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Leadership for Institutional Change awards grants
	The Leadership for Institutional Change (LINC) initiative, a Penn State and Cheyney University of Pennsylvania effort supported by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, has awarded minigrants for 2002–03 for projects that address campus and community concerns. Nine Penn State teams are sharing $34,702 in grants: Penn State York Early Awareness—Penn State York. Contact: Dr. Cora Dzubak, Learning Center director. Goals: To increase the retention rate of high school students from the School District of the City of York by their participation in a weeklong summer program. The three program strands that support this goal include leadership, career awareness and corporate mentoring. Community Leadership Development Program Gettysburg-Adams County—Adams County Cooperative Extension, College of Agricultural Sciences. Contact: Tim Collins, extension agent and project leader. Goals: The initial efforts will focus on working with municipalities in the county to develop a cadre of citizen volunteers who will foster intergovernmental cooperation. The long-run goal is to grow the program into a permanent community endeavor that will develop a continuing stream of young leaders who will provide insightful, purposeful guidance to the governmental, nonprofit and educational boards that decide and influence the future of the community. Leveraging Faculty for Leadership Development—The Schreyer Honors College. Contact: Dr. Cheryl Achterberg, dean. Goals: The goal of this project is to engage more Penn State faculty in teaching courses devoted to leadership development and/or incorporate more leadership content material into preexisting undergraduate courses. Faculty from all areas will be invited to participate; however, faculty in the College of the Liberal Arts, School of Information Sciences and Technology, International Business (The Mary Jean and Frank P. Smeal College of Business Administration), College of Engineering and College of Agricultural Sciences will be especially targeted, based on the subject matter of the seminars in Washington, D.C.   The major strategy used in this project will be to pay faculty expenses to attend short, intensive seminars on the subject matter at major think tanks in Washington, D.C., where they can observe state-of-the-art pedagogical techniques, learn more of the content themselves and watch undergraduates’ eagerness to learn this material. Course models and templates for assignments and readings will be shared, as well. The specific expectations for this project are to provide travel grants to four to five Penn State faculty to attend the Center for Strategic and International Studies seminar on Global Trends and World Issues (with IST/SOC 497H) and to attend the Leadership Forum seminar hosted by the Henry J. Stimson Center. Community-built Sustainable Housing: An Interdisciplinary Service-learning Course—The Schreyer Honors College. Contact: Dr. Josephine Carubia, coordinator of Student Programs and Service Learning. Goals: This course will examine alternative building methods with a focus on load-bearing strawbale technology. Students enrolling in Architectural Engineering Special Topics course A E 497H will design and lead the construction of a community-built structure with these methods.   Other goals of this course are to focus on research into the physical and cultural environment in which the design-build strawbale project will be completed. Students from various disciplines will provide the site research needed to pursue culturally and regionally sensitive design and construction practices. This will allow honors students to work side by side with architectural engineering, architecture and landscape architecture students in a collaborative environment.   The building project proposed for this course will be a Strawbale Design and Learning Center on the Northern Cheyenne Indian reservation in Montana. The project will include one or more buildings that will serve as the focal point for education and research on community-built housing for the Northern Cheyenne tribe.   Core faculty will oversee technical content on design and building processes. Faculty from multiple disciplines and guest lecturers will be used to introduce additional subject matter relevant to this diverse experience. For example, Professor Sergio Palleroni, a world-renowned leader in design-build education at the University of Washington, will contribute a lecture on developing social capital through community-built housing. In addition, the newly established Rock Ethics Institute in the Penn State Department of Philosophy will contribute learning modules on American Indian culture and cross-cultural intervention.   Students will gain hands-on experience in interdisciplinary problem solving and the application of traditional design concepts to an unfamiliar building material. Students will explore the history of providing shelter and the present living conditions prevalent on American Indian reservations, with a focus on the Northern Cheyenne Tribe. Students will gain experience in research methods, team problem solving and cross-cultural intervention. The integration of academic learning and community engagement in this course also is expected to include outcomes of increased awareness of civic values, appreciation for diversity, self-efficacy and leadership. Penn State Rural Nursing Connection: Early Childhood and Family Assessment and Health Promotion Initiative—Penn State School of Nursing. Contact: Dr. Carol A. Smith, professor-in-charge of Outreach and project leader. Goals: The Penn State Rural Nursing Connection (PSRNC) multisite nursing center network, with Smith as project director and Dr. Mona Counts as co-project director, is designed to further develop outreach and service-learning initiatives in the 10 medically underserved areas where College of Health and Human Development School of Nursing programs are taught. School of Nursing PSRNC outreach initiatives include students from nursing and other health-related disciplines.   LINC funds will help meet the following objectives: Expand collaboratative linkages with Penn State Cooperative Extension and Outreach Program for Children, Youth and Families to plan early childhood and family assessment and health education programs; design, with assistance from consultants, a data management process for PSRNC initiatives to facilitate analysis of measurable health indicators; and submit an application for the Health Resources Services Administration Basic Nurse Education and Practice, Division of Nursing, Nursing Center grant. Initiation of at least one new education program involving 20 to 30 students and analysis of data on existing programs is an expected outcome of the LINC portion of the project. The program developed will be replicated in other campus locations. Intergenerational Program—Department of Agricultural and Extension Education, College of Agricultural Sciences. Contact Dr. Matthew S. Kaplan, associate professor of intergenerational programs and aging. Goals: To incorporate an intergenerational component into the two early-childhood education programs operated by the Department of Human Development and Family Studies at Penn State: Bennett Family Center and Child Development Laboratory. This initiative will be conducted as a partnership between the early childhood programs, Cooperative Extension, the Gerontology Center and the Community Academy for Lifelong Learning. This model program will serve to stimulate mutually beneficial interactions between the children participating in the University’s early-childhood education programs and senior adults in Centre County and provide training opportunities for students, faculty and early-childhood development professionals interested in learning how to design and implement intergenerational programs involving young children and older adult volunteers. New Kensington Youth Leadership Program—Penn State New Kensington. Contact: Dr. Carol Rush, campus executive officer. Goals: To increase participants’ knowledge and skills related to leadership; to increase awareness of their own leadership style; to increase knowledge of negotiation and conflict resolution; to increase ability to work within a team by providing an understanding of team dynamics and the role of an individual within a team; to increase contemporary leadership skills related to goal setting, critical thinking, decision making, strategic planning and innovation; and to design a team project to address a community issue, incorporating skills learned in the program. Outcomes are targeted to address leadership development of selected youth from the campus’ service area. Participants will identify their management and leadership style, recognizing both their strengths and their weaknesses. They will use a framework for decision making that includes legal, ethical and moral elements. Students will learn how to interact socially, evaluate critically, think creatively and systematically and will practice empowering others through participative decision making and goal setting. Global Understanding—Hubert H. Humphrey Fellowship Program. Contact: Dr. Syedur Rahman, research associate. Goals: The purpose of the project titled “Introducing an Old Community in a New Setting: Global Understanding” is to bring together a group of 15 high school students and immerse them in issues and an agenda that are of a global nature. These issues are likely to impact both their personal and professional lives. Awareness of these issues at a young age and preparing for how to deal with them should make them well-versed citizens and permit them to shoulder broader leadership responsibilities in the future. Listening to speakers, discussing issues facilitated by community and University experts should provide an overall rich learning experience. Outcomes will include providing a learning enrichment program to high school students (juniors and seniors), introducing participants to looking at broader issues that impact the United States, having participants look beyond the United States and prepare to go abroad and seeking community support to continue the program each summer. Penn State Lehigh Valley Institute for Emerging Leaders—Penn State and Penn State Berks-Lehigh Valley College. Contact: Corry Lamack, program administrator. Goals: The Institute for Emerging Leaders of the Lehigh Valley is a program for high school juniors with a primary goal of providing leadership education and training to a group of students who might not otherwise have the opportunity. The institute targets students with leadership potential. They do not have to have already proven themselves to be nominated. It is anticipated students will increase knowledge of social issues, their awareness of ethical issues and their effectiveness as a leader. It is also anticipated students will develop links to the community and Penn State and have an impact on the community through a service project. Kouzes and Posner’s Leadership Practices Inventory will be used as a pre- and posttest measurement. Additionally, evaluations will be completed by the students at each session for feedback about relevance of speakers and programs for achievement of goals.   For more information about Leadership for Institutional Change, visit http://www.psu.edu/president/cqi/LINC/awardees2002.htm.