Dartmouth is currently in the preliminary stages of integrating a four-year, co-curricular leadership program into its undergraduate graduation requirements. Known as the Dartmouth Leadership Project, the program is set to stipulate participation in a selection of workshops, experiential learning opportunities and a senior capstone project over the course of a Dartmouth student’s college career. It will be the first comprehensive leadership plan of its kind amongst the College’s peers.
“Preparing our students to be leaders is, in my mind, the most important work that we do at Dartmouth … Regardless of the career path they choose, Dartmouth graduates will use the timeless skill afforded by their liberal arts education to have an impact on the world around them,” College President Phil Hanlon wrote in a statement on the Dartmouth Leadership Project’s website. “These aren’t simply the capacities employers seek; they’re the foundational qualities of true citizen-leaders.”
The Leadership Project is one of several initiatives slated to receive funding under Dartmouth’s “Call to Lead” capital campaign, which seeks to raise $3 billion in donations by the end of 2022.
Although the Leadership Project had initiated development several years prior to the campaign’s announcement, former Dean of the College Rebecca Biron, who was in office at the time the program was announced, emphasized that “it fit perfectly with the goals of the campaign and is a direct response to trying to fulfill the mission of the College in a more coordinated way.”
Biron said that the Leadership Project will aim to ensure that all Dartmouth students receive the preparation needed to assume leadership positions upon graduation, regardless of their anticipated career field. While a wide array of leadership-oriented programs already exists on campus, such as the Rockefeller Center for Public Policy’s Management and Leadership Development Program and the athletics department’s Dartmouth Peak Performance, she noted that these programs often have enrollment limits or cater to students with specialized areas of interest.
The focus of the Dartmouth Leadership Project will not be, however, to undermine or replace these pre-existing leadership programs, but to centralize them within a singular co-curricular experience — what Biron describes as a “menu of opportunities” or a “hub-and-spokes model.” In order to complete the curriculum, students will select leadership experiences offered through a variety of departments and student organizations. “Strategic peer review” and “coaching checkpoints” during sophomore summer and pre-senior year will serve as unifying elements to the Leadership Project, allowing students to reflect on the career skills they have gained through their selected leadership pathways.
“I think that what’s most exciting to me is that [the Leadership Project] puts these areas on campus in dialogue with each other about intentional leadership development,” said Renata Baptista, the Dartmouth Leadership Project’s program manager. “It gives opportunities for our students to understand how different experiences they’re having on campus connect.”
The project also aims to cultivate skills across varying levels of personal, interpersonal and organizational leadership. According to Biron, curriculum for first-year students will focus on emotional intelligence, while second-year curriculum will be geared toward activities that foster multicultural awareness. Third- and fourth-year students will be expected to participate in “community-building” activities and projects that involve “strategic collaborative action,” culminating in a capstone senior project determined by the student.
According to The Call to Lead campaign’s website, the Dartmouth Leadership Project hopes to raise $25 million for its endowment. Biron states that these funds would be used to “scale up some of the more general interest current programs, add new programs … and hire a director of the co-curriculum who would be devoted to doing the work of building the curriculum out and continuing to assess it over time.”
Although the Leadership Project still rests in its early stages of development, several of its components have begun test runs on campus. Last fall, the Student Wellness Center initiated a series of emotional intelligence workshops held on each first-year residential floor. This summer, a group of 16 students participated in the Collaborative Leadership Pilot, where they took part in several group problem-solving workshops and an outdoor team-based challenge involving a ropes course, brainteasers and orienteering.
As the Leadership Project prepares to introduce a more fully-realized curriculum, its website notes that it will continue to incentivize voluntary participation in pre-existing leadership programs on campus. Examples of such programs include the Dartmouth Center for the Advancement of Learning’s Telling My Story program, the Office of Pluralism and Leadership’s heritage month planning committees and the Rockefeller Center’s first-year Dartmouth Leadership Attitudes and Behaviors Program. For current students, involvement in these programs will contribute toward eligibility to apply for “advanced or selective experiences” to be determined in the future.
Elizabeth Janowski '21 is the news executive editor of the 177th directorate. Hailing from Brookfield, Wisconsin, she is pursuing a double major in history and film and media studies.
