Harry T Wilks Leadership Institute

On August the 29th the Wilks Scholars and staff traveled to Pyramid Hill for a day of team building. Pyramid Hill is a public sculpture park in Hamilton, where Harry T Wilks displays his sculpture collection on a vast campus of 265 acres. Mr.Wilks also resides on the campus in his home that he designed himself. The house is built into a hill, evident only by the glass pyramid that emerges from its peak, and after which the park is named.

During their visit, the new Shaping Sustainable Communities cohort developed goals and expectations for their program and Acting Locally reviewed their previous semester of work and formulated ideas and goals for this fall.

Mr.Wilks joined the group for lunch and shared his motivations for providing the funding to create the Wilks Institute at Miami. His stories and ideas were both entertaining and inspirational. The students greatly enjoyed hearing him speak and felt lucky to have had the opportunity. After lunch Mr.Wilks gave the group a tour of the new museum as well as his home.

The trip to Pyramid Hill was the first time the institute was able to introduce the two current think tank programs to one another. Though involved in different programs, we hope that they can contribute to each others experiences and build relationships both friendly and intellectual. Overall the trip to Pyramid Hill was everything we hoped for.