Alma G Blount, Lecturer in Public Policy and Co-director, Hart Leadership Program  

Office Location: 104 Sanford Building
Office Phone: (919) 613-7323
Duke Box: 90248
Email Address: blt@duke.edu

Areas of Expertise

  • Education
    • Experiential Learning
    • Research/Service Learning
  • Leadership, Ethics, and Public Service

Education:
Masters of Divinity, Harvard University, 1993
B.A., University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, 1980

Research Categories: Civic and political participation; pedagogy assessment

Office Hours:
By appointment

Representative Publications   (More Publications)

  1. A.G. Blount. Courage for the Tough Questions: Leadership and Adaptive Learning. From Command to Community: A New Approach to Leadership Education in Colleges and Universities. Edited by Nicholas V. Longo and Cynthia M. Gibson. Tufts University Press, May, 2011.  [abs]
  2. A.G. Blount. "Critical Reflection for Public Life: How Reflective Practice Helps Students Become Politically Engaged." Journal of Political Science Education Vo. 2.3 (Fall, 2006).  [author's comments]
  3. Parker J. Palmer, Arthur Zajonc with Megan Scribner. "Experiments in Integrative Education--Appendices: Course Syllabi and Pedagogy Overview." The Heart of Higher Education: A Call to Renewal--Transforming the Academy Through Collegial Conversations Jossey-Bass. (2010).  [author's comments]
  4. A.G. Blount. "Critical Reflection and Public Life: A Pedagogy for Teaching Undergraduate Students about Leadership." The Journal of Sookmyung Global Leadership No. 5 (June, 2007): 65-84.
  5. A.G. Blount. "Transforming Lives: Service Opportunities in Leadership." Duke University Libraries (Winter, 2000).
  6. A.G. Blount. "Adaptive Interdependence." Duke Magazine 95.3 (June, 2009). [html]
  7. A.G. Blount. How Does a Campus Link the Curriculum and Co-Curriculum for Civic Engagement. Democracy and Civic Engagement.  Fall, 2005. (a monograph published by the New York Times and the American Democracy Project, American Association of State Colleges and Universities)
  8. A.G. Blount. "Speaking for Ourselves (article in collection)." Pantheon Books. (1984).

Bio/Profile
Alma Blount became the director of the Hart Leadership Program in 2001, and has served as co-director with Tony Brown since 2011. Since 1997 she has also been director of Service Opportunities in Leadership (SOL), a leadership mentoring initiative for undergraduates. As a lecturer in Public Policy, she teaches courses about civic and political participation, problem solving work in organizations and institutions, and adaptive leadership. She has taught public policy at Duke since 1994.

Blount has been a consultant for numerous non-profit and public sector groups across North Carolina on issues of organizational development and project design. In the 1990s she served as a strategic planning coach for 13 North Carolina counties participating in Governor Hunt's Smart Start Program, which worked to improve early childhood education and access to resources for families and children.

In the 1980s she managed programs for international, faith-based, human-rights organizations in the United States and Central America. She has organized and led numerous delegations from the U.S. on educational trips to Nicaragua and El Salvador. Her strong interest in Latino politics and culture grew out of her work with migrant farm workers in eastern North Carolina in the 1970s. She was an original staff member of The Independent newspaper in Durham, N.C.

She has a Masters of Divinity Degree from Harvard University and a B.A. in Journalism from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Alma G Blount