February 1, 2018

Interdisciplinary Work

Another post from Reba Juetten. The editor would like to thank her for her generous contributions to this blog.

            Boreas, in Greek mythology, is the personification of the north wind, a winged, bearded, and strong god.  In the mythology of the city of St. Paul, his place in the pantheon is upgraded to King of the Winds, instigator of the St. Paul Winter Carnival, and direct rival of Vlucanus Rex—god of fire.  At the University of Minnesota, Boreas is a leadership program for graduate students housed at the Institute on the Environment.  This Boreas Leadership Program is named for King Boreas of St. Paul.
Photo from the St. Paul Winter Carnival Website: https://www.wintercarnival.com/legend/legend-characters/

            The mythology of Boreas might appear to be a fun and peripheral back story to the content of the Boreas Leadership Program, but I think it points to the central purpose of the program and its role in graduate education.  So often, academia asks us to be placeless—to create knowledge that is transferable across the country and around the world, to be part of national and international societies, to be in conversation with ideas and individuals geographically dispersed from here.  The Boreas name points to a core aspect of the program—its essentially local nature.  While it teaches transferrable skills, Boreas represents leadership as something that happens here and now in one’s local community.  They type of graduate student Boreas supports is the one who is actively working here (in the specific place that is Minnesota), arguably the only kind of leader.  Would it make sense to call a similar program Boreas somewhere else? No, but we aren’t somewhere else. We’re all Minnesotans now.
      So practically speaking, what is Boreas?  It is an interdisciplinary leadership program for graduate students and postdocs from any college at the University of Minnesota.  It is a combination of workshops that teach concrete skills and community building events designed to inspire and support leadership.  The workshops cover a variety of useful topics well, including hosting a productive meeting (or canceling an unproductive one), building an excellent presentation, and negotiation basics.  I have found almost all of workshops I’ve been to useful, either as a means to improving my professional or personal effectiveness.  The community building events, which happen on Thursday evenings, are my favorite part of the program, however.  Throughout the semester, these meetings (complete with refreshments) offer an opportunity for students to envision their future careers as leaders, either by participating in student-led sessions or by meeting a guest speaker who is a local environmental leader in some capacity as an artist, business-owner, elected official, or scientist, among others.  Without fail, these meetings have left me inspired to develop a career with greater personal impact, whether that is inside the academy or outside it.