Students in the 340-level course ‘Ethnography of Research in Organizations’ participated in Levitt Leadership Institute (LLI) programming over spring break. LLI provides a two-week intensive leadership training program that seeks to help students recognize, develop, and practice the kinds of leadership skills that are essential for creating personal and societal change.
The first week of LLI took place on Hamilton’s campus, while the second week brought students to Washington D.C. 25 students participated in the initiative’s first week, and 20 students participated in Week 2 of the program. This year’s LLI was led by recently retired Professor of Education Susan Mason.
LLI’s first week focused on improving team building, understanding what roles individuals play in a team, and developing communication skills with team members. The curriculum emphasized the listening component of communication. Students learned to listen actively, so when it is their turn to speak in a conversation they are able to respond to or acknowledge what their conversational partner said.
“You have influence over others when you don’t realize it,” said Anna Neumann ’21, an LLI participant. “Leadership without explicit authority still exists and can be even more powerful sometimes than if you happen to have a leadership position.”
Students spent much of the first week practicing interview skills to prepare for interviews with various local leaders at the end of the week. LLI has fostered relationships with people in Oneida Country who work in government, nonprofit organizations, school systems, and other local colleges. These local leaders have in some way impacted their community through the organization they work for. Among the local leaders with whom students in LLI had a chance to interview in small groups were Utica Mayor Robert Palmieri and Hamilton Director of Campus Safety Frank Coots.
The second week of LLI featured a trip to the nation’s capital. Students chose from a variety of political groups, then spent the next four days traveling with their group around the D.C. area, interviewing leaders who work in organizations in their specified area of interest.
The leaders the students interviewed included the Wildlife Programs Director at National Geographic, the founder of Vox Media, senior consultants at Deloitte, and U.S. congressman Anthony Brindisi, among others. Students on average were able to conduct 7–10 interviews throughout their time in D.C. These interviews averaged 45 minutes to an hour in length.
After talking to a plethora of leaders, Neumann says she was struck by how they viewed success and failure.
“People in our generation can often be really paralyzed by the thought of failure,” she said. “I don’t feel good about failing or thinking about failing so I might not take a risk. But these leaders are relentlessly incremental and really clearly define their goals, and then commit to present action to achieve their goals.
“And then if they don’t achieve those metrics of success, they own their failure. They were so positive. They were like obstacles are just opportunities. And then they totally learn from their mistakes.”
Nicole Taylor ’19 was a TA for LLI this year. She first participated in LLI as a sophomore. Taylor is passionate about civic engagement, and as a sophomore she was struck by the low voter turnout rate among Hamilton students. She decided that she wanted to work to promote better civic engagement on campus. Eventually, she founded HamVotes, a student-run organization whose aim is to get more Hamilton community members to register to vote and cast their ballot on election day. She credits LLI for helping her create HamVotes.
“I had this big idea. But I had no idea how to do it for real,” Taylor said. “So I joined LLI because I thought it would help me figure out how to accomplish this goal. And ultimately it did. When I had completed LLI I felt like I had the leadership skills and had developed as a human being to make myself more capable of starting an organization and doing something that was going to have large social impact.”
Taylor has worked as a TA for LLI during her last two years at Hamilton. She says that she has used many of the skills she learned while participating in LLI as a sophomore to be successful in her role as an LLI TA her junior and senior years.
“Sometimes I helped lead discussions and students would be having a bit of trouble getting one of the concepts we were talking about or figuring out how it applies in real life. Given my years of experience, I was able to provide different insights and bring prior experience to the table,” Taylor said.
The students in the Ethnography of Research class will use their experiences from LLI to write an essay about a particular aspect of leadership they find interesting, analyzing how that aspect of leadership is approached across the spectrum of leaders they interviewed both in Oneida County and Washington, D.C.
