The Student Fellows Program
July 2005 Student Fellows Meeting
The Student Fellows Program met from July 18-22, 2005, at the Lockheed Martin Center for Leadership Excellence in Bethesda, MD. Thirty-eight students from six schools, including three local public schools, two private local schools and a New York high school, attended all or part of the meeting. The program included activities for new Student Fellows and for new participant schools, as well as new and returning Student Fellows from returning schools. The full group worked together on a day of outdoor team-building exercises and those attending the full week participated in a strategy session on the last day. This session included a Four Quarter Focus Activity in which the students identified specific goals for each quarter of the school year.
The students' enthusiastic responses included the following examples:
- Annandale High School (VA): First quarter will focus on fostering school spirit. The theme will be "Cheering not Jeering." The students will organize pep rallies and play to their diversity, making everyone feel welcome and a part of the school by broadcasting the pep rallies in multiple languages.
- Millennium High School (NY): Second quarter will focus on responsibility. They will try to get their peers to stop being late to class by getting strategies from kids who already show up on time and using bulletin boards to spread the message.
- Washington-Lee High School (VA): Third quarter will focus on stopping cheating. Students in the SEO will talk with teachers about ways they can prevent/reduce cheating in their classrooms, support/provide study halls for students, and bring in speakers who have suffered consequences of cheating (e.g., alum who was kicked out of college).
- Gonzaga College High School (DC): Third quarter will focus on raising the awareness of the new honor code. Students in the SEO (they call it the PEB--Promoters of Ethical Behavior) will visit classes to present the honor code to their peers.
- Lake Braddock Secondary School (VA): The final quarter will focus on recognizing the good kids in their school (who are not members of the SEO). The LBSS will host an awards luncheon (something that Annandale HS has already done), and will thank the rest of the student body for working with the SEO by expressing their appreciation through muffin baskets to other club leaders.
Read comments from the participating students.
July 2004 Student Fellows Meeting
The first meeting of the Student Fellows Program successfully concluded on July 16, 2005, following a week in which 23 students discussed leadership styles, the role of ethics officers, methods and challenges in integrating a student ethics office into a school's culture, and strategic planning for student ethics officers. Some of the more memorable events of the five day meeting included participation in outdoor team-building exercises and "building an ethics officer", which involved tracing a student's body onto paper and then enhancing the outline with the characteristics they believed an ethics officer should have. (View the slide show for visual evidence of their creativity.)
The group also heard from Joseph C. Kale Jr., Director, Ethics and Business Conduct, Integrated Systems and Solutions, Lockheed Martin Corporation, on the topic "What is an Ethics Officer" and from ERC Fellow Linda Trevino, Ph.D., of Pennsylvania State University, who discussed her research on honor codes. Finally, the students worked in groups to develop a presentation on creating a student ethics office that they could make to their school administration and faculty.
A number of ERC Fellows, attending their own meeting in the Washington DC area at the end of the week, stopped by to talk informally with the students, and some agreed to be mentors in the upcoming year. The meeting was held at the Center for Leadership Excellence at Lockheed Martin, who also donated meals for the participants. ERC Character Development Manager Katie Sutliff led the meeting with help from ERC Interns Katie Donohue, Rielle Miller and Jennifer Carleton.
Ms. Sutliff shares her thoughts about the "extraordinary, young people who are ready to transform the heroism of a moment into a movement that will change the world" in "The Ethics of Corporations and Kids".
Read comments from the participating students.
View our slide show about the 2004 Student Fellows Program.
