Enriching the student experience: highlights reel

In October, I participated in the Leadership in the Age of Personalization Summit, hosted by the Glenn Llopis Group and sponsored by my alma mater, Fairfield University (#GoStags). During a session on “Enriching the Student Experience,” we considered both the purpose of education and the lived experiences that students bring with them to learning and to their careers.

Among the things that my co-panelists and I shared, I’m glad the highlights include a great line from me (if I do say so myself), that “we can offer people better ways to belong, and better things to belong to.” That’s a direct quote from Resmaa Menakem’s My Grandmother’s Hands. While Menakem wrote in the context of understanding inherited trauma, addressing systemic racism, and establishing social justice, his insight speaks directly to the ways educational institutions - from early childhood through higher ed - need to change.

There’s a particular challenge here: we can offer new and just ways to belong, but individuals need to develop a capacity for belonging. If one’s education doesn’t attend to that, then a school’s mission and ability to impact (and maybe even transform) our culture fall flat.