COMMUNITY ISSUES IN LEADERSHIP
Course Description
This course offered an introduction to the application of leadership. By building on PRLC-1810's more abstract and theoretical leadership approaches, we as a class were able to discover a more realistic view of what it means to be a leader. This class also involved more independence in exploration. This was facilitated by the argumentative rhetoric learned in PRLC 1810.
Course Reflection
For me, PLRC 1820 was the first time that the work I did in school had the potential to impact anyone else. I took this course in my second semester, and it helped me to understand one of the most substantial differences between high school and college. Not only do the things that I do affect other people but I am increasingly in a position of power. It’s up to me how I develop that.
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I stumbled upon (read: was helpfully guided to) this realization through the Human Centered Design project that we explored in our recitation groups. Through this design model, we focused on the human aspect and how individuals interact with a problem and its solution. We had the opportunity to directly apply what we learned about this project through our partnership with a community organization. My group worked closely with Imagine!, an organization that provides opportunities to be part of the wider boulder community to individuals with developmental disabilities. We worked through the iterative HCD model toward a solution to their problem with intra-organizational communication.
This process was intense to say the least. Putting a group of freshmen in charge of creating a solution that may actually be implemented seems like a bad judgment call. We're students. We do homework for a living, not create actual policies and products. What I learned was that we are actually capable of doing just that. In a relatively short period of time, we produced a semi-functional communication plan that started Imagine!'s progress towards more effective communication. It was empowering to see my research and brainstorming become a prototype that could actually make a positive change in someone else's life. When we wrote our college entrance essays, we all said that we wanted to make a difference and leave a mark. I was mildly shocked that what I thought was a theoretical possibility is becoming an immediate reality.