Harry T Wilks Leadership Institute

"Leadership education ... must be public. This means students must be given the opportunity to link theory and practice — to understand that knowledge alone is powerless; it only becomes meaningful when people act on it. Our experience with the Wilks Institute has shown us that when leadership education is connected with community engagement, it becomes clear that leadership can transform publics as well as individuals. An underlying assumption of the work of the Wilks Institute is that by educating a new generation for citizen leadership, we can also partner with our students in the revitalization of public life."

(Nicholas Longo and Marguerite Shaffer, "Leadership Education and the Revitalization of Public Life," in Civic Education in Higher Education: Concepts and Practices, p. 172)

The Wilks Leadership Institute supports courses on public and community leadership across the curriculum. Our flagship initiative and first 'think tank' was Acting Locally, a multi-year community-based research and learning project in American Studies. Acting Locally is a thematic sequence that will be actively recruiting again in Spring semester 2010. Our second "think tank" is a minor in community-based planning for environmental sustainability, called Shaping Sustainable Communities.