The Essay

Here's the essay I wrote for my application. Let me know what you think.

Higher Education Program Applicant

I was presented with a unique and possibly lifelong challenge on the day I was to register for my sophomore year in high school. My caring mother sent me to school with a list of classes I should take to prepare for attending college. Upon looking at this list my high school counselor said, “These are interesting classes. But these are not the classes you should take since you most likely won’t be going to college.”

Fast forward nine years later to my senior year at Western Washington University-- I elaborated more of the details of the “Won’t be Going to College” story on a panel addressing the perseverance of students of color through higher education. Through my work as a student leader and community youth organizer I was the only student asked to join the panel of academics. The keynote panel was presented to a regional conference of approximately 200 Washington state high school counselors. In the middle of the audience, unnamed, was my high school counselor.

In reviewing the Educational Leadership and Policy Studies Graduate Program in Higher Education, I firmly believe it will help my quest to resolve systematic short falls in the educational system as highlighted in my personal story. I have made education and leadership my life’s work. I passionately seek new ways to inspire and empower community. Utilizing the abundant research of academia already available, I try to make education and leadership accessible to the common person. A core value I hold dictates that the responsibility to disseminate knowledge into the community is held with the individual attaining it. The ideas of education and leadership should not be elitist but readily available to the whole of the community. These ideas have been opportunities for me to be creative, strengthen community, and responsibly organize and contribute to educational institutions.

Within my Coast Salish community there is a metaphor that exacts the idea that Native people walk in two worlds. The first world is the cultural and traditional knowledge of indigenous affiliation. An example of this knowledge is a teaching I received as a young person. It prescribes that balance is a necessity of life and everyone has a specific role in the community to maintain it. The second world in the metaphor is the non-Native society. This world can be described as being individualistic and competitive in nature. The ‘walking in two worlds’ metaphor denotes the idea of two worlds coming together in a manner that an individual has to learn how to exist in both. I have honed my ideas and experiences in education and leadership by drawing inspiration from this metaphor. It is my resolve to draw the two worlds closer and have each exist comfortably together so neither world gives up its identity or degrades the other. This can be described as cultural brokering. As a cultural broker I see myself as a person who can successfully translate the wisdoms of the two worlds through a deep understanding of both. The attainment of education is one avenue where the Native community has been able to bring the worlds to a closer existence. I believe my further education, in both worlds, will lead me to clearly define and culturally broker the best knowledge of the two communities.

As a student leader I was acknowledged as a founder of the Ethnic Student Center of Western Washington University which opened its doors in 1991. What warranted the acknowledgement for the student leaders of that era was the ethic they held toward bringing their home communities to campus: Walking in two worlds. As students of the institution and our cultural backgrounds, it was vital to the process of creating the center that both were equally honored. While we did open a center, not one person could foresee the resonating cultural force the center would come to represent. Since then I have progressed from student to administrator, serving in the professional role for the past eight years. The mission of the Ethnic Student Center is to provide a safe and supportive environment for historically underrepresented groups and allies while providing cultural and educational programs. I hold this mission as a very personal quest to assist in Western’s institutional growth. Additionally, the Ethnic Student Center has served as an outstanding examination into education and leadership providing me excellent preparation for graduate study.

In regard to additional relevant experience, in the last year I have had the opportunity to work with a nationwide initiative generated by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation entitled Kellogg Leadership for Community Change (KLCC). The focus of the initiative is to stimulate shared leadership within the community. Shared leadership can be characterized as the opportunity where all community members are considered in the decision making process. Specifically KLCC hopes the implementation of shared leadership can lead to intergenerational partnerships that advance just communities. An intergenerational partnership is the idea of working across generations to create change and improvement within the community. Although seemingly simplistic, it is easy to observe within the power structures of society that there is a clear disconnect between youth, adults, and elders in any decision making process. As I have studied the idea of shared leadership and intergenerational partnership I have realized that higher education can and must play a particular role. As educators we whisk students through the educational system. However, this is a crucial stage of development as these students are making a transition from youth to adulthood and entering professions. It is very critical that we impart during the educational process the idea of shared leadership and intergenerational collaboration. Doing so would help to address many of the frustrations citizens face in participating and owning local to international societal issues. In my work I strive to stimulate youth to develop leadership skills and find voice. In addition, I work with adults and elders to evaluate power that has traditionally been held by their respective groups. This work has been an exciting time that I feel would only be enhanced in my studies with the EDLPS program.

Although my experience is limited, I have a strong interest in studying the ideas behind problem-based learning. My thirst for research into problem-based learning is in its similarities to my experiences in service learning and experiential education. Serving on the board for the Center for Service Learning at Northwest Indian College has allowed me to gain knowledge about the growing pedagogy of service learning. I was fortunate to assist in coordinating the Summit on Indigenous Service Learning. The focus of the gathering stressed the need for academia and community partners to have a strong understanding of the community of which they want to serve. Service learning provides a student to take academic coursework and apply it to a practical learning experience that meets a real community need. This speaks to another value that I hold deeply: Education is only valuable when applied to community betterment. Service learning greatly epitomizes my philosophy on this value. Similarly, experiential education allows an opportunity where an individual or a group grows through an experience (whether real or metaphoric exercise), typically characterized as ‘learning by doing.’ As a student and purveyor of student leadership development service learning and experiential education are styles that I frequently utilize to impart knowledge. Allowing individuals to utilize their relevant personal experience to analyze a situation is paramount to my way of thinking. Interestingly problem-based learning, service learning and experiential education allow for growth not only for the individual but also as a collective. I believe that every opportunity for collective growth strengthens community as a whole. In my work I constantly draw upon metaphor and use challenging, open-ended questions to help groups learn. This allows the recipient to personalize and invest in learning to analyze the problem and develop a solution. Following this process hopefully the student will reflect on the experience and apply critical analysis to solve larger systemic problems. Although the styles of problem-based learning, service learning and experiential education have been around for many years, they largely remain an unknown educational treasure to the general community. There are many avenues that communities can help themselves grow through the use of these tools. A focus my graduate studies will examine and develop processes to facilitate the dissemination of these pedagogies into the community.

Ya’e tenges is a Lummi language phrase that roughly translates into ‘take me along with you’ or ‘we go together.’ It is a phrase that is typically used when one is requesting mentorship from another. Additionally, it can be used where an individual regards his personal work as the work of the whole community. A more contemporary description phrase would be ‘working for the people.’ I thought of the phrase ‘Ya’e tenges’ from my language after reviewing the Graduate Program in Higher Education Handbook. Particularly resonating for me was bullet two of the program’s mission:

Like all of education, leadership in a college or university is a moral endeavor that requires leaders to consider the larger implications of their work within the context of broader social challenges and dilemmas. (GPHE, pg. 5)

To my way of thinking, to fulfill this mission is to ya’e tenges, to be concerned for the greater good even while acting alone. I have been very fortunate with the opportunities presented to me in my life and career. I have progressed along the educational field and have defined a lot of my own innovations along the way. Consequently, these experiences have prepared me to embark on to my next plateau. I am at a point where I should move to another level of educational leadership. This would allow me the opportunity to set a beneficial tone for the educational community. My short term goal is to join an institution as faculty to create an academic program with a strong emphasis on practical student leadership development. In addition, I have a future goal of developing an educational institution that would strongly support my philosophies in educational equity, cultural brokering, intergenerational shared leadership, problem-based learning, service learning, and experiential education. It is my hope that such an institution would serve as a model and catalyst to improve the education field. Much of the coursework in my desired degree would greatly enhance this possibility. Since I have similar interests, I look forward to studying and contributing to the courses required for completion of the doctoral degree. In critically examining the Educational Leadership and Policy Studies Graduate Program in Higher Education I have determined that the program would be an obvious choice in my progression toward my set goals.