Name It, Claim It, Reframe It: Appreciative Inquiry and Indigenous Ways of Knowing with Dr. Denise Henning

Dr. Henning’s career in higher education spans nearly 25 years in both the United States and Canada, as well as serving as graduate faculty in New Zealand. She currently serves as the Director of the UNCW/3C Collaborative and is a professor of Community College Leadership and Higher Education at the University of North Carolina Wilmington’s, Watson College of Education. Born in Creek County Oklahoma, Denise is Cherokee & Mississippi Choctaw. As a committed educator, she believes in equity and inclusion, and shared leadership for administration in higher education. Her philosophy as a leader is based on building relationships through a collaborative and team-spirited approach, energizing people to think outward while focusing on the needs of every student and the organization. She has earned a reputation for cultivating and sustaining positive relationships, building collaborative teams, and energizing people in ways that foster their innovative spirit. She joins us to discuss her experiences using Appreciative Inquiry in higher education and with indigenous populations. In addition to her consulting group, Kiona-Oxendine & Associates, Denise is also a co-founder of Women Honoring Other Women, a nonprofit organization that aims to empower women and create change using strengths-based approaches for leadership development.

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS

• Denise shares how her dissertation, rather than studying problems to death, focused on success factors.
• Instead of asking what they can do to better serve their students, Denise encourages higher education leadership to look for what are they doing well right now, what is working, and what might their students look like at their best?
• She uses Appreciative Inquiry to create trust between educational institutions and remote rural indigenous communities.
• She shares stories from her work building bridges between indigenous populations and higher education institutions, focusing especially on dignity and the value of indigenous customs.
• At one particular engagement, the nature and success of the work completely changed when they invited the people they were serving into the room and into strategic planning discussions.
• She talks about the importance of appreciative language and the power she has to kindly disrupt the conversation and share the etymology of certain phrases that can often be carelessly thrown about.
• She shares how Appreciative Inquiry taught her that, for the most part, people want to do the right thing.
• An appreciative approach has had a meaningful impact on her ability to grandparent and when dealing with personal loss.
• Denise believes that when we make room for hearing and sharing stories, people feel significant and valued. This changes their encounters with institutions in which they traditionally felt marginalized.

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Learn more at appreciativeinquiry.champlain.edu.