by:
  Kris Bulcroft,
  Carmen Werder, and
  Glenn Gilliam

  Leadership Inside Out

A partnership between Academic and Student Affairs formed around this concept, and the seminar was offered winter and spring terms, co-facilitated by the Special Assistant to the Provost and the Director of New Student Programs. The seminar was titled Adult Higher Education 417: Leadership Inside Out. Carnegie Conversations Faculty also nominated students for the course, and a total of fifty students enrolled in the seminars during the two terms offered.

Leadership students attended some of the core faculty bi-weekly sessions. Some of the conversation, however, took place in outside interviews between CCC faculty and the seminar students. Based on these interviews, key ideas emerged and were then explored more fully in biweekly group discussions between the students and faculty. In addition, the seminar sponsored a threaded electronic discussion, and students discussed several themes relating to the scholarship of teaching and learning.

These data were used to form a collaborative action plan composed by faculty and students identifying strategic ways for moving ahead to achieve the scholarship of teaching and learning in new ways. This action plan was presented to the Provost at the final Breakfast Seminar at the end of spring term, 2000, and he endorsed all of its points and pledged his continued support.

The combination of the leadership course and the Carnegie Conversations provided students with a valuable perspective not typically available to students. Guest conversationalist included the University President, the Provost, the Vice President for Student Affairs, President of the Faculty, President of the Associated Students, and many other key leaders of the campus community. One student remarked:

I was amazed at what I was seeing. Here was the university president, who I didn't know had feelings, sitting across from me telling me that there were times when she felt alone and sad regarding the pressures she faced. At that moment my perspective of the universities (sic) leadership entirely changed. Few students get that opportunity.

The Provost supported the travel costs of two seminar students to attend the Carnegie Campus Conversations Colloquium at the annual AAHE conference held in Anaheim, CA in March 2000, where they presented a session on the ways in which the student voice was being heard at Western. As a result of the effort to include a student voice in the conversation, Western Washington University was recognized with one of the first Going Public grants provided by AAHE and the Carnegie Foundation.

• Introduction
• Campus Conversation at Western Washington University (Parts I & II)
• Where are the Students?
• Leadership Inside Out
• The AAHE Summer Academy
• A Web of Connections
• The Teaching and Learning Academy
• A New Course on Learning
• Diffuse Leadership
• A Public Rally for Learning
• Lessons Learned from the Students
• References
• print version