Chapter I:
Anni Amberg, Student, CBL Fellow
"I'm a Frances Perkins scholar, and I'm a senior this year."
Asinath Rusibamayila, WCL Student Leadership Grantee
"Very few students in Tanzania are able to come to the United States compared to other African countries, but I was very fortunate enough to receive a scholarship."
Kate Rindy, Associate Director of Annual Fund & Special Gifts
"I returned to school in fall of 2006 after a thirty-five year leave of absence,"
Mika Weissbuch, SAW Assistant and Mentor
"The reason I came to Mount Holyoke is actually because of the Weissman Center."
Marcia Schenck, WCL Student Leadership Grantee, SAW Mentor
"So, my name is Marcia and I'm actually from Germany."
Karina Reid, WCL Student Leadership Grantee
"I'm from Jamaica."
(Voice-over)
"Coming from Norway."
"I'm from the south."
"I was born in Puerto Rico and was raised there."
(Title) The Weissman Center brings world leaders to the students...
Naomi Tutu, Lecture Series Speaker: Bearing Witness
"And that is the truth that leads to reconciliation. That leads to a learning from history. That leads to us seeing our history, not simply as something that makes us proud, but as something that teaches us how to live and how not to live."
Marcia Schenck (WCL Student Leadership Grantee, SAW Mentor)
"When I think back, you know, in twenty, thirty years to my college time, I will remember things like Naomi Tutu coming to campus. She not only gave a great public speech, but she also led a workshop on racism for the entire community, which included not only students and teachers but the entire community, and they really came from all different walks of life. So, that discussion that was created was amongst the most honest that I have seen, and it had a huge impact on me."
Applause.
Chapter II:
(Title) The Weissman Center opens doors.
Kate Rindy, Associate Director of Annual Fund & Special Gifts
"I remember many conversations with Lois Brown, but I particularly remember one of the first. I saw her in Blanchard. I was quite shy, and Lois, in her astute way, I think, picked up on that and managed a way to sit down with me. And in just a few sentences, Lois managed to communicate what the Weissman Center is about in many ways, which was to say: 'What do you dream about, Kate? What do you want to be and do in your life?'"
Elise Marifian, SAW Mentor
"You come here and there's this dynamic of... everybody else is just as strong as you. It's sort of intimidating. And, what I appreciate about the Weissman Center is the emphasis is on your personal development and how you have the tools to make a difference and achieve your goals. And they're here to help you bring out the best in you.
Marcia Schenck, WCL Student Leadership Grantee and SAW Mentor
"I have been a leader in many existing organizations and in existing structures, but what the Weissman Center really did support is help you to be the change, as Gandhi so nicely said, "Be the change you want to see," and what the Weissman Center does support - you have an idea and you have a decision, and the Weissman center is here to help you make that a reality."
(Title) Community Based Learning Program
(Title) Speaking, Arguing and Writing program
Elise Marifian, SAW Mentor
"Hearing again and again that you have these valuable tools you can use to achieve the goals you want... After hearing it a bunch of times, you start to believe it, and you start to take a leadership one-on-one workshop... "
Chapter III:
(Title) Leadership Grants
Karina Reid, WCL Student Leadership Grantee
"I'm from Jamaica where diabetes is a growing concern, so I am interested in researching this area. The Weissman Center grant allowed me to attend a biomedical conference. Before I went, I was like enclosed in a box, because when I went there I heard things I had never heard of before, things I can't even pronounce right now. This [Leadership] grant enables women to step out of their shells, step out of themselves, and see the bigger picture, which allows them to realize that it's not just about them. There's a bigger community out there."
(Voice-over)
"The Weissman Center Grant provides a real vote of confidence. It's a way for them to be recognized, not only for the potential of their project but for the bold and ambitious nature of their ideas. So a student can come with a project that is as local as a conference that will enhance her leadership skills or she can travel around the world to study a community and engage with them in a way that will demonstrate her leadership potential. So, students get a vote of confidence, they get funding that supports their leadership development, and they also get an invitation from us to come back and share with our larger Mount Holyoke community the ways in which they have both grown and how they have reflected on their leadership."
Karina Reid, WCL Student Leadership Grantee
"And I hope to contribute what I have learned from this research to the research currently being done in Jamaica, and I hope to possibly find a cure for diabetes. Even though it's very ambitious."
Chapter IV:
Kate Rindy, Associate Director of Annual Fund & Special Gifts
"And in one class in particular, we were asked to speak before the class. And we had a mentor who was working with each of us to improve our speaking skills. And by the end of that class--some of whom, in the beginning said, 'I don't know if I can stand up before you and speak'--"
(Title) SAW: Speaking, Arguing and Writing
Kirbi Kidd, SAW Mentor
"SAW is in the library, on the forth floor. It is a place where students can come into the center and sign up for fifty-minute sessions. They can come to talk about anything that is needed for their paper. Whether that is, well, if they just need a sounding board or if they need to talk about brainstorming or really critiquing or possibly grammar."
Megan Durling, SAW Administrative Fellow and Mentor
"The SAW staff learn about the politics of mentoring, and about the history behind writing center theory. And they learn a lot about the academic institutions in which they are operating. They learn about the powerful discourses that are occurring so that they can learn to navigate and negotiate."
Kirbi Kidd, SAW Mentor
"You know, arguing. We are always trying to figure out the arguing component in SAW. We have started to learn that arguing is more about progress than winning."
(Voice-over)
"The speaking, arguing and writing program is a pioneering program. When it was established in 1999 it was the first in the country to recognize the power of peer mentoring and attention to speaking and attention to writing. The notion of argument bridges the two and brings them together. Certainly, in a conversation about leadership, we know that the ability to express one's ideas with confidence, to write persuasively, and to argue with passion, has everything to do with transforming the world."
Mika Weissbuch, SAW Assistant and Mentor
"And this one student I had, she was really nervous about getting up in front of an audience. We worked on developing her ideas, and by the end of the session she was really confident in what she wanted to say, but she was still really nervous... And I saw her in the dorm the next day she came up to me and said, 'Mika! I did it! And it was so good and I was so excited about it. And everyone said that it was great and I seemed confident.' "
Yedalis Ruiz, WCL Consultant and CBL Mentor
"I didn't think that it would be such a life-changing experience, but it really was. And I continue to tell students to go to SAW because there they will get the skills they need, and the confidence."
Chapter V:
(Title) CBL: Community-Based Learning
(Voice-over)
"Community-based learning enables students to build a bridge between the classroom and their community. It enables them to see lessons in action. So many students bring their own ambition and their own hope for the world, and they learn about this in many meaningful and practical ways, but the additional component: the opportunity to connect with communities that are either in crisis or are thriving, gives them the chance to bring a sense of reality to their education and allows them to really live the theory. "
Kirbi Kidd, SAW Mentor
"Given that the Weissman Center intentionally has a community-based learning program where people can get out there in the community and really see that what you're talking about in class is a real problem. It is not like you can just open a book, close a book and you're done."
Chapter VI:
(Title) Awareness, Training, Passion, Action
Megan Durling, SAW Administrative Fellow and Mentor
"The Weissman Center is trying to really create a space where students can decide what leadership is to them, and often times it comes out as activism driven by passion. And, in this case, they share this passion with other people."
(Voice-over)
"All of the students are amazing. They are strong, intelligent, articulate women who have this energy of leadership."
Kathryn Jones, WCL Student Leadership Grantee
"I've really learned how to take initiative. I've learned who to talk to, how to get things done, how to set up a conference, how to have certain people do certain things: how to delegate tasks. So in that case, it's been incredibly useful. I've learned skills that I guess I can't even put names to at this point."
Nina Nedrebo, WCL Student Leadership Grantee
"Really, once you start contacting people, asking for grants, getting people together and getting people excited about something, you realize the barriers you had begin to fall. The really powerful thing is the vision you have."
Jonathan Kozol, Lecture Series Speaker: Law & Dis/Order
"Everyone I know who has ever taken a risk for an ethical cause, and lost their jobs have always found a better one. The ones I feel sorry for are the ones that really bite their tongues, who subdue their beliefs and never know the thrill of struggle or the taste of victory."
Chapter VII:
(Title) "Go forth and do great things..." --Mary Lyon
Lois Brown, Director of the Weissman Center
"When Mary Lyon founded this college in 1837, she did so in a time when expectations for what it was that women could accomplish were so fraught and in some ways so narrow, and she started this college with a challenge, a challenge of the students, for the world, which was: send your daughters to me, let us educate them and see them educate each other. And let us see them go out into the world to attempt great things and to do great things. In the twenty-first century, we see Mount Holyoke leading the way for women's education. We're a school that really draws the world in and sends our students out into the world.
"There is a pressing need, an urgent need for women to be at the forefront of every conversation, of every decision, of every moment that will change the course of history. We need women's voices; we need women's confidence; we need women's optimism, insight and wisdom. When we think about leadership, we cannot separate that out from the liberal arts. Mary Lyon knew that in 1837. Harriet Weissman and Paul Weissman knew that in 1999. And as we celebrate the 10th Anniversary of the center, we recognize that wisdom and that forward thinking that has everything to do with not only motivating the students that are here, but really calling the students who are yet to arrive."
Chapter VIII:
(Title) With heartfelt thanks and enormous appreciation for the vision, commitment, and generosity of our founding donors: Harriet Levine Weissman '58 and Paul M. Weissman.
Harriet Weissman, Founder of the Weissman Center for Leadership
"Well, we believe in people and we believe in young people. In this generation, we have seen extraordinary idealism. They do want to make a different and I think that's so much a part of Mount Holyoke's mission."
