Director of Personal Learning – Danielle Leek
Dr. Leek is an accomplished educational powerhouse. Her work has extended across a range of platforms designed to promote education and student learning. She has an impressive resume that speaks volumes and her drive to motivate others is infectious. We talked to Dr. Leek for a short while about technology in education, the importance of asking the right questions and why knowledge is the most important tool an individual can have.
Listen to our entire conversation below:
Full Transcript:
Charlie: Welcome back to United Planet Radio, a show designed to connect those looking to
promote global understanding through dialogue. We hope you have enjoyed our show this far and
please feel free to reach out to us with any questions or comments. For those that are listening for
the first time or have just heard of the United Planet, we are a non-profit based out of Boston
looking to promote global education and sustainability. This week, have Danielle Leek who is
currently the director of professional learning at Campus Compact. She has also worked as the
executive director at Grand Valley State University where she was also a professor of
communications and she has worked as a professor both at Grand Valley University and Florida
State. She holds a Doctorate in Philosophy from the University of Iowa. So, I'm just going to get
right into it. I was reading a little bit about you and you mentioned that you have some background
tact in education. So my first question is. What are some of the benefits of tact in education and
then the cons? Obviously, as technology advances there's pros and cons. What are the best ways to
sift through that stuff? And with the immersions of such advanced technologies is the potential to
take away from period to period learning more frequent, less frequent?
Danielle: The cons — because I think one of the biggest dangers when it comes to technology in
education is that people are too afraid of it. So I think that that's the right history, we've had sort of
a human fear of technology and what technology does to us as people, as communities, our ability
to connect with one another. But we forget that technology does the work that we want it to do
and if we remember that, that we have the power over technology to make it work for us and if we
try to teach and learn with the goal of keeping human relationships in mind, technology can actually
be an amazing contribution to the way that people have access to education and their ability to grow
and improve. So some of the strengths I see in technology in the classroom is that it gives people an
opportunity to adapt to different learning styles and that means both the teacher and the learner.
So one of the hardest things about a class, say for example a college classroom, because you might
have thirty students and only one instructor. It's really hard for that instructor to effectively
accommodate every single student's learning style equally, but technology can help level that
playing field. For a student who's more visual for example, providing online examples or visuals that
students could go back to after a class can really help a student integrate and make concrete
whatever has been taught in the classroom. For a student who is more oral, being able to listen to
something like this radio show after a class is over can be really helpful. So I think in a lot of ways,
technologies can benefit how students have access to learning, but I also think it could help give
access to education to populations of people who might not be able to get into a traditional
classroom. So I'm thinking about people who have lifestyles that are restricted in terms of what
time of day they can go to class or people who might not be able to be as mobile physically or who
live in less well-populated regions of the world. Technology can give them access to all the
information that's been held by the elites throughout our history.
Charlie: Totally. Let’s backtrack a bit. How did you get here?
Danielle: So how did I end up here at United Planet? I think I'll start by just getting to Boston. In the
summer of 2016, I finished an MBA degree. I had decided to do some additional learning to try to
grow the types of work I could do with colleges and universities. After I finished that degree, I
realized that I wanted an opportunity to take that learning and put it into practice some place
outside a traditional campus setting, and this opportunity came available at Campus Compact.
Campus Compact is, as you mentioned, a non-profit. We are a membership organization that has a
thousand colleges and universities that work with us to try to connect civic and community
engagement with the classroom and campuses so we work on things like helping colleges
understand what it means to be a play spaced institution to really think about not just being
immersed in college but being immersed in college in the city of Boston and really connecting to the
space that's around the campus and helping students connect with the city and the people in the
city around them. I was really attracted to the opportunity to go and help growth in some of the
work Campus Compact is doing and I love the city of Boston so it seemed like a natural fit. I moved
here in January of 2017, and one of the first organizations to reach out and say "we share a lot
values and goals in common" was United Planet. And so after a series of conversations, I ended up
here with you today.
Charlie: That's great, and you're not from New England, correct?
Danielle: No, I'm not. I'm actually from the Midwest. I grew up just outside of Detroit. I was there
for most of my life, I did my undergraduate work in Michigan. I then moved to Illinois for a while for
a master’s program and then to Iowa. I've also lived in Chicago and, as you mentioned, I taught at
Florida state for a few years before going back to Michigan, and throughout that time, I've had the
opportunity to live in other places around the world where I did teaching and research so I spent
quite a bit of time in Peru and I've also spent a lot of time in the UK. I lived in London during the
summer for about five years working with the Study Abroad program for students.
Charlie: That's great, and what kind of drove you? What was the spark that drove you to education
and communications and all that stuff?
Danielle: Well, an honest answer is that I wasn't really sure what I wanted to be when I grew up.
That's really what I guess leads me to try and figure out how do people do what they do and why do
people know what they know but I'm a first-generation college student. It took me a long time while
I was an undergrad both to figure how to do school while into figure out how a college degree might
be something that would fit into my life. And by the time I really found the answer to that question,
what I realized was that I wanted to be one of the people who helped students who are in college.
Think about how education and knowledge can really make them not just somebody who can have a
job, but somebody who can be a really good person and contributes to their communities. So I was
finishing my undergraduate degree and I was offered an opportunity to do a master’s program in
Illinois State and as part of that program, I would have my tuition covered but I would teach classes
and I would teach the introductory public speaking class. I've always been involved in speech
activities so I've done debate and forensic speaking, and I thought that sounded like a great way to
keep going with my education and from the first day I stepped foot into the classroom, I knew that's
where I wanted to be.
Charlie: That's awesome. So obviously you're an extremely accomplished individual, extremely
educated. Do you ever find it frustrating when — obviously in the current state it's pretty difficult to
do what you're doing with information and higher education and promoting knowledge, how do you
combat that and how do you fight back against that stuff?
Danielle: Yeah, your right, Charlie. We live in a weird moment where education is almost a bad
word where the idea of learning and being knowledgeable is seen as something sort of stigma to
fight against. So we've almost created this, I don't know, fan culture around being the least
informed, the least interested in learning, the person who can get by however they are today
without needing to grow and I think that's a shame. But I do think that we do have the tools and the
power to try and reverse that trend and I see that every day with the students that I work with. So
in addition to working at Campus Compact, I teach classes for Johns Hopkins University. I work in
their master’s program for professional communication and in that program, which by the way is all
online, so speaking off technology, I get to work with students from around the world. So in one
class section, I have a student from Taiwan who is interacting with a student in Dubai and a student
from Columbia who is working with student from Baltimore who is working with a student from Los
Angeles and they're all working together in this class.
Charlie: That's amazing.
Danielle: Yeah, it's really cool to try and think about how to build messages for organizations that
can help change the world, that is the entire purpose of the class and being able to work with
students who are really committed and passionate about making change inspires me and I think it’s
important to not let the fears and ignorance of a few challenge the opportunities for everyone. So
one way that I try to combat sort of that sense that education isn't valuable anymore is to continue
to teach. I think there's a really important value in the people who believe in knowledge and
learning continuing to be in the classroom and I try whenever I can to listen really carefully to the
ideas and arguments that people have and to be open-minded and willing to listen to anyone even if
I don’t agree with them. I hope by having conversations with lots of people, maybe I'll have a chance
to say some things that will change their mind about how important knowledge, education, facts
and, research can really be.
Charlie: Yeah, that's really true. So, what are some of the things you tell individuals to keep them on
track and to say maybe if you have a different opinion of some on this and maybe it's not going
down those pitfalls that we find ourselves in — but maybe what's something you'd say to someone
who — and maybe has a different view or has the same view and it's just like oh, well let me move
forward this way or how do you direct them in a way that's beneficial to both parties?
Danielle: Well, I think the most important thing I can say is actually not saying anything at all, but
instead to listen and to ask questions. I think sometimes that we are too quick to talk and when
people have the opportunity to really think about what they’ve said or what they feel and somebody
asks them questions that encourages them to explore those ideas a little bit more deeply, we can
move people to a place where they're interested in more information or maybe open to changing
their own perspective. So I'm a really big fan of my childhood favourite question which is "why" and
that's usually where I start. Whenever anybody says something that makes me cringe or that makes
me shudder, I usually remind myself that there's something behind that statement, something that's
motivating that belief, something that motivating the reason why a person feels that way and my job
is to try and do the best I can to understand why. So I have to ask and that's usually where I start.
Charlie: Yeah, that makes so much sense. So my next is question is why would it be difficult for a
college or university to hop on to Campus Compact? I've read your article on Forbes so you
obviously mentioned that it was a little difficult for some universities to take that step and say were
going to do this. Why would that be a case for any school?
Danielle: Yeah, thanks for asking about that, Charlie. The civic action planning initiative at Campus
Compact took on something that’s really important to me. In 2015, the organization asked all of its
member campuses to consider signing on to what we're calling our action statement and that action
statement included five commitments that focus on embracing the value of civic engagement,
empowering students to take action in their communities, trying to make a commitment to social
justice and equality, and to advance in the public purposes of higher education. And as a part of that
signature, we asked a campus president to commit to taking one year to produce what we call a civic
action plan for their campus and this would be a lot like any sort of strategic plan that an
organization that might come up with where you’d say, “Our organization is committed to focusing
on this topic for the next year, we're going to create a plan to talk about how we're going to do that
so how will our campus focus on civic engagement, civic action? What will be our plan for the next
few years?” And when I say it like that, it's doesn't sound all that challenging or difficult and
campuses exist for the purpose of trying to advance citizenship for advancing communities, but
when you really get down to it, there are lot of people with lot of different agendas and it's a pretty
big thing to ask all of them to try to come together to work on a common goal with a common
purpose and to say out loud that the campus is going to make that commitment can be really scary.
So the fact that we have 463 of our 1000 campuses that have already signed, we have almost
seventy of the civic action plans already completed, I think is a real testament to the strength of
higher education in the United States makes me really proud.
Charlie: And how many universities do they have currently?
Danielle: I was mentioning that we have about 463 campuses that have signed the civic action plan
that means that that number of campuses have agreed to engage in the civic action planning
process. Now a few of those are duplicates. For example, if a college president may have retired
and a new president came on, that new president would also sign, but that's over fifty percent of our
membership which is pretty impressive I think.
Charlie: And were you there at the beginning? How did you get directly involved with Campus
Compact?
Danielle: So I wasn't really with the national Campus Compact office at the beginning. I found out
about civic action planning because my university, Grand Valley State University — Go Lakers — was
one of the first campuses to agree to sign Grand Valley as a Campus Compact member. So I had
done work with Campus Compact in the past, I had attended their trainings, I had participated in
some of the research projects. The organization had work done and I was familiar with their work,
but I actually started on the opposite end as a faculty member on a campus that had made this
commitment to create a civic action plan. So I really got to see first-hand what that meant to ask
individuals from all of these different departments on campus from student affairs, to financial aid,
to housing, to academic affair, people who are faculty to the provost office, to people from facilities
and you have people from all over campus who are all coming together to say “yes our campus is
committed to civic engagement and to believing that that should be a part of the college
experience.” It's a lot of work to coordinate all of those people and that's how I first got involved
with participating as part of the team that was working on that project. It's amazing to now see it on
the opposite end to really get to look at all the work the different campuses are doing to try to
promote that kind of thinking on their campus.
Charlie: That's great and you’re talking about civic engagement or civil engagement frequently.
What's the term?
Danielle: Civic is the right term, but I hope it's civil too.
Charlie: Yeah. So you speak about that pretty frequently in your article and you say it's very hard to
define. Why is that and why is it so important to define?
Danielle: Well, I think the challenge in defining civic engagement comes from a long history in the
United States of recognizing that the most important values that we hold dear are going to be the
ones that are most difficult and challenging to wrap our fingers around so when I talk about things
like freedom or liberty or justice. These are the same kinds of ideas. We know how important they
are. It's almost like we know it when we're in it and we see it, but sometimes it can be hard to just
say here's what counts and I think that that's because it can be really sad if you've accidentally
excluded something form your definition that when you hear about it, you think, oh that's so
important too and that's sort of the story of the United States, right? Understanding what
democracy means, means that we have to be open to an ever evolving change in the way we
understand what that means and how we practice it. But it’s important to identify civic engagement
as the work that is done to try and help bring our democratic society together to work together as
people, that's the work that civic engagement does and when we understand it that way, we really
begin to see that there are lots of different components that need to be in place in order to help
students on a college campus understand that concept and practice it effectively. It's not enough
just to ask students to go and volunteer for a service organization. That’s only one component of
civic engagement. It's imperative that colleges and universities also do the work to help students
have the knowledge and understanding of how politics and institutions work. They’re the
organizations that created the conditions that require service in the first place and if we don't give
people that full circle understanding and then give them the tools like the ability to speak and write
and express themselves well so that can participate, we aren't really doing all of the work that civic
engagement calls for.
Charlie: So, it's kind of just being all encompassing all the time which is a lot easier said than done.
And were you able to finally figure out a concise definition of civic engagement or are you still trying
to figure that out?
Danielle: I'll say that we'll just leave that open for discussion, but I think a good civic engagement is
the work that people do when they’re working together to make democracy better.
Charlie: That sounds pretty concise to me. I think that works. So I guess my last question is what's
next for you? What do you have? What are you excited for in the future? What are you working
on? Just, this is your time.
Danielle: Well, right now, I’m working on a project at Campus Compact that is trying to build up a
platform for professional development opportunities for the people on college campuses who are
leading this kind of work. So I think that we can say that since the 1980s, colleges and universities
have figured out that it's really important to have someone on their campus or a few people, a team
of people on their campus hopefully that are working to try to keep the civic component in mind
across all aspects of a student’s life while they’re in college. But the people who are on those teams,
we don't really have any specific sets of training or expectations or academic backgrounds, we just
don’t have anything in place right now that really is available to them to grow in their career path.
So right now I'm working on a program, it’s called the Campus Compact Credentialing Program and
we're working one way to try and create professional development opportunities for those folks to
give them an opportunity to really come together in their own associations so that they can build
and grow their professional capabilities for working on a campus.
Charlie: That sounds phenomenal. Thank you so much for coming today. I think there is a lot of
stuff in there that we can dissect even further, but that was amazing. Thank you so much.
Danielle: Thanks for having me, Charlie. It was great.
Charlie: So that's our next episode. We hope you enjoyed it and we'll be back again next week.
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