Beacon Student Leadership Nominations and Awards

2009

From Duncan Holmes's "Ode to Student Leaders"

• How did CCT get on their "jet path"?
• It was when they set out to get staff
  • To probe wikipsaces --
  • And nobody graces
• That role more than does Tara Tetzlaff!

• As for those in the CCT Forum,
• In quorum after quorum,
  • With podcast and facebook
  • They've made this whole place look
• Attractive! Alums all adore 'em!

• The CCT Network
• Is no ornamental fretwork
  • But a broad way of thinking
  • That's led to a linking
• Of how to both "make work" and "get work"!

Beacon Student Group Program Award

The CCT Network has, since it was established in January '07 by the CCT Forum, organized monthly events that pursue the goals of:

• organizing, in a sustainable fashion, personal & professional development, community building, and educational-innovation activities beyond the formal CCT program of studies.
• supplementing students' education through the involvement of alums.
• continuing alums' education by their involvement in the education of students and each other. (For details, see files/CCTNetwork and for the growing library of podcasts of the events, see http://www.talkshoe.com/tc/16894)

Complementing the live events, the CCT Forum has established and maintained the social network site [like facebook] for the CCT Network, files/CCTNetworkNing, with the same goals and established and maintained an online calendar for events and activities related to CCT, http://my.calendars.net/cctnetwork, and helped produce the monthly news bulletins to the students, alums, faculty, and associates of CCT, files/news

The rationale for these initiatives is well conveyed by one of the postings of CCT Forum co-leader, Jeremy Szteiter, on the social network site:

• As one of the current graduate assistants of the CCT program at UMass-Boston, I've been considering the sustenance of a "CCT Network" from a few different points of view - as a program staff person, as a current student, as a future alumni, and as a member of a community of lifelong learners. Each point of view has helped me to recognize and take advantage of opportunities within the program, and I notice how important the idea of a "community" can be, where people and their attitudes and actions are the threads that bind together the "products" of our network - the events, discussions, courses, and writings that we experience in more tangible ways. As a long-term idea, maybe this "community" is not entirely constructed through direct interactions of individuals attending these these events; rather, it gets refined in a more organic way over time, when we can look back on the events as parts of a process in which we were privileged to participate. Suppose I imagined the future me, looking back on the current time and wishing that I still had these kinds of opportunities. What would I need to do now to help them evolve rather than dissolve?

• In some ways, motivation for my involvement in the CCT network involves a suspicion and expectation that it is all too easy to slip away from the ideals and support of the CCT program after my time as a student formally ends. Or perhaps, that life will get in the way, and it might become more challenging to relate my ongoing day-to-day work and life to critical and creative thinking, as fewer and fewer chances occur to have such direct attention and discussion of what these mean to me. What keeps CCT as alive in my mind as it is now?

• My "hidden agenda" is to think of the CCT Network as a sort of agreement between us. That we agree to acknowledge common threads between us, that we agree to continue to share our progress with each other over time, and that we agree to keep in touch periodically. Occasionally, a long time may go by in between visits, but still the CCT Network might be a place where we can find familiar territory and use our built-in relationship as a step to finding deeper ones.

The impact of these initiatives on CCT students (who are typically working full-time with family responsibilities), can be seen by following the links above and by the email from a new student received after one of the CCT Network events, "Looking Out For Each Other
Thinking Our Way Through an Economic Funk":

• I have really enjoyed my experience so far and feel enriched by all of you, who have welcomed me. The courses thus far have been everything I expected and more. What I didn't quite expect, way back when, was the depth of care and interest 'we' all take in each other, and therefore take universally. Where am I going with all of this? As you know, I work on the front line with high risk urban youth. Even if taken at faceless value, the effect they have is enormous. When one succeeds, as many have, the community is shocked, in a good way. When one fails, the family, community and city pay an enormous price; emotionally, traumatically and financially. I'm just one new cog in the wheel of 'Utopia', but... The CCT gatherings I have been at so far have always left me reflecting for several days, in a very positive way. Same for this most recent one...Not Utopia; real change and real effect, in a real world...real time. Thank you for what you do.