Leadership

 

Leadership and Mentoring 

The mentoring of young people takes many forms. Some young people grow up with a sibling, relative or another adult ally who serves as a mentor to them. Some benefit from formal mentoring programs in schools or from community organizations. Not everyone enjoys access to regular mentoring, yet research shows that mentoring has tremendous benefits for both the mentor and the mentee. These benefits include the development of leadership skills, increased interpersonal communication, improved relationship-building skills, and increased self-awareness. Armed with these skills, a young person has greater potential for success in many settings.

In this fully online course we will practice deepening our existing service in the community. Throughout the course students will learn about and practice the Social Change Model of Leadership. Before class begins students will contact the instructor and develop a service plan with an organization with which they are currently affiliated. In addition, students will form small teams with their classmates. Each team will develop, implement, and evaluate a highly focussed community project.

Racial Equity In Oregon

This Capstone partners with the Community Alliance of Tenants, Taking Ownership PDX and the Urban League. Students will learn the history of BIPOC communities in Oregon while working with our partners to fight racism, white supremacy and to create a different future for Oregon. Students in this course will learn how to write grants, work directly with organizations centering BIPOC homeowners and tenants and, if they choose, use their own skills and talents to support these organizations. All of this work can very easily be translated to working professionally in a nonprofit organization! A wide variety of project opportunities exist -- everything from scheduled shifts to projects that can be conducted on your own time and schedule.

Forests, Narratives and Social Movements

Social movements have shaped the world we live in and are one of the most important sources of social change. They often organize to address issues of inequity, oppression or prejudice in local, regional, national and transnational spheres. They arise to address factual situations: the number of people without health care, levels of air pollution, racial profiling, unemployment, deaths in war or the destruction of the environment. However, facts alone are not sufficient to create social change.

 

Cultivating Leadership Capacity and Promoting Educational Equity