Muriel Shockley, PhD

Core Faculty

Prior to her appointment as program director, Muriel E. Shockley was a long-time faculty member in Goddard’s Undergraduate Program. She has served the College in a variety of roles over the years, including Progress Review Group chair, Third Century Plan chair, Collective Bargaining Team member, and president of the Faculty Union. She is a licensed psychotherapist, and mediator with deep experience working with community collaborations addressing issues of service and access to diverse populations. An accomplished grant writer since 1998, Muriel  brought more than $600,000 in research grants to her affiliated institutions. She was co-director of the Multicultural Access & Treatment Demonstration Project, a multi-year research grant aimed at creating a best practices model of multicultural mental health service delivery funded by the California Endowment.

Education

PhD in Leadership and Change, Antioch University
MA
in Clinical Psychology, Antioch University
BA in Economics, Smith College

Personal Statement

I was born a teacher and a student and have come to know organically that learning is an act of liberation and teaching an act of love. I believe learning is both emancipatory and subversive. Since 1987 my work as a clinician, educator, consultant, researcher and social justice activist has centered on issues that illuminate the impact of the intersection of gender, race and class and sexual orientation on the individual, on organizations, on communities and on academic institutions. My lived experience as a woman of color, a multicultural feminist educator and social justice activist informs my conviction that education is the practice of freedom. In this paradigm both teacher/learner and learner/ teacher are social change agents, digesting and interrogating existing bodies of knowledge while making new meaning, challenging hegemonic knowledge production and contributing to a more just world by translating thought into progressive action. This requires an engaged and transformative pedagogy that is rooted in relationship, authenticity, risk-taking, curiosity, courage, dialogue, disciplinary border-crossing, intellectual rigor, intentionality, emotional connectivity and critical reflection. I believe the relationship between student and teacher is central to the process of learning—I am as influenced by my students as they are influenced by me. Teaching allows me to continue to articulate and explore the complexities of change and identity, while learning from and marveling at the intricate lives of my students. Who are you? What do you believe? Why do you believe what you believe? How do the multiplicities of your identity impact your ability to be a learner, a friend, a social change agent? How have you been co-opted? How do you learn and change? How are you silenced or do you silence others? How do you resist? These are the questions I continue to ask my students and myself. I am a twenty year activist in the ending violence against women movement and a principal in a consultancy supporting social change organizations in program design, implementation, evaluation and training. I also am a licensed psychotherapist, and have extensive experience working in community based mental health organizations.  I have been a faculty member in the Masters in Clinical Psychology Program at Antioch University, teaching courses including Multicultural Psychology and Feminist Theory. Finally my personal and professional foci remain rooted in my deep conviction that as individuals and as a global community we must seek wholeness through deconstruction, seek understanding through crisis, seek completion through contact, and seek justice through action . . . peace out.

Muriel.Shockley@goddard.edu

Affiliation BA Health Arts & Sciences
BA Sustainability
BFA Creative Writing
BFA Socially Engaged Art
Individualized Bachelor of Arts
Undergraduate Studies Program

Location Plainfield, Vermont