**3.1 Launch of an initiative**

In spring 2019, the author's home institution, Dickinson College, announced with flair The Revolutionary Challenge (Challenge). It had four objectives. First, to solicit ideas that could, if implemented, contribute to the mission of the College. Second, to create stronger bonds between internal members of the College community and external members including alumni, parents of current students, and so forth. Third, to help the College achieve competitive advantage in the liberal arts sector by introducing a new competency [19]. Fourth, to attract contributions from stakeholders who had not previously been active donors.

Essentially, the Challenge was a call for proposals from combinations of faculty, staff, and alumni. To provide appropriate lead-time and indicate seriousness of intent, the announced deadline for proposal submissions was October 4, 2019.

Proposals were asked to address a series of related questions. While some were process-related, others were more intriguing. (1) What are the central concepts in your proposal? (2) What steps will be associated with implementing the proposal. (3) How does your idea relate to or support the college's strategic framework? (4) What partnerships, on campus and off campus, do you envision? (5) How

*The Imperative—and the Challenges—of Introducing a Citizen-Leader Development Program… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.100002*

will your idea positively affect the education of Dickinson students? (6) How will your idea positively impact the world beyond Dickinson's campus? (7) If your proposal is selected as a finalist, what resource needs do you anticipate for preparing a detailed proposal?

The start-up process for the Challenge called for formation of a team of judges, The President's Panel on Innovation (Panel). The Panel would consist of members of the board of trustees, administrators, and selected faculty. In mid-spring, the author was nominated by a colleague to serve on the Panel and was subsequently elected to serve. The membership of the Panel was also announced in celebratory fashion.

### **3.2 A request for assistance**

In late August of 2019, the author was invited by the then VP of Development to attend a meeting with two alumni whom he had met a few years prior, Dr. Robert Paull (class of 1962) and Mr. Paul Kovach (class of 1971). The two alumni had maintained a long-time and dedicated relationship with the College and had for some years been strong advocates of a College-wide leadership development program. When the Challenge was announced, they had started to develop a proposal they titled "Leadership for 21st Century Revolutionary Challenges" (Leadership Proposal or Proposal).

During the meeting, the author listened to the preliminary thoughts of the men and appreciated their ideas. Then, as a bit of a surprise, the author was asked by the VP if he might help the alumni fine-tune their Proposal. Since the author had already been named to the Panel, he asked if guidelines could be put in place to prevent conflict of interest. He received an appropriate answer as to how that would be ensured from the VP, who would also serve on the Panel. He therefore agreed and worked the next two months to help the two men further shape and write their Proposal.

#### **3.3 Key features of the leadership proposal**

The Leadership Proposal had four important features. First, it attempted to respond to what the two men—the co-originators—perceived as a threat to the College and to the liberal arts philosophy of higher education. They observed that while "the liberal arts were once perceived as providing appropriate guidance and opportunity to develop the knowledge and maturity needed to enter adulthood and the world of work …", in the current era "… much of the public questions the value of a liberal arts education and perceives it as expensive and lacking strong, focused preparation for employment."

Second, it was conceptually relevant. Dickinson College was founded in 1783 by Dr. Benjamin Rush, a key figure in the American colonies' efforts to win independence. Dickinson's mission statement is informed by his writings.

"Dickinson College was created explicitly for high purposes—to prepare young people, by means of a useful education in the liberal arts and sciences, for engaged lives of citizenship and leadership in the service of society."1

Although the College has graduated thousands of successful young men and women over its 235-year history, it has never created a commonly agreed framework for helping all students appreciate leadership components and practice leadership methods.

<sup>1</sup> https://www.dickinson.edu/info/20184/academic\_offices\_and\_resources/1953/information\_about\_ dickinson

Third, it was innovative, perhaps to the point of being considered radical. The co-originators asserted that each student's leadership capability was being shaped in all aspects of their four-year liberal arts experience, via engagement in individual and group projects undertaken in academic classes, internships, study abroad experiences, sports teams, the performing arts, student government, student life, public service, etc. The missing piece was a mental model of leadership development that helped students recognize and appreciate commonalities in "interleaved projects" [20] that spanned domains. To shape such a model, faculty, staff, and administrators would need to share ideas about the projects they assigned and supervised in their respective roles as educators, supervisors, mentors, and coaches. The purpose of such gatherings would be to create a common vocabulary, a "linguistic scaffolding". If members of the community had a common vocabulary, then when they assigned projects and provided feedback, they could prompt students to think about how leadership capability would be cultivated during efforts to complete the project.

Fourth, the proposal included a vision statement. If students repeatedly thought about their contributions to projects, then they would be able to write and speak in clear and convincing terms about the commonalities across a liberal arts education, the responsibilities they had fulfilled in generating positive outcomes, and the roles they were prepared to play in future endeavors: That ability in turn would resonate with potential employers, graduate school admissions officers, collaborators, or others.
