Every year in Leadership JumpStart, we bring in Professor Peter Aeschbacher from the Department of Architecture at Penn State to help the class work on finding ways to make their projects both unique and actualizable. Yesterday’s class was Aeschbacher’s second visit to LJS 2017—he came in August before they even discussed their ideas for service projects, and again this weekend when they have spent the past month settling into their project and making progress toward putting it into action. We have experimented with all combinations of Aeschbacher visits—some years he only comes once, some years he comes twice but later in the year, etc. I believe that this year’s Aeschbacher visit schedule, especially this second visit, was the timeliest and most worthwhile I have seen in four years of LJS.
Aeschbacher started by giving each group their own challenge, and telling them to complete that challenge as a group. Each challenge was designed to help the group see the key areas where their project had room for improvement. Afterwards, we came together as a class to debrief each of the challenges and for Aeschbacher to give feedback to each group regarding what he saw as their biggest struggle moving forward. One team was told that they needed to figure out what they were actually focusing on and what the true purpose of their event was. Their scope was too broad because they did not have a clearly defined problem statement. One team was told that they were putting the cart before the horse by finding a solution and latching onto it without deciding whether that solution was the best one for their problem. One team was told that their proposed solution wasn’t actually addressing the problem they claimed to be fixing. Finally, the last group was told that they were playing it safe with their project and solving a “problem” that did not actually exist.
As TAs, we have been strongly encouraged to not tell our teams any feedback regarding their teamwork or project plans for the past month. I have seen my team (the first one discussed above) struggle to really define their project for a few weeks now, unable to really tell them that. Aeschbacher, however, has a habit of coming in, being really tough on the students, telling them things they don’t want to hear, and then drastically switching things up.
This year I thought that the teams needed to hear Aeschbacher more than in previous years, and that he came at a more opportune time for them to actually do something about it. However, I was actually very surprised by how much some of them pushed back against his feedback. I have seen so many groups eat up every single word and piece of advice he gave them, so it was kind of nice to realize that this year’s LJS students can stand their ground and support their decisions for their service projects. At the same time, though, they need to be more open to feedback and learn to take constructive criticism.
One thing that I have been working on in my own role this year is figuring out when and how much feedback or support I should provide, and when I should allow people the chance to figure things out on their own. Previous years watching Aeschbacher-ized LJS projects made me hesitant about feedback given early in the process because of its tendency to overpower any original thought a group may have had, but this year made me think that perhaps feedback given too early will be ignored because a group does not yet realize that they need it.
I am very curious to see what happens over the next few weeks with these LJS projects. I hope that they all take yesterday’s feedback into account and find effective ways to respond to their challenges, but at the same time I think stubbornness and independence may prevail.
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