel the basement.
Political Involvement. I am active in Democratic Party activities in Spokane and have developed web sites for two candidates.
Unitarian Universalist Church.  I have found the beliefs of the Unitarian Universalists to be consistent with my own beliefs.  I have served on local church committees, taught religious education to grade-one and two children, and am currently considering whether I might in the future want to be a Unitarian Universalist minister.  I am currently taking classes in MA program in Pastoral Ministry at Gonzaga University.
Gonzaga Institute for Action Against Hate.  I have served on the Board of Directors of the Gonzaga Institute for Action Against Hate since it was established, developed the web site for the Institute (and for the Anne Frank exhibit sponsored by the Institute), and since the Fall of 2001 have served as the director of the Institute.

Contact Information:
Office:
Doctoral Program in Leadership Studies
Gonzaga University
502 E. Boone Ave.
Spokane, WA 99258
(509) 323 3484
fax (509) 323 5964

Home:
1249 S. Wall St.
Spokane WA 99204
(509) 456-2571
cell (509) 768 8312

last update:  December 21, 2001