For Faculty & Staff
While much of the Wurtele Center for Leadership’s programming is geared toward students, we nevertheless strive to live into our mission to equip all members of the Smith community with the creativity, courage and collaborative capacity to lead positive change. We believe strongly that in order to build these skills in our students, we need to engage as learners ourselves as we seek to model collaborative leadership. We also hope to serve as a resource to faculty and staff members who are interested in exploring new ways of building collaborative leadership skills in their students. Below are some ways our center engages with faculty and staff.
The Art of Leading Teams Lunch Series
Join the Wurtele Center for Leadership for this facilitated monthly series of conversations about what it means to work collaboratively in a team at Smith College. Open to all faculty and staff, regardless of title or position. Most sessions are held in-person with a virtual attendance option; lunch is provided for in-person attendees who RSVP.
See a pdf of the schedule, or click on the tabs below. Sign up for email related to the Art of Leading Teams on this Google form.
“Thank you all so much for facilitating this amazing series! I often was on the fence about joining because I was ‘so busy with everything else,’ but every session I was able to join gave me new tools and connections across campus, and I left so glad I carved out this time for professional and personal development.”
Student Pedagogical Partners
The Wurtele Center designs and facilitates a series of workshops for students participating in the Sherrerd Center for Teaching and Learning’s Student Pedagogical Partner program. The workshops provide students with a space in which to reflect as a cohort on their experience as a pedagogical partner and to explore what leadership looks like in this specific context. Past workshop topics include:
- Owning your Role and Challenging Imposter Phenomenon
- Tools for Facilitating Discussions, Navigating Classroom Dynamics, and Intentional Design of Learning Experiences
- The Science of How People Learn
- Reflections on the Pedagogical Partner Experience
“Thank you so much for your support and guidance during this past semester with the Pedagogical Partnership. Our monthly sessions were such a joy to attend, and I always felt inspired talking to you and the group. The time was perfectly divided between reflecting, writing, sharing, and discussing. Additionally, all of the tools you used in the meetings (as simple as the great icebreakers) were very engaging and useful.”
Ways to Partner with the Wurtele Center
The Wurtele Center for Leadership is available for consultation, collaboration, and support for any faculty members whose courses (or other modes of students engagement) are actively team- or group-oriented, and who are interested in exploring how they might work more intentionally with students to develop their collaborative skills in order to lead projects and initiatives forward. Our curricular engagement with faculty has ranged from individual consultation and curricular co-design to guest teaching arrangements to resource sharing.
For more information, please contact the Wurtele Center Assistant Director, Megan Lyster, and/or check out the Resources page of our website.
The Wurtele Center for Leadership also collaborates widely with a range of campus partners to support the collaborative leadership development of students and staff through co-curricular or work experiences. This includes:
- Ongoing training and development partnerships with student leaders in Residential Life, House Leadership and Student Affairs
- Support of student club and organization leaders
- Collaboration with other centers on campus to develop programs, talks and workshops
- A monthly student intern leadership enrichment series open to student interns and work-study students across campus
- Assistance with meeting design, retreat design and facilitation of team engagement for other units on campus
If you are interested in collaborating with the Wurtele Center in these or other ways, please reach out!