News
Correction appended
Dartmouth's Rockefeller Center will launch a series of leadership initiatives this fall after receiving a $5.6-million donation in June from Fritz Corrigan '64 and his family.
The center will offer a new set of curricular and co-curricular programs designed to enhance students' leadership experience, centering on a management and leadership development program and the public policy minor, Rockefeller Center Director Andrew Samwick said in an interview with The Dartmouth.
The minor, first developed during government professor Linda Fowler's tenure as the center's director, did not previously offer specific courses in leadership, Samwick said.
"We had not, to date, made the study of leadership a part of the curriculum," Samwick said, adding that such study is not something that happens in an "intentional way in a liberal arts education."
The new leadership sequence in the minor will include three pillars comprising a "foundations" class, a class in institutional leadership and a class on leadership in civil society.
The classes will not be restricted by class year or have prerequisites, such that any student can enroll, according to Rockefeller Center Associate Director Ronald Shaiko, who is in charge of the center's curricular offerings.
"We want to expose as many students as possible to this process," he said.
The center plans to launch the civil society class during Spring term 2010 and the foundations class in Fall 2010, followed by the institutional leadership class in Winter 2011, Shaiko said.
Other departments may also begin offering classes in leadership, Shaiko said.
"It would be very rare in the other classes I've taught at Dartmouth, in my discipline, to pause and think about leadership," Samwick, who is also an economics professor, said.
