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.
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| 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.
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