Winter 2003 Feature

Brown Foundation Awards PMC $3 Million Challenge

[ return to Brown Foundation Challenge page ]

Building and Expanding Our Learning Community

Support for Learning

We recognize the need to maintain and strengthen the support services available to our students as we rely on a holistic approach to education. We are therefore challenged to expand funding for increasingly electronic library services; for our highly successful Brown Learning Resource Center, where students with diverse learning styles turn for one-on-one assistance to improve course work and academic skills; for up to date learning technologies; for our abundantly used Health and Wellness Center which provides intervention, education, and referral for the myriad of health and wellness issues facing our young women today.

Community Partnerships

Students, faculty, and staff recognize that significant learning takes place outside of the classroom and that the College should serve as a resource for the wider community. One of the most successful new programs, the Community Healthcare Outreach Program, has forged strong relationships with many community health partners who assist in providing teaching assistance, internship placements, and community service opportunities. Community-based research methodology has been infused into existing Psychology and Social and Political Systems courses. Students trained in the new methods have worked closely with service providers, agencies, and consumers of health services. The program has received grants from the Massachusetts Campus Compact, the Petersmeyer Foundation, and the Corporation for National Service.

Student Athlete Leadership

The College strives to provide enriching opportunities for students in intercollegiate athletics and recreational and fitness programs. Several grants to conduct leadership training and self-confidence programs have helped integrate ilsr principles. Each year a community service project is required from each team. Team members usually conduct clinics and provide mentoring and one-on-one coaching in local junior and senior high schools. Students contact the school systems themselves, make all the arrangements, and run the clinics, with the coaching staff serving as resources.

Leadership Scholars

The College awards a number of Margaret Elkins ’42 Leadership scholarships for incoming students who have clearly demonstrated the qualities of compassion, common good thinking, and social responsibility. The scholarships are renewable for four years if the recipient maintains satisfactory academic standing and documents involvement in the Pine Manor community to promote the growth of inclusive leadership and social responsibility. We now have more applicants for leadership scholarships than we have scholarships to award. We are working to build a more structured program for our Leadership Scholars.

Faculty Support

To allow the faculty to continue their creative approach to the curriculum, support is needed for more interdisciplinary/team teaching; building teaching-learning partnerships with community groups; integrating community service components into existing courses; creating new courses and reconstructing approaches to existing ones. PMC is asking faculty who are among the lowest paid in the state to work harder than faculty at many comparable institutions. Funds are necessary to support the College’s commitment to raise salaries to at least the 50th percentile compared to institutions nationally.

ilsr: Center for Inclusive Leadership and Social Responsibility

The Center was created to be a resource for the entire campus, serving as the umbrella organization for generating relevant inclusive leadership and social responsibility partnerships with the wider community. Its mission is to foster leadership that is inclusive of all people and styles and is directed toward a common good. The Center seeks to promote new models of leadership for both women and men, to facilitate the participation of women in leadership and organizational change, to build community partnerships, and to introduce the concepts of ilsr beyond the bounds of the campus.

Despite budget constraints that have limited the Center’s scope, the programs offered have successfully introduced young women to new ways of thinking about their futures and about leadership, especially since students serve as coordinators and counselors and acquire valuable experience in organization, mentoring ilsr principles.

Plans for the future include a strengthening of the existing youth outreach component with an emphasis on creating more partnerships with those who can both benefit from and contribute to the outreach work; the implementation of a more focused approach to faculty and curriculum development and the development of an in-service program; and an intensification of the collection and analysis of data on the work being done as well as the sharing of results with other educators, the business community, and community practitioners.

Current Programs

• Leaders in Residence
The new program brings exceptional individuals to campus for one or two semesters to share their experiences and research on topics relevant to ilsr, such as the principles of collaboration, the model of flattened organizations, common good thinking, and creativity in diverse communities. Participants have included an African-American attorney who was on leave from the Mississippi College of Law; an African-American sociologist; and a Japanese artist who exhibited a collection of her paintings and discussed her artwork and creative process. We hope to expand this program.

• Leadership Weekends for High School Girls
Students from high schools across the country spend a weekend on campus attending workshops and lectures and participating in a series of exercises and discussions designed to build self-confidence, self-reliance, and teamwork. To date more than 400 young women have attended.

• Cross-Cultural Summer Leadership Camp
A residential two-week program for girls 12-15 drawn from the US and from PMC’s educational partner in Japan, the Tokyo/Jogakkan School, which is interested in adopting ilsr as its educational theme. Campers participate in a myriad of activities, build solid relationships, and hone their skills and abilities. They learn of each others’ cultures and traditions as they participate in workshops and activities that stress interactive and experiential learning strategies for personal growth and development. Campers also work with the Massachusetts Department of Parks and Recreation to help clean and restore historic sites, allowing them to learn social responsibility first hand while giving back to the community. With support we will launch two two-week sessions in summer 2003.

• Leadership Awards for ilsr
The Pine Manor College Award for Inclusive Leadership and Social Responsibility is given to individuals whose lives exemplify the principles of collaboration, creativity, and involvement in the promotion of the well being of others, particularly women and children. Nominations for the award generally come from alumnae who seek to recognize individuals in their geographic areas who have made a difference. Recent recipients include:

Wendy Kopp, founder and president of Teach for America; Mavis Nicholson Leno, chair of the Campaign for Afghan Women and Girls for the Feminist Majority Foundation; Wilhelmina Cole Holladay, founder and chair of the board of the National Museum of Women in the Arts; Iris Burnett and Nell Merlino, co-founders of Count-Me-In for Women’s Economic Independence; Attorney Kathy Checchi, president of the Trusteeship and board member of LA’s Best; Alison Winter, Chair of the LA Chamber of Commerce; Jeanne Wolf, TV and print journalist and editor-at-large at Redbook; the Honorable Juliette Claggett McClennan, former US representative to the UN Commission on the Status of Women; Lynn M. Martin, former secretary of the US Department of Labor and former congresswoman for Illinois; and Shelley Looney, US Olympic Women’s Ice Hockey Gold Medalist.