The Citizen Leadership Institute is one of Longwood University’s departments for fulfilling its goals of developing its students as citizen leaders. It is similar to many of the credited courses at Longwood, and has a similar classroom environment.
Laura Parker is the assistant director of leadership and development programs for the Citizen Leadership Institute, which is part of the larger Citizen Leadership & Social Justice Education department. She has been in this position since July, having arrived after finishing graduate school at the University of Greenville, where she helped to contribute to the Leadership Institute at that school. She said that this is a way of serving the community.
Parker explained that there are four different levels to the Citizen Leadership Institute coursework. These are:
Level I – Becoming Yourself
Level II – Becoming Together
Level III – Becoming a Change Agent/Becoming a Community
Level IV – Becoming a Citizen Leader
These different levels take place each semester, starting with Level I – Becoming Yourself in the fall semester, and Level II – Becoming Together in the spring semester, and so on. At Level III, participants choose one of subsets of the larger program to focus on. They have to either choose the social justice program (Longwood’s webpage for the Citizen Leadership Institute refers to this as “becoming a change agent”) or the “community engagement” program (“becoming a community”).
Arin Young is part of the class of 2019 and a social work major who has been helped by the Citizen Leadership Institute’s programs. On top of being a peer mentor, Young is an intern at the Citizen Leadership & Social Justice Education department who has been with the program for two semesters now, including this current semester. This places her in Level II for this semester. She credits Parker and the Director of Citizen Leadership and Social Justice Education, Johnathan Page, for introducing her to the Citizen Leadership Institute curriculum. She and Parker have a personal connection, since they are both from North Carolina.
“It's an eight-week program,” Young said of each level of the course. “(Level I) has the goals of helping you build your self-reflection and your awareness of yourself, and then also helping you build a philosophy of leadership.”
Young has not yet decided on what her “philosophy of leadership” is. Unfortunately, she is not able to go forward with the program, due to a timing conflict with her classes.
“I mean, it's a four level program, so I think I would have to work on it a little bit more,” she said. “You separate on the tracks later down, so I wasn't divided yet.”
However, Young did find that what she learned in the Institute’s courses were values that very much dovetailed with the principles that she was encouraged to develop as a social work major. She also noticed that there were many of her fellow social work majors enrolled in the courses. She also found that what she learned from the Citizen Leadership Institute has helped her in other areas of her life.
“I'm actually on (the executive boards of) two organizations now, so I think it helped build some confidence and some courage,” Young said. “But other than that, I think it's helped re-instill what I already knew about myself.”
Young overall feels a sense of pride towards to Citizen Leadership Institute, and described it as “a really beneficial program.” Through her internship with Parker, she has spoken with her about advertising it more to freshmen, and how it can promote more campus involvement among freshmen.
She said that, since “the mission of Longwood is to build more citizen leaders, this is a kind of program that should be more emphasized to students.”
