The Leadership Fellows Program

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Exemplar Type: COURSE/ PROGRAM
Title: The Leadership Fellows Program
Grades: Undergrad, Grad
Discipline:
Submitted By: Heather Spalding

Course Description: The Leadership Fellows Program is a one year academic program offered through Student Activities and Leadership Programs (SALP) at Portland State University. The goals of the Leadership Fellows Program are to develop your leadership skills to better serve your student position; develop understanding, knowledge, and skills that you can use in your career and community work; and to meet other student organization leaders and share insights.

Learning Objectives: The Leadership Fellows course is designed with specific learning outcomes that each cohort will spend time on.

SALP Learning Outcomes:
1. Consciousness of Self
2. Sustainability
3. Common Purpose

Student Sustainability Center Learning Outcomes:
1. Building relationships and systems
2. Knowledge and awareness
3. Civic engagement
4. Sustainability leadership
5. Purposeful pathways

BENCHMARKS REPRESENTED IN THIS EXEMPLAR

Big Ideas

  • A healthy and sustainable future for human and other life is possible

  • Humans are dependent on Earth’s life-support systems

  • Diversity makes complex life possible. It assures resilience in living systems

  • Places are alive, unique and evolving. If humans want to flourish over time, our relationships with the places in which we live must be mutually beneficial

  • We are all in this together. We are interdependent on each other and on the natural systems

  • Nature sustains life by creating and nurturing communities

  • Living and non-living things are subject to the laws and principles derived from nature

  • The changes to the Earth’s surface environments made by human activity are causing unintended consequences on the health and well-being of human and other life on Earth (proposed Anthropocene Epoch)

  • The significant problems we face can’t be solved with the same thinking we used to create them. Our prior experiences with the world create cognitive frameworks (also known as mental models/maps) that inform what we can perceive. They shape our behavior and our behavior causes results. If we want to produce different results, it all begins with a change in thinking

  • Sustain-ability requires individual and social learning and community practice

  • We all depend on and are responsible for “the commons”, i.e., what we share and hold in trust for future generations. Recognize and Protect the Commons

  • We must pay attention to the results of our thinking and behavior on the systems upon which we depend if we want to thrive over time. Read the Feedback

  • We are all responsible for the difference we make. Everything we do and everything we don’t do makes a difference

Higher Order Thinking Skills

  • Emergent: Creative Thinking

  • Emergent: Design Thinking

  • Emergent: Ecologically Design

  • Emergent: Regenerative Design

  • Complex: Critical Thinking

  • Mindful: Questioning

  • Mindful: Reflective Thinking

  • Hands On Skills: Building

  • Making, Tinkering, Crafting

  • Hands On Skills: Design/Drawing

  • Hands On Skills: Gardening/Farming (organic, permaculture/bio-dynamic, integrated pest management)

Applied Knowledge and Actions

  • Strong Sense of Place

  • Cultures, Traditions and Change

  • The Many Ways of Knowing

  • System Dynamics and Change

  • Responsible Local and Global Citizenship

  • Multiple Perspectives

Dispositions

  • Courageous

  • Curious

  • Efficacious

  • Imaginative

  • Mindful

  • Resilient (the spirit to bounce forward not back)

  • Collaborative

  • Compassionate

  • Empathetic

  • Ethical

  • Place/Community Conscious

  • Respectful, Self Aware

Applications and Actions

  • Create Social Learning Communities

  • Engage in Dialogue

  • Honor the specific knowledge and skills that each person and culture brings

  • Build from successes

  • Learn from mistakes, develop strategies to improve, and apply what is learned

  • Teach and Learn

  • Design for whole systems integrity with ecological principles and physical laws in mind

  • Define and Re-Define Progress

  • Empower people and groups

  • Envision, strategize and plan

  • Govern from the bottom up

  • Lead by example

  • Make the least change for the greatest effect

  • Trust local wisdom

  • Be inclusive

  • Practice justice and equity for all

  • Take responsibility for the effect you have on future generations

  • Treat others with respect and dignity

  • Create and maintain highly functional and successful teams

  • Use creative tension to resolve conflicts

  • Listen to one another

  • Serve your community