On July 1st, 2010, Lisa Schmidt joined the staff of The Xenia Institute as its director of community of engagement.  We are extremely excited about Lisa’s appointment and the work she will do to help Xenia connect various segments of our community.

Lisa Schmidt is a doctoral candidate in adult and higher education at the University of Oklahoma with more than thirty years of higher education administration and university teaching experience. She is currently serving her fourth term on the Norman Human Rights Commission and is an active and engaged member of St. Thomas More University Parish. Her dissertation topic is academic service-learning, exploring how engaging in deliberate, meaningful and reflective service as an undergraduate might impact professional commitment as well as degree completion, especially among women in engineering and science. As Director of Community Engagement, Lisa is responsible for identifying and developing ways for Xenia to be involved in addressing critical community issues through dialogue, partnerships, and public events.  Of particular interest to her are issues related to social and economic justice and inclusiveness.  She is a Norman native and her doctorate will be her third degree from the University of Oklahoma.

In addition to her work in the field, Lisa will also be contributing regular blog posts on community engagement and civic participation to The Xenia Institute’s Web site and to Dialogic, the online magazine of The Xenia Institute.

In our summer discussion surrounding the book Soul of a Citizen: Living With Conviction in Challenging Times (by Paul Rogat Loeb), we have found the author’s postscript, called The Ten Suggestions to be extremely poignant.  Loeb refers to them as the “Ten Commandments” for effective citizen engagement, and we’ve spent a great deal of time working through them and with them.  Today I want to share our work on Suggestion #6: Unlikely Alliances: Seek out unlikely alliances.  The more you widen the circle, the more you’ll have a chance of breaking through the entrenched barriers to change.

In our meeting two weeks ago, we made our own list of suggestions on how to engage unlikely allies.  Please feel free to comment, add items to the list, or share stories of unlikely alliances you have witnessed or participated in.

7 Suggestions on Engaging Unlikely Allies

1. Ask open-ended questions; true listening means making an effort to engage and understand your potential ally without introducing your own biases, preconceived notions, or suppositions.

2. Seek ways to come together around something specific.  Don’t focus on your differences, but on your shared willingness to achieve a goal or complete a project.  If you are deflected by the things you disagree on, the work suffers.

3. Be approachable.  At the institute, we call this “speaking in a way that you can be listened to.”  Welcome your potential ally in the spirit of humility and hospitality.

4. Know your potential ally and what he or she needs or wants most in the potential alliance.  This is not to breed coercion but to allow you to think like your ally and provide the foundation for a partnership based in mutual benefit and work for a common goal.

5. Be willing to embrace a “what if” moment.  As yourself these questions: “What if we were able to put aside our differences and work for something greater than either of us or our organizations?”  ”What if this could actually work, even though we have been told time and again that a project like this based in an alliance like this is doomed to fail?”

6. Create a narrative that both parties are comfortable with that tells the story of why you allied with each other and how you plan to meet your shared goal.  Personal stories of this nature are very powerful and can inspire others to seek unlikely alliances.

7. Trust your instincts.  If you see the potential for an unlikely alliance, and the only thing telling you to go through with it is your gut, DO IT!

In a unanimous decision at its July 12th meeting, The Xenia Institute’s Board of Trustees voted to approve the nomination of Dr. Vicki Schaeffer to the board.  Dr. Schaeffer’s experience in public and private education, her interest in dialogue and communication, and her desire to help forward Xenia’s mission make her a perfect addition to the board.

Dr. Vicki Schaeffer

Dr. Vicki J. Schaeffer, a native of Salem, Ohio, is currently Director of Recruitment for the McClendon Honors College and an adjunct Assistant Professor for the College of Liberal Studies at the University of Oklahoma. She received a Doctor of Music Degree from Indiana University-Bloomington, with a double major in organ performance and church music. She also holds degrees from Mount Union College and Kent State University.

A church organist since the age of 15, currently serving as organist at First Christian Church in Oklahoma City while maintaining an active recital and workshop schedule, Dr. Schaeffer has spent the majority of her career in education, having held teaching positions in Ohio, Hawaii, and Oklahoma. Serving both public and private institutions as well as universities has laid the foundation for her belief in the Xenia mission. She has seen first hand how building relationships through listening and dialogue can help to transform lives.

Dr. Schaeffer’s first official responsibility as a member of the board of trustees will be participation in the board’s upcoming retreat on fundraising strategy.

Friends of Xenia,

It’s our pleasure today to introduce that we’re accepting applications for our Fall 2010 class of Dialogue Fellows. The fellows program is integral to the work of Xenia and represents our most lasting contribution to the life and well being of our community. Dialogue Fellows will participate in four training sessions over the course of the fall that will focus on tools and skills of dialogue, conflict resolution, and deep, meaningful communication.

For more information on our program and its benefits, take a look at our Xenia Dialogue Fellows Information sheet.  If you are interested in applying for the program, please download our Fall 2010 Fellows Application, fill it out and email it as directed on the application.  Preference will be given to those who respond by July 1st, 2010.

We look forward to hearing from you as we prepare for this exciting program!

Hello friends of Xenia,

Well, it’s summer again, and this year we’re trying something new.  Even though summer is usually more of a down time for us, a time when we work on ideas for our dialogue sessions, public events, and series for the website, we’ve decided to offer a couple of summer programs this year.

First, we’ll be offering an event series this summer for our existing dialogue fellows.  We’re going to treat it like Phase II of our traditional dialogue series, which means we’ll be looking at an issue area from several different angles.  After talking it over with our dialogue fellows, it was decided that the issue area we would most like to study is water.  So in five sessions this summer, we’ll be looking at the natural water cycle, problems with water usage and conflict, water issues in Oklahoma, and water issues in Norman.  At each session, we’ll have an expert on the topic who can help us dig deeper into various questions and ideas.  We’ll also be holding some sort of concluding event to talk about ways we can get involved locally.

What excites me most about this series is that we’ll be treating it like a prototype for future Phase II dialogue units.  The summer session will give us an opportunity to examine what works, what doesn’t, and how we can be most effective in learning about an issue area.  The dialogue fellows and other participants have agreed to help me in assessing the program and determining its strengths and weaknesses.

Also this summer, our third phase dialogue fellows will be participating in a book study.  We have chosen a seminal work on community engagement and volunteerism to study, Paul Rogat Loeb’s Soul of a Citizen: Living With Conviction in Challenging Times.  This book takes a look at activists and community volunteers through the last century and talks about volunteerism and civic engagement as a extension of good character and sound principles.  It is our hope that this study will guide our conversations on what Xenia’s civic engagement and community participation will look like in the coming year.  Some members of Xenia’s board and staff will be participating in the study as well, so I look forward to some great dialogue.

As always, you can keep up with our topics, discussion, and thoughts from our dialogue fellows on Dialogic, Xenia’s online magazine.  I look forward to reporting great things from our summer activities and wish you all a great period of recreation and relaxation.

Clint

Last week, I talked with Michael Palermo, Xenia’s Newest Board Member and owner of Michelangelo’s Coffee and Wine Bar, about his life, his work in Norman, and his interest in Xenia and dialogue.  Enjoy!

Clint Williams: So how did you end up in Norman?

Michael Palermo: I was living in Denver, and I married my wife Paula, who was living in Oklahoma at the time.  Originally, we thought she would move to Denver and find a job in the school system there, but nothing was coming open, and we decided to take a look at Norman.  Both my kids went to OU, and my wife’s two kids live here now, so we were both familiar with the town and liked it.  It was a perfect fit for us.

CW: What were you doing in Denver?

MP: I owned another coffee and wine bar.  It was almost exactly the same as this one.  It was even called Michelangelo’s.  Owning a restaurant has been a lifelong dream of mine.  In 1969, I set out to own a restaurant with my dad.  We had everything planned, right down to the menu.  But not long after that, my dad was diagnosed with leukemia and died very quickly.  Then my children came along, so I started selling real estate and continued in that business for 30 years.

CW: And that was in Denver?

MP: No, in Houston.  After my real estate career, I moved to Denver and opened my first Michelangelo’s there.  That was 2005.

CW: You’ve only been in Norman for a year or so.  What do you like most about it?

MP: I’ve only lived here about that long, but I’ve been coming to Norman since 1988.  My son was a cheerleader and on the rugby team, so I’ve been to a lot of OU sports events.  But even the first time I pulled into town, I knew I would really like living here, living in a town this size.  Coming from Houston and Denver, it’s nice to have a more laid-back atmosphere.

CW: One of things I like about coming into your coffee shop is that you know the name of everybody who comes in here.  You really seem to enjoy people and quality customer service.

MP: I think that’s one of the things I picked up from having parents who always owned their own businesses.  Often times, our customers have a real sense of ownership of this place.  It’s their coffee shop.  And they like seeing the owner in here interacting with the customers.  My parents owned a grocery store when I was a kid, and people took satisfaction and comfort in the fact that they were going to be in the store every time the doors were open.  Being an independent business, you have to offer people more than just a place to come buy a product.  That’s really key.

CW: I see a lot of connection between the kind of service you provide and some of the fundamental things we examine at Xenia.

MP: Yeah, I see Xenia almost like an art form.  You help people learn to express themselves, and communication and learning a shared vocabulary is so important in expression, and what is art if not expression?  Is that about right?

CW: Absolutely.  I would just add that we also teach ways to appreciate the expressions that others bring to the table.  That’s the other piece.

MP: Of course.  That’s one of the things I appreciate about Xenia most.

CW: And when we first met, when I first started talking to you about the institute, what held your interest enough to consider joining the board?

MP: First of all, I saw this as a great opportunity to get involved with a non-profit organization.  I’ve worked in various ways with non-profits before, but nothing like what I do with you now.  I was really excited to be asked to be in the leadership.  I also really admire your courage in working for the common good instead of selling a product or something like that.  Raising your own budget through grants and private contributions is not an easy thing to do.

CW: Is there any Xenia program or service that you particularly like?

MP: What I like most is that you get people from diverse backgrounds to come together in a safe environment, one in which they can share meaningful, important things with each other.  If you take two people from different backgrounds and put them together in the way Xenia does, there is enormous potential for them to gain something from each other and grow.

CW: And there’s the possibility to teach people to talk about issues without getting so mad at each other.  We also try to prevent people from going into the situation feeling like they already know what the other side is going to say.  We get to know the issue by getting to know the people who care about the issue…both sides.  We meet routinely on the issue and we insist on civil conversation, if for no other reason than to demonstrate that it’s actually possible.

MP: And that’s the kind of work that I honestly feel will change the way we think about issues and the way that we treat each other.

CW: Michael, thanks so much for your time today.  It’s great to have you on the board, and I look forward to getting to know you better as we go along.

MP: You’re very welcome.  I had a great time.

Today we offer the second of two interviews with Brenda Wheelock and Mary Francis, the organizers of Pennies for Peace Oklahoma.  In this interview they sum up their experience organizing the state-wide campaign that raised over $18,000 toward building schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Pennies for Peace-interview 2

Greg Mortenson with children from schools across Oklahoma

Today we release the first of two interviews with Mary Francis and Brenda Wheelock, organizers of the Oklahoma Pennies for Peace campaign.

Mary Francis (left), Greg Mortenson, and Brenda Wheelock (right)

This campaign was organized to coincide with a visit from Greg Mortenson, author of Three Cups of Tea and founder of Pennies for Peace, to the campus of the University of Oklahoma.  In this interview, Francis and Wheelock discuss the beginnings of their statewide initiative.

Pennies for Peace-interview 1

Tonight we release photos from our April 9th website and online magazine premiere.  The entire gallery will soon be posted on our website, but for now visit the gallery on our facebook page here.

Today we release our second interview with Susan Sharp concerning her upcoming symposium on wrongful convictions.  In this interview, Sharp discusses her hope for this issue following the event, the complex elements of forensic science in court cases, and how this issue affects various segments of the community.

Susan Sharp interview-part 2