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EducatingWomenF E A T U R E DT O P I CM A RY K . T R I G GA women’sleadershipdevelopmentprogram can insertleadership asboth theory andpractice morecentrally into thewomen’s studiescurriculum andresearch agendaIT WAS Colleen Connolly, a DouglassCollege senior, who planted the seed in 1996for a women’s leadership program for undergraduates at Rutgers University. She was anintern at the Institute for Women’s Leadership,a unique collaboration of academic centers andunits that came together as a consortiumaround the shared mission of examining andadvancing women’s leadership in education,research, politics, the workplace, and the world.Institute members included Douglass College;the Department of Women’s and GenderStudies; the Center for American Womenand Politics; the Institute for Research onWomen; the Center for Women’s GlobalLeadership; and the Center for Women andWork. While the directors of these units hadbrainstormed about a cluster of shared programs, fittingly it wasa student who, afterinterviewing representatives of all the unitsabout their work, came up with the idea ofmining the riches of the institute for studentlearning. She was particularly struck by thepower and potential that internships held forundergraduate education, and envisioned arequired internship and practicum as a centralcomponent of such a leadership educationprogram.In recent years, a number of leadership programs have been created for women in business,women who head nonprofit organizations,women in professions like law and medicine,and women students. Although there are overfive hundred colleges and universities in theUnited States (and a growing number aroundthe world) that offer programs on leadershipand leadership development, there are farfewer that offer programs specifically onwomen’s leadership, and that are affiliatedwith academic departments rather than studentlife offices. This article describes a women’sleadership development program at RutgersUniversity that draws on the rich scholarshipin gender studies to reimagine leadership, toMARY K. TRIGG isdirector of leadership programsand research at the Institute for Women’s Leadership at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey.22LIBERAL EDUCATION WINTER 2006accelerate young women to leadership, and toprepare them as educated citizens who willmake a difference in the world.The Leadership Scholars Certificate Program reflects the institute’s commitment toand definition of leadership as inclusive andparticipatory, and linked to an obligation towork for positive social transformation (Hartman 1999). Although feminist leadership isnot a commonly used term, the institute’s definition of women’s leadership implies feminism, and has similarities with Leila Rupp’sdefinition of feminism as “a worldview thatranks gender a primary category of analysis orexplanatory factor for understanding the unequal and unjust distribution of power and resources in society” (Rupp 1981, 283).Developing such a worldview can enable people engaged in leadership development notonly to better understand women’s continuinglack of access to power and resources, but mayalso stimulate them to challenge the lack ofaccess of other social groups as well. Withsuch an approach, gender becomes a categoryof analysis for seeing and understanding theskewed nature of how positional leaders areselected and rise to power, and how resourcesare distributed.Leadership development for women, then,can be a subversive educational tool. It canenlighten corporate women about gender dynamics in organizations that keep womenfrom getting ahead, for example, or attractyoung college women who might not otherwise consider taking a women’s studies class tocome into the discipline through the entrypoint of leadership. Stark figures aboutwomen’s underrepresentation in governanceand politics around the world, in officer positions, or as board members in American corporations can stimulate a commitment to theadvancement of women’s leadership (seeRhode 2003). Leadership education situatedin a women’s studies framework encouragesstudents to question existing social structures,particularly as they are made aware of thepaucity of women as decision makers in publicoffice, in institutions of higher education,business, and other social arenas. It also

Leadersprovides a forum for critically investigatingwomen’s historical and contemporary roles asleaders in communities, in the home, in grassroots groups, and in volunteer organizations.Leadership has not been a key concern inthe field of women’s studies, which for thepast quarter century has concentrated moreon exploring the connections between race,class, and gender, and critiquing the socialconstructions that have negatively impactedwomen’s lives. Social change was key to thedevelopment of women’s studies, however,which began in American higher education asthe academic arm of the women’s movement.A women’s leadership development programcan insert leadership as both theory and practice more centrally into the women’s studiescurriculum and research agenda, while it promotes liberal learning by making connectionsbetween theories about women’s lives andpolicies and actions that impact their lives.for theTwenty-firstCenturyThe Leadership Scholars ProgramA two-year, nineteen-credit program for undergraduate women, the Leadership ScholarsCertificate Program combines classroomlearning, research and policy internships, andindependent social action projects to give participants a distinctive learning experiencethat is at once theoretical and practical. Theprogram seeks to expand students’ understanding of leadership, policy making, andsocial change and to encourage them to takeresponsibility for making change. Desired program outcomes are linked to research thatsuggests women leaders share common traitsin the areas of leadership skills, interpersonalskills, problem-solving and decision-makingabilities, and personal organization and timemanagement (Aurora and Caliper 2005).Fifteen to eighteen students are chosen in aselective process each year, so that aboutthirty-five students participate annually in thetwo-year sequence. Although a small programin a large research university, it is a replicablemodel for other institutions of higher education and a laboratory for examining what happens when, to use Elizabeth Tidball’s phrase,women are taken seriously. Her philosophyRutgers, the StateUniversity of New JerseyWINTER 2006 LIBERAL EDUCATION23

T O P I CF E A T U R E Dabout women’s colleges applies as well to thiswomen’s leadership education program:What works for women resides within thewholeness of the environment, originatingfrom a mission in which women are takenseriously. It has to do with creating a community in which women have a clear senseof ownership, knowing that they make adifference and knowing that they matterand that they truly belong and always will.What is essential is not to be found inquantifiable categories. (Tidball 1999, 140)The four goals of the program are consistentwith the goals of liberal education in their emphasis on high-quality undergraduate education, as well as welfare of the community andquestions of the common good. They are (1) tooffer students an opportunity to deepen theirunderstanding of leadership and women’s contributions to social change; (2) to enhancestudents’ leadership abilities through a concentrated academic sequence and extracurricularofferings; (3) to provide an opportunity for students to learn the issues and problems specificto their disciplinary fields and to develop waysto implement a social action project; and (4) tobuild bridges between the university and thecommunity by connecting women students withcommunity representatives and women leadersand by providing career-building internships incorporations and nonprofit organizations.Students in the program earn a certificatein women’s leadership from the Departmentof Women’s and Gender Studies and the Institute for Women’s Leadership that complementstheir baccalaureate degrees. This kind of education addresses the estrangement of liberal andprofessional studies by bringing together highachieving students who share a commitmentto both community welfare and women’s leadership for social change with majors as diverseas comparative literature and marketing, history and cell biology, and the visual arts andphysics. Using gender as the lens and women’sleadership as the tool, they explore the policyareas that are embedded in their disciplinesand that cross disciplines: health, law, poverty,politics, work, human rights, arts/literature/media, and education. Students select one ofthese “tracks” to follow through the program,and all of their work in the two-year sequencerelates to it. This interdisciplinary learninghas a strong connection to policy; it might becalled applied women’s studies.24LIBERAL EDUCATION WINTER 2006Like liberal education, the Leadership Scholars Program aims to be representative of ourdiverse democracy. Students in the programare racially diverse: over the past seven years,40 percent of the students enrolled in the program have been women of color. This reflectsthe rich racial and ethnic diversity of the Rutgers student body, and adds to the multiplicityof perspectives that inform and enrich theprogram. It could also suggest that leadershiptraining is attractive to minority students,who face the double challenge of bias on thebasis of gender and race, and may recognizeleadership development as something theyneed even more than do white students.The program structureThe program includes three main components:coursework, an internship/field site experience, and a social action project. It includesfive required women’s studies classes, including a seminar on women and leadership, inwhich leadership is studied through intensivereadings in United States and global women’shistory, combined with theoretical and structural studies of gender in society, as well ascase studies of women leaders.The internship seminar, taken in the secondsemester, focuses on women, work, and community and combines theoretical readingsabout women in the workplace with a practical experience in a work or field site. It exposes students to issues women face in theworkplace, including the wage gap, the challenge of having both families and careers, andthe ways that gender schemas often disadvantage working women. The seminar also reinforces the importance of young women’scivic engagement and participation in thepolitical process.Organizations that sponsor our interns include local nonprofits such as a domestic violence shelter, a health clinic that serves thelargely Mexican immigrant community of NewBrunswick, New Jersey (where the university islocated), and an institute that teaches art to underserved urban high school students. Such internship placements help bridge the gapbetween university and community, while developing students’ ethical capacities and senseof civic purpose. With the help of a foundationcommitted to youth civic engagement, the institute is making these community partnershipspart of the ongoing structure of the program.