Let me start off this blog by saying that I have loved being in the PLA and I hope that more students continue to have the awesome experience I’ve had. But the PLA is not perfect by any means—it has enormous room for improvement. I think just one vital change to the PLA would drastically improve it as an organization, resulting in students who think more critically, create actual impact, and represent Penn State in a noticeably positive way. That change?
We need to actually do things instead of just talking about them!!
Ask yourself this question: what do we actually do in this program? Your answers are probably “class, trips, and blogs.” We have class where we’ll talk about what’s going on in our community or the world, and sometimes we’ll have speakers. We go on trips where the same thing happens, we have speakers who raise ideas about our communities or the world and we discuss those ideas. And then we further discuss those ideas in the blogs.
The common theme here is learning and discussion. And that’s obviously important, I’m not saying that should go away. But have you noticed what’s not here? ACTUALLY DOING ANYTHING ABOUT THE ISSUES WE’VE LEARNED AND DISCUSSED. Seriously, think about that! With very few exceptions, the PLA is all talk and no action. And if I asked you to describe a leader, would you use the phrase “all talk and no action?” We could be engaging in community service or starting organizations or getting politically involved. Literally doing anything would be better than what we do now, which is nothing.
I know some of you will say “but the policy paper!” Yes, we write a policy paper that is focused on some issue. The biggest problem with it is that it’s usually 100% theoretical—no tangible outcomes emerge from the writing of that paper. You present it to Barron, sigh because it’s done, and then tell the class below you that it sucks. It’s a massive, complex and glorified blog.
Now I know that one sophomore group actually decided to create a club focused around their policy paper topic, and that’s awesome! I encourage more things like that to happen in the PLA! But the reason you can’t point to this and say “see, the PLA does make us do things!” is because those students took the initiative themselves to start their own club—that action wasn’t required of them. These students did something exceptional and meaningful because they operated outside the official parameters of the program. When exceptional outcomes are more frequently the result of operating outside of your program rather than within it, your program is more of a hindrance than a boon. you must ask yourself why that is.
There is one time I feel like I had a meaningful impact through the PLA. The Spring ’16 trip was a bus tour of important Civil Rights locations in the south. After visiting the town of Selma, we all donated some of our leftover per diem money to help the school and community. This is great, but there are two problems with it. (1) Donating money is the least effortful way that privileged students can give back or impact a community, and (2) it was actually proposed by a PLA student, totally uncoordinated with the PLA leadership! So just like before, something exceptional and meaningful happened not because the PLA required it, but because students took initiative on their own.
And look, obviously the two examples above were entirely facilitated by the PLA—they wouldn’t have happened if we weren’t in the program. The program put us together and in the physical and fiscal situation to make impact possible. But I think the PLA needs to redesign its programming such that exceptional and meaningful outcomes are the result of official PLA projects, rather than unexpected surprises students voluntarily take on. Here are some very basic suggestions on how to do that.
- Instead of spending an entire semester writing a theoretical policy paper, maybe the first half of the semester could be spent learning generally about a couple of topics impacting the PSU community. Then the second half of the semester is doing something practical about them. Think about how much time you’d have to impact the community if you weren’t spending all those hours in class…
- The class led by the Honors College Dean could function in a similar way. Maybe some classes are discussion-based or have guest speakers, but others can focus on what could be done in the community to change or improve that. For example, instead of talking about sexual assault for an 11th straight class, you could put some of that knowledge and critical thinking brainpower to generating practical solutions students could implement.
- Juniors should not be doing nothing. They do nothing in the literal sense, except when they blog. Then they do nothing in the metaphorical sense.
- Instead of meeting up once a month to talk for two hours, seniors should spend that time doing community service. We will still wind up talking about important issues anyway, because we do that whether we’re asked to or not. Here are some service ideas:
- Volunteering at a state college prison (leading to eventual discussion of incarceration policies and their effects)
- Moderating a debate between two polarized groups, like Students for Trump/Hillary or Palestinian/Israeli organizations
- Volunteering with CAPS and brainstorming how to better address mental health issues on PSU
- There should always be at least one or two student liaisons to keep the PLA leadership updated on what we are feeling. This is the first year where I feel like we’ve had anything like that, and I appreciate it and want to see it continued.
These would all be so much more interesting and rewarding and meaningful than what we do now. In its current state, the PLA more closely resembles a privileged kids travel club than an organization creating leaders. We have many classes where we discuss the issues our community and world face, and then instead of doing things about those issues we take paid-for vacations. That is the most apt description of PLA I’ve seen and yet it’s probably not one we’d like to put on our website.
Let me reiterate this: I like the PLA a lot. I have made amazing friends through it and had some incredible experiences. I’m always going to be thankful for the opportunities it has afforded me. But the PLA has a lot of work to do if they want to be viewed as an organization that truly fosters leadership and generates impact. As it stands, the PLA is not much more than a privileged kids’ travel club. I would love for it to be more than that, I truly would! And I bet Penn State and President Barron and the Hintzes and all of us would love for it to be more than that, too! But it’s not. I don’t know if it ever will be, but this blog post is an attempt to change it.
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Edit: the strikethrough part. Muhammad pointed out that the program isn’t necessarily a hindrance, and I agree with that.
Matt, as always, thank you for being honest. I’m glad you feel comfortable voicing your opinion, and I’m glad you did – I can tell you have been thinking about this for awhile. I, like Muhammad, see the value in your points. Working and studying higher education, however, I have a slightly different vantage point to the PLA, and one of the things I have learned while in graduate school is that you must stick to the objectives and mission of your program. PLA’s objectives are listed on the “Current Leader” section of the Academy website. They all revolve around “learning and discussion,” which you note is most of what we do in the Academy – and that’s why. We’re following our mission. To shift beyond one’s mission (“mission creep”) is dangerous – it breeds more and more shifts beyond the boundary and almost always results in failure – of too much money and time spent, too much manpower used, on things that we shouldn’t be doing in the first place. So, if the PLA were to do much of what you suggested, we would be shifting beyond our mission and going down the path of mission creep. I have a personal example of what this looks like and why it’s bad.
Last year, a PLA-er posted a blog not unlike this one, calling for more PLA service engagements. Being new to PLA and to the field of higher education, I read those words and sprung into action. Forget the stated PLA objectives, I thought. Let’s do some mission creep and get our service on! With some help from the student, I started planning a PLA Day of Service. I got some local charities involved, and PLA students seemed interested in the event, dozens of students responding to my feeler email. When I sent out the official RSVP, only a handful of students signed up, and I had to scramble a little to make sure the final count was okay with the charities. As the Day of Service approached, all of those who had RSVP’d dropped out. I was of course disappointed but not at all surprised. I had been told not to do this in all my higher education classes – stick to the mission, stick to the mission, stick to the mission. Students only have so much time to give, and to ask them to give more than is already required is too much. It really hurt having to contact the charities and cancel our slots with them, but I could only really blame myself. I flew too close to the sun – and that’s what mission creep looks like. In this case, it was letting down third parties, some of whom could have really used our help.
In my opinion, PLA provides the scaffolding for good leadership – and it’s up to PLA students to climb it. Yes, we want self-initiative. It’s why we select driven students for the PLA. We expect to teach you critical thinking skills and then for you to apply these skills as you see fit. If that’s by participating in student government, awesome. If it’s by working in a lab, great. If it’s by doing a service learning spring trip, perfect. There’s no set prescription or way of being a leader. I personally do think giving back is important for leaders, but that’s just my opinion. There are others who would say the opposite – co-curricular activities are an unnecessary hindrance; leaders should aim for good grades in their classes and hold paid work positions to build their resume. PLA seeks to lay the groundwork for you and for you to use it as you will. We’re so proud when we see PLA students do amazing things, but that’s not an expectation of the Academy. We’re building students who can construct and assess arguments, unpack language, and understand the inherent risk behind decision-making; we do that by providing class, field trips, and speaking events. From there, it’s in students’ hands. And that’s the whole point of the field of student affairs: We challenge and support students, but it’s ultimately up to the student to decide what to do with that knowledge learned. And how much more impactful that is, when a student had the choice to do nothing but did something.
Hey Matt,
That was a very honest assessment, and I agree with a lot of points you are making. Specifically, you are on-point regarding the fact that there are many times in which a PLA-wide effort to make an impact was almost always the volunteering of the students, and not from the PLA program itself. However, I don’t think that this trend is making the PLA a ‘hindrance’, as you have suggested. I think the better phrase or sentence is that the PLA isn’t fulfilling our perceived objective in leadership development: that is to make hands-on impact towards the surrounding community.
Having PLA moving towards project-based experience is certainly something that we should look forward to. Your suggestions are wonderful: I would love to do some weekend community service as part of the PLA program during my senior year and I certainly think that it won’t be impossible to do that. We had the opportunity to meet and talk with speakers of wide variety of backgrounds, if only we had the opportunity to, perhaps, impact or help out surrounding community we visited during our trips. While I don’t want to make it bordering towards ‘voluntourism’ (not sure if you’re familiar of the phrase), but certainly something practical, as you already mentioned, would be extremely beneficial for our leadership development.
My current perspective about the PLA program is that it indeed geared towards outside-of-the-program implementation. Because many of us are leading our respective clubs and organizations, it is within the expectation that what we are learning is translated to our activity outside of PLA. While PLA has influenced me in the way I see how leaders conduct, it would certainly be great if that influence was translated to something we, as PLA students, can implement together.
Now, in terms of implementation and designing such projects/experiences, they are certainly easier said than done. But I think it’s worth a shot. If future PLA students can come out having done an incredible service work or moderating discussions of various opposing groups, they will become much more hand-on prepared leaders than we would be (in my opinion).
I wish I have more substantive thing to say other than agreeing with your points and adding stuff, but the most important points have been elaborated already in your post.
I look forward in discussing this further, perhaps in-class (two weeks from now?)
– Muhammad
Thanks for reading and commenting, Muhammad! Good point about the hindrance point, I didn’t know how to say it while I was writing it but I found better words to express my thoughts now.
I think that the classes should be designed so that impactful things we do aren’t simply voluntourism (and if they were, I bet other PLA members would be the first to call it out). For example, instead of going to San Diego just because, we should have looked at something relevant we could have related the experience to and worked on it in class before and after the trip. Connecting what we learn in class to real-world things should be a component of the program, and I feel like it currently is a component that is not adequately addressed.
Also, I get that the program is geared towards outside-of-the-program implementation, but I don’t think it should be. I think we don’t truly learn the concepts in class until we perform them in real time. We could wait for opportune moments in our normal lives, or we could create situations through the program which we are guaranteed to learn from. I understand why some people might want the former, but I want the latter.
Thanks for the comment! I hope this discussion is continued after I leave because it is worthwhile