Dr. Russell Korte

Dr. Korte studies the social, cultural, and political systems that influence how people learn and work in organizational settings. These studies focus on the socialization or onboarding of newcomers to organizations and provide insights into what and how they learn when joining new organizations. The majority of this work has been focused on the professional development of engineers—including the socialization of engineering students into their higher education programs and the socialization of engineering graduates into the workplace. Internationally, Korte has studied the socialization of engineers in the U.S., Mexico, and Taiwan. Recent studies have expanded this research program to include the socialization experiences of medical students, faculty, teachers, and entrepreneurs—specifically focused on how they learn the social, cultural, and political aspects of their professional work.

Dr. Korte worked as a scholar-practitioner combining the scholarship of human and organizational learning with his experiences of work in education, business and industry. He has published on topics ranging from socialization, workplace learning, organization studies, theory, social science, and philosophy. He also works on a variety of topics supporting his students’ work on decision-making, the meaning of work, and social connectedness in school and the workplace. For several years, he has been invited to give numerous presentations of his work around the world to faculty, students, managers, and aspiring professionals beginning their careers.

Prior to joining the faculty of the George Washington University, Korte was on the faculties of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Colorado State University. Recently, he was a visiting associate professor at National Taiwan Normal University in Taipei, Taiwan.