Community stewardship as an educational — and institutional — goal

Project Pericles, a higher education consortium centered on community-engaged civic learning, recently published a story that chronicles the community stewardship of President Ron Cole '87 as he transitioned from faculty member to dean to institutional figurehead.

Cole was first involved with Project Pericles as a Periclean Faculty Leader in the late aughts. He, alongside Professor of Global Health Studies Caryl Waggett; Professor of Communication, Media, and Performance Vesta Silva; and other former faculty members, collaborated on a semester-long interdisciplinary experiment about local water resources and environmental health.

"Not only did I want students in the course to gain fundamental knowledge of Earth processes-the physical and chemical properties of our planet, how to think in geologic time, and how that shapes the planet and our evolution, I also wanted to demonstrate the connections of those to human development, society impacts, socioeconomic conditions, and the like," Cole told Project Pericles.

Cole is also the current chair of Project Pericles' Board of Directors.

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