College of Leadership & Public Service officially launches at special event in shadow of the state capitol
Kim Chaudoin | 615.966.6494 |
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Doris Kearns Goodwin and Lipscomb University Provost W. Craig Bledsoe at a student forum on Feb. 4 to mark the launch of the new College of Leadership & Public Service.
With the backdrop of a presidential election campaign season in full throttle, Lipscomb University launched a new initiative to provide a different approach to public service at a special event Thursday evening in Nashville’s War Memorial Auditorium just steps away from the Tennessee State Capitol. Pulitzer prize-winning author Doris Kearns Goodwin, known for her writings about American presidents, was the guest speaker for the evening.
Lipscomb’s new College of Leadership & Public Service is not only an important next step in the university’s commitment to community engagement but also in providing programming that advances a collaborative leadership approach to society’s complex challenges, said Steve Joiner.
“Alexis deTocqueville recognized the value in working together for a common good,” said Joiner, dean of the College of Leadership & Public Service. “He observed that leaders in and out of government should see their roles in society as service-minded. Lipscomb in a small way has tried to live up to this model with our institutes and programs with the goal of turning the university and its resources outward into the community. Lipscomb has become a model for positive, sustainable change.”
The setting for the program’s launch, War Memorial Auditorium, was fitting as, since its completion in 1925, it has welcomed to its stage some of the country’s key political figures throughout recent history including Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy to name a few.
Joiner said the different approach to public service that will be reflected in the programming of the new College of Leadership & Public Service is needed now more than ever.
“It’s the right time, it’s the right place to take the next steps of leadership,” Joiner told the audience of more than 300 leaders from the Nashville community who gathered for the event. “It’s the right time for civil discourse. It’s the right time to prepare future leaders to collaborate rather than divide. And we’re in the right place at War Memorial Auditorium tonight with its history, and we’re in the right place in Nashville and we’re in the right place in Tennessee to build paths of engagement to make significant public change.”
The College of Leadership & Public Service has “been in the making for the last 10 years,” said Joiner. Over the past decade, Lipscomb University has built a group of institutes that serve the common good and support innovative solutions. These institutes are housed in this new college and include the Institute for Conflict Management, the Institute for Law, Justice & Society, the Institute for Sustainable Practice and the Nelson & Sue Andrews Institute for Civic Leadership. Each offers graduate degree programming in addition to other initiatives including certificate programs, Rule 31 training and more. It offers programs which offers programs of study in pre-law, public service, nonprofit management, corporate social justice, government and sustainability among others. The college is also home to signature program Leadership Tennessee. This unique initiative provides collaborative learning and dialogue spanning the state’s three grand divisions, issue-specific education for demonstrated leaders, diverse representation of participants and opportunities to affect change. The college will launch a School of Public Policy in the coming months and this fall will offer a new Master of Arts in Leadership and Public Service degree.
In the audience to help celebrate the college’s launch were, Nashville Mayor Megan Barry, former Tennessee first lady Andrea Conte and Rep. Jim Cooper in addition to numerous other dignitaries, government representatives and business leaders. Lipscomb alumnus Tom Ingram, founder of the Ingram Group and long-term political advisor, shared his enthusiasm for the new college as well as his thoughts about the impact Lipscomb made on his life and his career in public service.
Lipscomb University President L. Randolph Lowry noted that this new college is the institution’s latest approach to making an impact on the community and “helping people through their day.” He also reflected on a moment nearly 10 years ago when the Lipscomb community gathered at War Memorial Auditorium as part of a weeklong celebration of Lowry’s inauguration as the university’s 17th president in March 2006.
“I’m so pleased tonight with the announcement of this college,” said Lowry. “I’m pleased to think about how we might train up generations of people in perhaps a little different way to work in the public sector. What can I possibly say ten years after we gathered her to celebrate the start of our time together to the whole community if I could? It really would be, simply, how profoundly grateful we are that you have allowed us in the last ten years to build a university that I believe we can be proud of that serves effectively and that will be part of this constellation in Nashville, the Athens of the South.”
Barry was on hand to introduce the evening’s guest speaker, Doris Kearns Goodwin.
“Congratulations for the reason we are here — to celebrate the opening of the new College of Leadership & Public Service,” said Barry. “I am always grateful for everything Lipscomb University does. You truly bring our Nashville community together. As somebody who serves, I can tell you that you are critical.”
Barry quipped that as mayor she “gets to do a lot of things that are cool.” She noted that her husband, Bruce, accompanied her to the dinner, which he doesn’t often do.
“He’s here for the same reason I’m here,” she admitted. “Because we get to hear from Doris Kearns Goodwin. It is an honor to be able to stand up here tonight and to introduce her. She has given the world an understanding of some of America’s most famous and beloved presidents. In addition to her contribution to political history, she has also broken down a lot of political barriers.
Goodwin is the author of six critically acclaimed and New York Times bestselling books, including her most recent, “The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft and The Golden Age of Journalism.” She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for “History for No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II,” and is the author of “The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys,” which was adapted into an award-winning, five-part miniseries.
At the age of 24, Goodwin became a White House fellow, working directly with President Lyndon B. Johnson. Goodwin served as an assistant to Johnson in his last year in the White House and later assisted him in the preparation of his memoirs.
She shared stories from her life including how her passion for baseball blossomed as she took detailed notes about Brooklyn Dodgers games to share with her father when he returned home from work when she was a child, and how that experience helped shape her love for telling stories. Goodwin also shared insight into the lives of past presidents and her experiences with the presidents for whom she worked.
Goodwin’s main focus of the evening was a discussion of “Every Four Years: The 2016 Presidential Campaign.” In it she shared her observations of the ways campaigns have changed through the years. She said major changes include: the physical way campaigns are conducted, the establishment of presidential primaries, the aspects of a candidate’s life that are the subject of public discussion, the increasing importance of televised debates, the increasing use of negative television ads, the increasing important of public opinion polling and the escalating role of money.
“My experience of studying political leaders over time persuades me that however broken our modern political culture is, however difficult our political campaign structure has become, however negative our attitudes toward politicians in Washington, I still believe that politics is one of the most honorable vocations,” said Goodwin. “I’m so glad that Lipscomb will be offering courses and training in public service, civic leadership and public policy. For when the right person is in power at the right time, when the public is mobilized behind these leaders great things have been accomplished. Historic legacies have been left.”
For more information about Lipscomb’s College of Leadership visit leadership.lipscomb.edu.
—Photos by Kristi Jones