The Central Experience
What is wonderful about the project before us is that the work of professional preparation, civic agency, and deep purpose and personal fulfillment is not divergent—not three separate tasks we must take on. This work is emergent and interconnected. As we deepen our embrace of our new vision and mission, and as we set our sights on the horizon before us and the challenges that our students will face when they leave us, we have the opportunity to carefully and artfully craft a Central Experience that will equip our students to thrive in their careers and live purposeful and meaningful lives, and our economy and democracy to flourish. In order to take our work to the next level, we cannot ask about student readiness and must become focused on institutional readiness—that is, rather than focusing on the deficits that we perceive our students bring with them, we must focus on building the scaffolding necessary for all students to meet the challenges of the rigorous educational experience that the 21st century demands. We must prepare ourselves as an institution to help all of our students succeed at the highest levels possible and learn to value and sustain the richness of the identities, cultures, histories, languages, literacies, and backgrounds they bring with them. Indeed, can we emphasize, as a niche, the opportunity to learn from others who have different backgrounds from us? Can we model, as a university and local community, both inside and outside our classrooms, on and off campus, in Ellensburg and at our Centers, the ability to collaborate across differences in respectful and civil ways, with authentic deep listening? Can we work towards expanding our capacity to set aside, for a moment, our own thoughts and ideas and let someone else’s ideas take up space in our minds? To truly engage otherness in a way that honors the richness of diversity, which is truly the heart of innovation and creativity? To discern our own biases, put them aside, and truly consider another perspective? We should not be so intellectually insecure that we fear considering some new or different idea simply because it comes from someone who has a different set of life experiences. When we are ready, after much thoughtful deliberation and learning and reflection, and when the resources present themselves, I propose that we establish a Center for Engaged Leadership and Learning that would be the proponent of the Central Experience and that would allow us the opportunity to not only craft an intentional and developmental journey for our students and ourselves but also to assess, evaluate, and conduct research on this experience and then share that research with others so we can continue to learn and grow. The Center would become a hub for modeling the future of higher education for public comprehensive universities, creating an intentional and developmental model for engaged learning and high impact practices with a unique focus on bridging different perspectives, backgrounds, languages, literacies, and histories. We have much to learn from other institutions of higher education and much to share. Page 8
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