Summer Conference Gives PhD Student Leadership Insight

Summer Conference Gives PhD Student Leadership Insight

Bourgeios

Fortunate. That is the word Jeff Bourgeois uses to describe his life experience.

“I have lived in some beautiful places and travelled extensively. I have seen things and done things that many people don’t know to do,” Bourgeois said. “My life is anything but boring, and I am so grateful for that.”

Currently enrolled in the University of San Diego’s School of Leadership and Education Sciences (SOLES) Leadership Studies PhD program, this New Hampshire native is now happy to be calling San Diego his “current home.”

Finishing up his first year of a four-to-six year program, Bourgeois has already immersed himself into campus life. With assistantships in the Office of the Vice President and Provost as well as the Hansen Summer Institute (HSI) and work in the Athletics Department, Bourgeois also splits his time among the SOLES International Sector Network, the SOLES Admissions Ambassador program, and the San Diego Lessons from Abroad Committee.

Interested in the SOLES program for its forward-thinking nature, Bourgeois was drawn to its focus on how to create and facilitate change as well as the learning environment and faculty engagement.

“I really have an appreciation for the faculty support. At other programs, I was impressed with the academic accomplishments of the faculty, but here it goes further,” he said. “In addition to being leading academics, [they] are genuinely good people. Right from the start, I have felt supported and valued.”

With an interest in leadership research, Bourgeois had an opportunity to become a graduate assistant with the Hansen Summer Institute. A three-week, on-campus program hosted through the SOLES Global Center, the institute brings together students from around the world in hopes of creating a network of peace-minded leaders focused on cultivating change and social justice in their home communities. Bourgeois, who describes his introduction to the program as “serendipitous,” originally volunteered to assist the program by scoring the participant applications the institute received this year.

With his research interest in transnational education, the institute experience gave Bourgeois the chance to connect with individuals from around the world, as well as the opportunity to develop personal connections with students focused on bringing about change in their own communities.

“It’s interesting to take a bunch of leaders and put them all in the same room and to make them part of the same [social] experiment and kind of see how much amazingness there is,” Bourgeois said.

Hoping to walk away from it with an affirmation that his work has made a difference, what most interests Bourgeois is the possibility of what the students can do next.

“It is when these [students] go back to the countries from where they came, that’s when we get to see what we did make a difference or what really sticks with people,” he said. “That they changed the way they make decisions or that they are really impacting their communities on a different level.”

Bourgeois is focused on how to spread a leadership program like the Hansen Summer Institute internationally, making it applicable in different societies and cultures.

“We’re just wrapping up the second phase of a project designed to determine the transferability of the program, and identify[ing] cultural constructs that influence leadership development,” he said. “After a pre- and post-test, we will re-administer a third quantitative data collection to gauge the development over time. Finally, individual interviews will help us get an idea of how the lessons of HSI have been applied since the group left USD.”

Knowing the results of this research could help in implementing other programs like the Hansen Summer Institute, Bourgeois hopes to identify the takeaways that attendees can use in creating sustainable change.

“It could help guide future programs in providing direction for participant selection, student support, and developing specific learning outcomes,” he said. “Research in leadership development of international students is quite limited, so I’m hoping to be able to use this experience to guide future projects.”

As for what he plans to do after graduation from the program, Bourgeois chooses to instead focus on the present and his work toward completing his degree.

“I am open to whatever adventures might be presented. I’ve never been a person who follows a strict plan, and I really enjoy writing my story as it unfolds.”

— Allyson Meyer ’16