May 10 2010
The Ph.D. in Leadership Studies, Gonzaga University, Conferred Saturday, May 8, 2010
It is with gratitude, joy, and delight that I cross this academic “finish line.” Though the learning process never stops, this academic achievement, I think, does mark the conclusion of my formal academic endeavors.
I am grateful for those who have supported me beginning with the decision to matriculate at Gonzaga University in the summer of 2004. There were many who played a major role in keeping me on this long and often arduous path especially when I wanted to be released from this doctoral pursuit. Thanks for your unrelenting commitment to my own growth.
Most of all, it is my hope that my research and findings will find their way into the lives of those men and women for whom I wrote and to whom I have dedicated my research: organizational leaders who have experienced the psychological trauma of involuntary termination and wonder if there is any possible way to believe that good may one day emerge from the ashes.
Indeed, good shall arise again. Indeed, when the insights have been teased-out from the pain and the wisdom gleaned from the wounds of failure and human finitude, you shall see with new eyes. And these eyes that see with tempered vision will be the eyes of a leader!
Jeffrey D. Yergler, Ph.D.