Young Women Leaders to Present Social Action Projects Feb. 2

The Institute for Women's Leadership (IWL) is hosting presentations by undergraduates in its Leadership Scholars Certificate Program, “Young Leaders and Social Change Forum.” The presentations focus on students’ independent social action projects addressing such topics as:  addressing food injustice in New Brunswick; progressive female art in the Rutgers community; documentary filmmaking as a tool for social change; revitalization of the Women’s Center at Rutgers; addressing physicians’ relationships with pharmaceutical companies and research fraud; and understanding and dismantling academic tracking practices in the public education system.  

Welcome and introductions by IWL Director of Leadership Programs and Research, Mary K. Trigg; Vice President of Information Services and Rutgers Universities Librarian, Marianne Gaunt; and chair of Women’s and Gender Studied Department and editor of Signs, Mary Hawkesworth.  Presentations by 14 undergraduate women in the Leadership Scholars Program on their Social Action Projects will follow.    

2:30- 5 P.M., Tuesday, Feb. 2 (reception at 2:30 followed by program at 3 p.m.)     

Mabel Smith Douglass Room at the Mabel Smith Douglass Library, 8 Chapel Drive, New Brunswick

The Institute for Women’s Leadership is a consortium of teaching, research, and public service units at Douglass Residential College of Rutgers University. The Institute and its members are dedicated to examining leadership issues and advancing women’s leaderships in all arenas of public life—locally, nationally, and globally.  

The Social Action Project is an important part of the required sequence in the Institute for Women’s Leadership’s two-year Leadership Scholars Certificate Program, which is a selective, interdisciplinary program that prepares Rutgers undergraduate students to be informed, innovative, and socially responsible leaders.  The Social Action Project gives Scholars the opportunity to apply the theoretical knowledge they have gained about leadership, advocacy, and social change with the practical and experiential knowledge they have gained through internships. The projects further develop leadership skills by giving students the opportunity to practice leadership through action.  

This event will also display the newly published book, LEADING THE WAY, edited by Mary K. Trigg and published by Rutgers University Press. The anthology of personal essays by twenty-one young, hopeful American women who describe their work, activism, leadership and efforts to change the world are all the young women are graduates of the IWL Leadership Scholars Certificate Program.