Building democratic leaders among students at university

It’s 7pm and the Zoom room is buzzing. A half dozen college students and a couple of staff and faculty are huddled together around the screen. Freshly out of quarantine, the masks are off, and the bubble is eagerly enjoying its first days of COVID-safe social time.

This is social time – but also a committee meeting and a classroom. Tidelines Institute students have gathered to interview one of four candidates for a visiting faculty position. Over recent days, they have read through CVs, course proposals and statements of teaching philosophy. They’ve met with current staff and faculty to formulate questions, choose an interview moderator and assign secretarial responsibilities. In a few days’ time, when the interviews are done, they will meet as a full committee to make a hiring decision.

Every institution of higher education promotes itself as a training ground for young leaders. Yet all too often, students are excluded from the opportunities for leadership education that abound on campus.

‘Leadership experience’ is instead confined to clubs, sports and student governments – most of which are bereft of the weighty decision-making challenges whose navigation is the real task of all leaders. Tidelines Institute takes a different approach. We train young leaders by making them leaders, by inviting them to participate in the most important decisions of the organisation.

Co-creators

That’s not the only reason students seek out our programmes. Some come looking for a more creative, expansive version of higher education. Some are drawn by the coursework: tiny, rigorous, place-based courses from across the arts and sciences. Some are drawn by the experiential opportunities that abound here in rural Alaska: from growing a garden to filleting salmon to sea kayaking in Glacier Bay.

But the biggest draw for many students is the authority and responsibility they are given over their own education. Tidelines students are active, democratic co-creators of their own educational space. They sit on the committees that hire faculty, set the curriculum, admit new students and handle external communications. They manage their own student spaces and help make budgeting decisions. One even holds a voting position on the organisation’s board of directors.

The goal is to provide students with a leadership education that is not simulated, that has real stakes. Students at many universities are able to exercise broad latitude in the direction of their individual education paths. But to deliberate and decide with their peers on the arc of everyone’s education is a different proposition entirely: an opportunity for democratic participation and to examine critically the goals of liberal education.

With prompting and direction from staff and faculty, students must grapple with practical decisions that bring real ethical questions to bear. When hiring faculty: what is the value of ‘sage on the stage’ versus discussion-based seminar versus lab-based course? How do we accommodate a wide range of student interest, experience and preparedness? Why does diversity matter?

Or, when examining the budget: where can we put our limited resources to do the most good? Should we raise staff salaries? Buy more organic food? Offset our carbon footprint? Expand student scholarship opportunities? And, if we want to do several of these things simultaneously, are we willing to raise tuition fees? Should we involve students in fundraising?

Democratising decision-making

Taking part in major institutional decisions adds immeasurably to students’ education. Ideas and ideals are drawn from the starry spheres back down to earth. Students come to appreciate the serious moral challenges implicit in the creation of educational spaces… and to empathise with those who have to make them.

Consequently, involving students in organisational governance is not only a powerful opportunity for leadership education. It can also be a balm for the often-strained relationship between students, faculty and administrators. Not always, mind you; gaps in experience and ethical priorities certainly persist. But open dialogue and collaborative decision-making build common ground where antagonism usually reigns.

What this requires, however, is for all of the adults in the room – staff and faculty alike – to treat the conference room as a classroom. Governance in this model is a core part of a student’s education, and like any seminar, expert guidance and questioning enrich the experience. Staff and faculty are there to set reasonable guardrails, to push back against unquestioned student assumptions, to help them see questions from multiple sides.

In a university culture that has gradually eroded the centrality of undergraduate learning, bringing students into governance can reclaim administrative work as part of the educational mission.

Raising expectations

Involving students in governance work takes tremendous patience and trust from all those involved. And yet, when that trust is extended, it is breathtaking to see students rise to the occasion. A student who might half-ass a midterm paper (pardon my language) is suddenly all in when interviewing her soon-to-be professor. Raising the expectations raises the results.

The pandemic has been a nightmare for universities. But we can use this crisis as a chance to re-evaluate the system’s core assumptions and structures. Among those should be the insuperable barriers between staff, faculty, and – above all – students.

Students can and should be invited into the conference rooms, both for their own benefit and that of the university itself. There is no better way to prepare young people for the rigours of real democratic leadership, and no better place to do it than within an institution designed for pedagogy.

Laura Marcus is executive director of Tidelines Institute, United States. E-mail: laura@tidelinesinstitute.org