University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service distinguished fellow Dr. Arvind Singhal will present the lecture “The Positive Deviance Approach: Solving Complex Problems from the Inside Out” as Hendrix College’s 2018 Mellon Scholar, on Thursday, October 4.
The event is set for Lecture Hall B of the Mills Center for Social Sciences on the Hendrix campus in Conway, Ark. The lecture begins at 4:15 p.m., with a reception to follow.
Singhal, a renowned communication and social change scholar from the University of Texas El Paso (UTEP), has been a William J. Clinton Distinguished Fellow at the Clinton School since 2009. An endowed professor of communication and director of research and outreach for the Sam Donaldson Center for Communication Studies at UTEP, Singhal teaches Dynamics of Social Change, a required course dealing with the elements of social change in a democratic society.
Singhal’s research has been supported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the U.N. Joint Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), UNICEF and others. He has served as an advisor to the World Bank, the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization, UNICEF, the U.N. Development Program, UNAIDS, the U.S. Department of State; USAID, Family Health International, Save the Children, the BBC World Service Trust and others.
Positive Deviance (PD) is a novel approach to individual, organizational, and social change based on the observation that in every community there exist certain individuals or groups whose uncommon behaviors and strategies enable them to find better solutions to problems than their peers, while having access to the same resources and facing worse challenges.
A leading scholar of the PD approach, Singhal has taught courses and implemented workshops on the positive deviance approach for educators, health practitioners, government officials, and business leaders in some 40 countries of Americas, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
He has written nearly 200 peer-reviewed essays in leading journals of communication, public health, and social change, and written or edited 13 books, including Inspiring Change and Saving Lives: The Positive Deviance Way (2014); Health Communication in the 21st Century (2014); Inviting Everyone: Healing Healthcare through Positive Deviance (2010); and Protecting Children from Exploitation and Trafficking: Using the Positive Deviance Approach (2009).
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