[Alumni-chat] Environmental Advocacy (One Version of Social Entrepreneurship) at Antioch University

[Michael Brower]

About a week ago Mark Pomerantz and I exchanged emails about his  
concern that Antioch College is not picking up
on his ideas about Social Entrepreneurship and not moving assertively  
in raising big bucks to hire new faculty and
recruit students for such a program.  In one of my responses to Mark,  
I wrote the following paragraph about the Antioch
New England (ANE) program in Environmental Advocacy and Organizing.

"Antioch New England (ANE) has a world recognized  Environmental
Advocacy and Organizing Program.  Our Boston Alumni Chapter is
holding a joint meeting on October 14, at Tufts University, where
Steve Chase, the creator and leader of this program, will be speaking
about it.  You are all invited.  Just please let me know.  I think
that Antioch College and Antioch New England would be wise to develop
more cooperation in this (and other?) fields and faculty sharing."

I sent a copy of this post to Steve Chase at ANE, Director of this  
program.
Steve sent me back the following and asked me to post it for your  
information:


Michael Brower <mbrower32 at comcast.net> writes:
A couple of months ago Mark Pomerantz '71, in commenting on Arthur
Morgan's legacy for Antioch, included in a longer message, that :
"other colleges are developing various forms of social entrepreneurship,
developmental entrepreneurship, and other environmental and community
development type programs that offer students training to be change
agents as well as a potential career path(s). Antioch is basically  
ignoring
this trend except for its service learning programs."

Dear Michael,

Please share this with the Alumni Chat website if you think it would  
be useful.

I found Mark's comment really interesting, but when I look at Antioch  
University I just don't see what Mark sees. Let me speak first for  
the New England campus. This summer we will be launching a new  
program in Education for Sustainability to help people already  
working as teachers become more effective change agents within our  
nation's schools. This will join our already existing program that  
trains new teachers to transform public school science education. We  
are also launching a new Green MBA program this summer to nurture  
change agents in the world of business.

I was also pleased to see that in your own response to Mark you  
mentioned ANE's five-year-old graduate program in Environmental  
Advocacy and Organizing where we offer professional training to  
public interest advocates and grassroots organizers working on issues  
of ecological sustainability, social justice, and the democratic  
control of corporations. It should be noted that this is the only  
environmental studies program of its kind in the entire country. The  
program's Advocacy Clinic project has also won awards from Campus  
Compact for being an educational leader in community engagement and  
service learning education. This program has also just created a new  
Antioch/Congressional Progressive Caucus Fellowship Program where  
some of our students work for the most progressive leaders in the US  
Congress every summer. Antioch University is the only university in  
the country that has such an arrangement with the caucus. The  
Environmental Advocacy and Organizing Program is also in negotiations  
right now to become a co-sponsor of a new "think and do" tank. The  
goals of this new institute will be to 1) research and disseminate  
information on the broad theme of corporations and their current  
social and environmental impacts: 2) research and develop model  
corporate code statues that could be pushed by state and national  
corporate reform activists to better address these problems at a more  
fundamental level than regulatory law, and 3) research, develop, and  
help implement organizing strategies in various states around the  
country to help pass versions of these model corporate codes in  
several jurisdictions during the next few decades.

The word about our EAOP is also getting around. The program has  
already inspired the creation of a similar program within the  
Geography Department at the University of Leeds in England. Also,  
last year, we received this comment about the EAOP program from Eli  
Pariser, the Executive Director of the 3.2 million member group  
MoveOn.Org:

“Lots of people care about the future of our country, but not all of  
them are as active or effective as they could be. There are just too  
few institutions that help inspire, train, and nurture progressive  
activists. That’s why I’m so excited about Antioch University New  
England’s Environmental Advocacy and Organizing Program. It’s a  
graduate program that offers in-depth activist training and even  
connects its graduates into an ongoing support network. I encourage  
everyone seeking to work as a public interest advocate or a  
grassroots organizer to check out Antioch’s advocacy and organizing  
program.”

When assessing the nature of our educational programs, I would also  
ask folks to consider the fact that students from ANE's Environmental  
Studies Department have been granted more Switzer Foundation  
Fellowships (a program to support emerging environmental leaders)  
than all but two graduate schools in the country. These other two  
schools are UC-Berkely and Yale. As I see it, Antioch University is  
the Little Engine That Could. ANE also hosts the Antioch New England  
Institute, which is a community service consultanting organization  
that supports change efforts throughout our region in education,  
management, and sustainability. ANEI also involves a number of our  
students and faculty.

On the national level, the students in the University-wide doctoral  
program in "Leadership and Change" are also doing amazing things in a  
wide variety of fields--and this is even before they graduate.  
Furthermore, the Carnegie Foundation recently acknowledged Antioch  
University as being among a small group of institutions within  
American higher education that are genuinely focused on community  
engagement and service learning for the common good. Also, later this  
month a group of Antioch folks from several different campuses will  
be meeting in LA to explore how to increase the programming the  
University offers in community change and activist training. And  
these are just a few of the things that I know about. Imagine how  
many other things are going on our campuses that each of us might not  
have heard about.

Can Antioch University do more to train change agents in a wide  
variety of spheres of influence? Of course we can. Mark is certainly  
right about this. Yet, what Mark might be missing is that his own  
goal is still the fundamental mission, goal, and reason for Antioch  
University's existence. He may also be missing the fact that we still  
are a dynamic innovator in the field of leadership development for  
positive social change. This isn't something that died with Arthur  
Morgan. Not at all.

I am incredibly excited about doing even more in the years ahead to  
make our University become an even stronger leader in this field. I  
hope all our alumni--our graduated leaders who are now "out in the  
world" making change--will also generously support such initiatives  
at the University in any way they can. There is so much we still have  
left to accomplish together.

All my best,
Steve

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Steve Chase, Ph.D.
Director, Environmental Advocacy and Organizing Program
Department of Environmental Studies @ Antioch University New England
40 Avon Street, Keene, NH 03431
Steven_Chase at antiochne.edu; 603-283-2336 (office); 603-357-0718 (fax)

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