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2007 Summer Leadership Institute group asks: "Who will Mother Earth?"
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Through the 2007 Summer Leadership Institute (SLI), a group of twelve students plus their faculty and trustee sponsors traveled to Washington and Oregon, from July 28 to August 3, 2007, for a week of intensive study. Traveling to the Pacific Northwest region gave students a chance to analyze the concept of environmental sustainability from cultural, historical, environmental, and business perspectives in native versus urban populations.
“This year’s Institute was designed to be an interdisciplinary examination of the influence of different cultures -- European, Asian, and Native Peoples -- in the Pacific Northwest and of the conflict between maintaining natural resources and the encroaching reality of urbanization,” said Wesleyan Associate Professor of Biology Holly Boettger-Tong, one of three faculty sponsors for the 2007 trip. Professors Libby Bailey and Shelley Martin also facilitated.
The 2007 SLI curriculum included pre-trip required reading to prepare the students for an intense itinerary of tours, speakers, and activities. The students visited one of the few remaining temperate rainforests and met with representatives from the Quinault Nation to learn more about their mechanisms for sustaining “Mother Earth” while maintaining a population in excess of six thousand members. Then they traveled to Portland, a city developed in what once was a temperate rainforest. There they were able to explore solutions for sustainability that are being implemented in an urban community of more than six hundred thousand people.
While in Portland, the group compared urban and Native culture and discovered all three influences within it: European, Native-American, and Asian. “Psychological issues related to women as leaders and the social and cultural roles of women in Native communities and in American majority culture were also examined,” said Assistant Professor of Psychology Shelley Martin. “Psychological issues related to sustainability and the communal rather than individual use of resources were addressed, also.”
Throughout the week, participants created their own artistic representations of these locales using watercolor and photography. Portland-area alumnae and President Ruth Knox were involved in other fun activities.
The Portland SLI marks the eighth annual trip since the Wesleyan College Leadership Institute was formed by Wesleyan alumnae trustees Diane A. Lumpkin ’63, Alexis Xides Bighley ’67, and Lynda Brinks Pfeiffer ’63 in 2000. Trustee and Alumna Judy Woodward Gregory ’63 also helped plan the 2007 trip along with the institute’s co-founders, and the 2007 faculty sponsors.
The first SLI took place in Denver and Breckinridge, Colorado, where attendees also studied urban strategic planning, particularly the successful revitalization of downtown Denver. The second SLI, held in 2001 in Seattle, focused on genetics and emerging technology with visits to Boeing and Microsoft. Other institute travel sites have included Boston ’02, Sante Fe ’03, Washington DC ’04, Minneapolis/St. Paul ’05, and San Francisco ‘06. Students’ expenses including air travel, lodging, food, and activities are paid by the leadership institute.
Through the Wesleyan College Leadership Institute, selected students have the opportunity to grow and experience leadership possibilities in the real world. Rising senior students are selected each year through a rigorous application and interview process that begins each December. 2007 attending students were: GinaMarie Cody, Kris Fenn, Charmin Green, Pragna Halder, Stephanie Hood, Hillary Jarrett, Victoria Johnson, Jessica Kendrick, Avantika Kulkarni, Missy Poole, Carla Ruiz-Ney, and Sehresh Saleem.
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