Barry Brownstein (Ph.D. Rutgers University) holds the CSX Chair in Leadership at the Merrick School of the University of Baltimore where he has taught since 1979.  He is known for his quality innovative teaching and has won numerous teaching awards. Both his teaching and research interests cut across economics and leadership.

He has authored numerous articles, as well as being the author or editor of three books. He has testified before the U.S. House of Representatives on nuclear power and was the founding editor of the University of Baltimore Business Review. His newest book The Inner-Work of Leadership: A Guide to Personal and Organizational Transformation was published in 2010 and is available at Amazon.

In 2002 along with his wife and then 7 year-old twins he began a multi-year project to climb all of the 48 peaks above 4000 ft. in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.  They completed their odyssey on Mt. Adams in August 2006. His blog Climbing the “48” tells the story.  Currently he keeps a blog Giving Up Control on economics, leadership and the inner-journey.

Teaching Philosophy:

“The master teacher creates a conversation for students to enter—a dialogue with great minds and their ideas—and then invites the students to join him by valuing their ponderings above his own.”—Arbinger Institute

“Who is responsible for what I have learned?... A teacher that each of us knows: the curious soul that resides deep within me, the river of inspiration and imagination that flows within. The greatest teachers in my life have been those who have awakened me to these internal currents and rumblings—those  who have brought me as it were to the water’s edge and inspired me to jump and be swept around the bend.”—Arbinger Institute

“If learning occurs as the student is led by the excitement and inspiration within him, my role as a teacher is to honor the gift and point the way as best as I know it.”—Arbinger Institute

“In times of change, learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.”—Eric Hoffer

“There is the puzzle of why some men and women go to seed, while others remain vital to the very end of their days. Going to seed may be too vague and expression. Perhaps I should say that many people, somewhere along the line, stop learning and growing.”—John Gardner

“The purpose of learning is growth, and our minds, unlike our bodies, can continue growing as we continue to live.”—Mortimer Adler

 “It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.”—Epictetus

“The world we have made, as a result of the level of thinking we have done so far creates problems we cannot solve at the same level which we created them.”—Albert Einstein

“The development of general ability for independent thinking and judgment should always be placed foremost.”—Albert Einstein

Genuine learning is a process. A student (and we are all students) needs a healthy respect for the simple fact that you can never understand anything completely. Alexander Pope pointed out the dangers in a failure to approach learning with an attitude of humility when he commented that: “some people will never learn anything for this reason: because they understand everything too soon.” 

The philosopher of science Karl Popper believed that there could be “no final knowledge only hypotheses which are supported for a time, then subsequently overturned by better but still necessarily inconclusive conjectures.” Popper believed we must be able to discover and correct our errors in order to progress. I believe in structuring courses so that they facilitate a process of students being able to engage in life-long independent thinking and being able to discover errors in their own mental models. Readings, assignments, lectures, group dialogue and web dialogue are all intended to facilitate this process.