Earlham College, an independent, residential college, aspires to provide the highest quality undergraduate education in the liberal arts, including the sciences, shaped by the distinctive perspectives of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). Earlham emphasizes the pursuit of truth, lack of coercion, respect for others, openness to new truth, integrity and application of what is known to improving our world.
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Mon, 2012-01-02 11:58 | by grahajo
Leadership often begins with a tap on the shoulder.
Trayce Peterson ’82 ESR ’98 remembers the time when her hall director at Earlham suggested that she would make a good hall convener (now known as Resident Assistants or R.A.s).
“I hadn’t seen myself in that role before, but once I was encouraged to try, I realized that I was pretty good at it,” says Peterson. “That set me on my path.”
Peterson, Earlham’s director of multicultural affairs, says that personal mentoring is key. The kind of encouragement that she received 30 years ago remains at the core of the College’s work to cultivate student leadership.
“I think we are in the business of helping students to recognize that they have the capacity and ability to offer leadership,” says Peterson. “The key is often that call-out, saying to the student, ‘I think you can do this.’”
Peterson, who has previously served Earlham as Director of Campus Ministry and Associate Director of the Newlin Center for Quaker Thought and Practice, believes that helping students discover ways to lead is central to her ministry on campus.
“I try to get students to explore their gifts as leaders, whether or not every project they take on turns out as they would like it to,” she says. “It should be about the process as well as the final product.”
“This is especially true right now, because we have a generation of students who are used to things happening instantaneously, through technology,” says Peterson. “I personally love all the technology that we have, but I sometimes worry that it can give students a false sense of how long it takes to achieve success.
“The people these students admire did not become successful instantaneously, and academic inquiry is not instantaneous either. The bottom line is that we need to encourage students to take responsibility for their own learning. If we do that, they are on a path to leadership.”
Conditions Are Right
Associate Professor of Education and Environmental Studies Jay Roberts suggests that there’s no better path to leadership than one that leads across a lake, up a mountain or maybe straight into your own backyard.
Roberts is one of the College’s leading advocates for a style of learning that he describes as “experiential” and “place based.” Many Earlhamites are familiar with this type of learning through August Wilderness, a 41-year-old program that takes brigades of first-year students mountain climbing in Utah or canoeing in Canada. But Roberts involves students in intensive, experiential learning in Richmond as well.
“I tell prospective students that if they want to have a hand in solving real problems both on-campus and in the community, come to Richmond. In terms of sustainability, they will find that this community is a learning laboratory with problems similar to those faced in larger cities. But the difference is, Richmond is small enough that the mayor may come to campus looking for a student to run a project.”
Roberts is Director of the Center for Environmental Action, a new initiative at the College that seeks to, “enhance the teaching and learning experience at Earlham in relation to environmental issues.” The center’s primary focus is on creating experiential and field-based learning opportunities on and off-campus, connecting the classroom with the community.
“Whether we are talking about a class project, a volunteer service site in Richmond, or an off campus program, we ask students to take on leadership in a collaborative way. This approach is closely related to Quakerism, which challenges traditional notions of leadership.
“We try to show that there are forms of leadership that can move a group forward together, without a single person being dominant, bold and decisive,” notes Roberts. “Students pick up on that, and Quaker approaches to leadership are core, foundational and seminal to what we do here.”
The Center for Environmental Action attempts to channel student passions into collaborative problem solving. Along the way, students gain skills and experience that prepare them to begin their careers, or seek advanced degrees, upon graduation.
Roberts points to a project led by Associate Professor of Computer Science Charlie Peck ’84 which built a monitoring system to measure energy use in campus buildings.
“Rather than buying a software package to accomplish our goals, we created a learning opportunity. Students built this system with faculty helping them along the way. For a learning institution, that’s the sweet spot,” says Roberts.
Leading Through Service
One of the best examples of Earlham’s efforts to encourage collaborative leadership is the Bonner Scholars Program, a service learning scholarship program in which 60 students a year receive partial tuition scholarships in exchange for a significant commitment to service work in the Richmond community and beyond.
Students are placed at local schools, government offices and social services agencies, where they must work an average of 10 hours per week during the school year. (Bonner Scholars also complete 280 hours of service each summer.) While students may begin with service work that simply follows the instructions of others, the goal is that Bonner Scholars will eventually emerge as leaders at their service sites — developing their own projects and perhaps training younger students to take their places.
“At first, some students simply see their service as a way to get off campus and have a break from their school work,” says Bonner Scholars Program Coordinator Jana Schroeder ’85. “So in my individual meetings with students, I’m always asking them to think about how they can take on more responsibility and asking them when they can take the lead on a particular project.”
Schroeder leads monthly meetings for the Bonner Scholars, which are intended to get students to reflect on the service experience and to make connections by their volunteer work and the things they are learning in class.
“I think that reflection is very important for students,” she says. “Some students are able to see connections between academics and service right away, but sometimes it takes a couple of years for things to coalesce. Not every student can immediately see how the various pieces are fitting together.” Schroeder thinks that the sort of support that the Bonner program provides — particularly the opportunity to talk through experiences with peers and meet with a mentor one-on-one — could be replicated elsewhere in the College.
“Service work allows students to see the different ways that leadership can play out. They can discover that sometimes asking the right question in meeting can move a process forward, and that’s leadership,” she notes. “Students need to remember that if they want to make a difference in the world, they need to embrace leadership and develop the skills it takes to lead.”
Preparing Leaders
Welling Hall is also interested in identifying potential leaders, but she is particularly focused on helping Earlhamites find leadership roles in our nation’s capitol.
Hall, professor of politics and Plowshares Professor of Peace Studies, is interested in providing students with the skills that will prepare them to assume leadership roles within the government.
“It seems to me that students who are interested in public policy should also be interested in governance,” says Hall, who spent her 2009-10 sabbatical year in Washington, D.C, working as an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow in the office Keith Ellison (D-Minn.).
“I know there are people who don’t want to get involved in politics because it can feel a little yucky, but if those of us who care about the issues don’t get involved in the government, we are ignoring very important tools for making the world a better place.”
Hall oversees Earlham’s Model United Nations program and teaches many courses that prepare students to work in government. The Model UN program hosts a large annual conference for local high school students, so in addition to giving Earlham students the opportunity to gain extensive knowledge of international affairs, the program also helps students learn to manage people and plan events.
She admits with some chagrin — but not surprise — that many students whom she grooms for leadership roles in Model UN are subsequently tapped to plan New Student Orientation or join student government.Since there are students on virtually all of the College’s standing committees, students gain opportunities to emerge as leaders not only among their peers, but also in groups of faculty and staff. These experiences in shared governance can be very helpful as students embark on their careers.
Hall says that she is impressed at how many of her students manage to balance their academics with a variety of leadership commitments.
“This is about learning by doing,” says Hall. “My goal is to help students gain skills and experience that will help push them into leadership roles after they graduate. The average age of staff members in congressional offices is about 27, and those young people can have a tremendous impact on how legislation is written. I think Earlham graduates could make a big difference in those roles."
—Jonathan Graham
Senior Editor, Public Affairs
This story was first published in the Winter 2012 issue of Earlhamite magazine.
