And Retires After 50 Years of Teaching

There is a new award that was established this year by the Instructional Design Program and CAPS.  It is the Instructional Design DNA Award.  The Instructional Design DNA Award recipient is chosen because he or she is a faculty leader in changing the world through education, training and instructional design.  The passion and teaching talents run so deeply in such an individual, that the College of Advancing and Professional Studies and the ID community at UMass Boston now formally recognize educational excellence as part of this person’s DNA.  This year, Dr. Bill Braun was honored as the first recipient of this award.

Bill, a teacher for over 50 years and a faculty member of the Instructional Design Graduate Program since January of 1996, says “I am still learning.” He encourages his students to analyze their own paradigms and urges them to resist the tendency to absolutize one paradigm, theory or ideology.  Bill’s life is a tribute to challenging paradigms.  Raised in a Catholic family of six children, Bill joined three of his brothers and a sister in the military as World War II was ending.  After completing his undergraduate degree at Niagara University, he began graduate studies in philosophy at Catholic University in Washington, DC.  During that time films of the Nazi atrocities, the Holocaust, the burn victims of Nagasaki and Hiroshima were showing in the local theaters intensifying the conversation on savagery of war.  It was then he was drawn to the life of a religious community.  At 31, he became a priest, pursued his passion of teaching and began working toward his PhD.  He taught at numerous colleges, including the inner city of Washington D.C during the Civil Rights Movement, but it was when he became the Director of a seminary on the campus of Stonehill College that his “great experiment” began.

While the seminary residence was designed exclusively for male priests, Stonehill College had an overflow of students that needed housing.  Bill was asked to help, and the radical transformation of a self-contained male-only residence to an integrated living and learning community began.  In 1969, the first year of integration, twenty two women opted to move to the seminary campus.  When joining the living and learning community, all agreed to participate in a collaborative decision-making process.  This included attending a monthly house meeting where house governing decisions would be made, participating in a weekly small group training session, and assisting in the kitchen.   The small group sessions focused on communication skills that would enhance the living environment, such as finding one’s voice and conflict mediation.  Mixed-sex dormitories were controversial in the early 70s, but Bill found that this integration helped students overcome their biases; de-mystifying and humanizing the opposite sex in profound ways.  Bill oversaw this great experiment until 1980 and assisted other colleges in emulating his model.  By then, his theological paradigm had been challenged and he left the seminary and started a family with his wife, Linda.  Linda, who shared his passion for adult learning, obtained her PhD in Urban Leadership and directed the Adult Learning Center of Brockton, MA.  “Raising kids was the joy of my life.  I loved every stage of their development,” Bill recalls.

After leaving collegiate work, he became certified as an OD consultant.  Years later, he joined the UMass Instructional Design Program faculty in January of 1996 when he was asked by former Instructional Design Program Director, Canice McGarry, to teach Communications Theory for Organizations.  “I thought I might stay for a year or two,” Bill remembers.  Fifteen years later, he is still inspired by the talent he sees in his students.  “I am convinced that in order to grow, you cannot do it alone.  Dialogue and challenge help us to re-frame our perceptions and create new knowledge.  Communication is really relationship-building at its core.  We are all interdependent, we all seek intimacy and we are always communicating a message, even if we say nothing at all.”

Bill touched the lives of many students who wished to share their well-wishes for him upon learning of his retirement.  Below are the comments we received.  Please feel free to include yours in the comment section of our blog.

“What I will always remember about Bill was his gracious and mild manner, his quick wit and his wealth of knowledge.  Each week, I looked forward to his inspirational lectures and his ability to deliver thought-provoking material.  Through reflection and mutual exploration of the topic of communication, I was able to develop a deeper understanding of my own communication experiences and a heightened awareness of subjectivity and the interpretation of meaning in communication.  I am honored that I had the opportunity to learn from him and I wish him well in his retirement.”  ~Marion Galinos

“Bill has been a gentle and sincere voice within the Instructional Design program.  He was always excited to discuss ideas and brought often amusing and engaging anecdotes to reinforce learning and humanize the theory.” ~Lance Eaton

“My biggest takeaway from Bill’s class was the concept of context.  Bill brought to light the myriad of filters that we must seek to communicate through in supporting performance in the workplace.  Bill’s insight was thought provoking and encouraged students to critically examine issues and formulate their own perspective.” ~Lynda Stevens

“Bill gently and compassionately encourages his students to develop awareness of our own paradigms, many of which we inherited as a child.  With his guidance, I was able to nuance my ideas about making meaning and communication.  I am grateful to have had the opportunity to learn with him.” ~Jaclyn DeChiro

“Bill is a true scholar, and his fascination with communication theory is contagious.  I had virtually no interest in the subject at the beginning of the course, but his class made me savor the nuances of communication theory.  He is also a very kind and dedicated teacher who takes the time to nurture and learn from every single student.  The class was a wonderful learning experience in all respects.” ~Marilyn Shapleigh