As the strategic planning work of our University Planning Commission gets underway in earnest, I find myself returning to a question that I frequently ask of projects large and small, those underway and still on the drawing board:
What can we at Wittenberg do better than the colleges and universities with which we compete?
If Wittenberg is to have a secure place in the twenty-first century higher education firmament, it should be because there are some learning outcomes, some student experiences, some academic and co-curricular programs, some ways of teaching and learning, that are particularly well suited to our size and mission.
My wife Jody and I have a 14-year-old daughter who is just at that point in life when she is starting to recognize the implicit hierarchies in the world around her, the unspoken and differential expectations for young women and young men. Watching her enter adulthood has prompted me to ask if one of these areas of advantage for Wittenberg should be the nurturing and growth of leadership skills in women.
Indeed, the scale of our university provides opportunities for a remarkably large percentage of our women students to lead their peers on the field and the court, in the classroom, in our residence halls, and in our student organizations. And the care with which we as faculty and coaches and staff speak of the women leaders among us, and how we describe the potential of women to take on these roles in the future, helps to shape -- or undermine -- the effect of those experiences.
I guess this is less a reflection than a call to action: developing women leaders should be an area of strength for us. We have the pieces in place: Wittenberg provides students so many opportunities to be out in front, low stakes chances to try to articulate a vision for a group of peers, to manage interpersonal dynamics, to captain a team, and to be responsible for seeing a task or project through to implementation. And with the leadership programming that Jon Duraj, associate dean of students, and Michelle Gafford, former area coordinator, and their peers have developed, we already have a strong foundation in our co-curriculum. Finally, among our alumnae we can find example after example of graduates who have taken their Wittenberg education and experience into leadership roles at every level in our society and around the world.
As another academic year comes to an end, let's celebrate the good work that is happening now to prepare women leaders on our campus, even as we challenge ourselves to further this work with greater focus and resolve in the years to come.
