![\"Alex](\"http:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/herring_610.jpg\" "\\"herring_610\\"")
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BLI certificate holder Alex Herring \u201911 parlayed an internship with UBS into a full-time job with Trinity Wealth Management Group of UBS Financial Services after graduation. Her boss, Paul Higgins (right), is a fan of the training students receive through BLI.<\/em><\/p>\n By Jeff Hodges M.A.L.S. \u201911<\/p>\n Step into Batten Leadership Institute Executive Director Abrina Schnurman-Crook\u2019s cozy office in Bradley Hall and you\u2019ll notice a card on her bookshelf that reads, \u201cLife Begins at the End of Your Comfort Zone.\u201d<\/p>\n The quote from author Neale Donald Walsch may at first appear out of place in such a warm and inviting atmosphere. But look closely at the success of the Batten Leadership Institute and the philosophy and goals that underscore its mission, and those seemingly mixed messages aren\u2019t contradictory at all.<\/p>\n For ten years, the past five as a curricular program, Batten has differentiated itself from hundreds of other college and university leadership programs nationally and internationally. With an experiential emphasis, the theory the BLI faculty aim to teach uses the dynamics at play in the classroom as fodder for learning.<\/p>\n To this end, Batten Assistant Director Jen Brothers says the institute takes a \u201cvery counter-cultural\u201d approach. \u201cWe try to get students to accept they don\u2019t need to be perfect. We want them to take risks and we want them to fail because we want them to learn. Letting go of the need to get the answer right all the time enables them to be more curious about themselves and each other and what makes them tick. Curiosity is a hallmark of the program.\u201d<\/p>\n Batten is an integral part of Hollins\u2019 twenty-credit Certificate in Leadership Studies, which complements all fields of study offered at the university. The certificate includes introductory and advanced leadership seminars from business and economics, gender and women\u2019s studies, history, and other disciplines across the curriculum. Students pursuing the Certificate in Leadership Studies complete two seminars plus four required Batten courses over their time at Hollins. The BLI senior capstone course takes place over an entire year and incorporates supervision practice as they mentor two semesters of new students in videotaped leadership labs outside of class. That intensive interclass connection is just one of the key reasons BLI students boast an impressive retention rate. On average, 75 to 80 percent of students who are eligible move forward beyond the 100-level BLI course. Ninety-eight percent of students who choose to take a 200-level BLI course wind up completing the entire three-year program.<\/p>\n If there’s a clear answer and pattern of what to do, that’s management. We want students to become leaders who can identify a situation where it’s hard to tell where to go and the right thing to do. \u2014Jen Brothers<\/p><\/blockquote>\n From day one of the Leadership Skills course, Schnurman-Crook, Brothers, and Associate Director Jill Hufnagel immerse students in Batten\u2019s core principles. \u201cWe don\u2019t equate leadership with a title or position,\u201d Schnurman-Crook notes. \u201cLeadership is leadership. It doesn\u2019t matter whether it\u2019s in a career, at home, or in volunteer work.\u201d<\/p>\n The institute\u2019s theoretical foundation is adaptive leadership, which Brothers describes as \u201cleadership in murky situations. If there\u2019s a clear answer and pattern of what to do, that\u2019s management. We want students to become leaders who can identify a situation where it\u2019s hard to tell where to go and the right thing to do. We want them to accept responsibility for that and figure out how to use their resources, hold people together, and make sure they don\u2019t alienate the people they really need to move with them because they can\u2019t do it by themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n According to Brothers, this means abandoning many preconceived notions. \u201cOften, students come into Leadership Skills with the idea that a leader is someone who takes charge and gets the job done. That\u2019s not where we\u2019re pointing them because it isn\u2019t sustainable. In fact, many of the students have tried that and they\u2019re burned out by the time they get here. They\u2019ve stood in the leadership gap, done everything for everybody else, and haven\u2019t really mobilized their resources.\u201d<\/p>\n Instead, BLI faculty have created a culture within Batten that combines self and system diagnoses to achieve a better perspective of what\u2019s happening in a particular environment, a process that requires much work and can be one of the most difficult tasks some students have ever undertaken. Brothers notes, \u201cStudents must be willing to let go and trust the process.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBatten isn\u2019t a fit for everyone,\u201d Schnurman-Crook readily admits. \u201cTime and again they hear, \u2018There is no growth in the comfort zone and no comfort in the growth zone.\u2019 Not everyone wants to strive for the pinnacle of discomfort in service of something bigger. There are many other wonderful leadership opportunities at Hollins to explore beyond BLI. But if students can truly drop the barriers, if they can find those moments of vulnerability and are willing to accept hard feedback from the Batten faculty and peers, they can move. And once they move they are forever primed to keep moving.\u201d<\/p>\n Leading the way: Jen Brothers, Abrina Schnurman-Crook, and Jill Huffnagel.<\/p><\/div>Schnurman-Crook, Brothers, and Hufnagel are adamant they don\u2019t ask students to do something they, the faculty, can\u2019t do. \u201cWhen you\u2019re passionate about the work and believe in it with your whole heart, you have to live it,\u201d Brothers asserts. \u201cSome of our students talk about how they really learned our culture because they saw us practicing it with each other,\u201d says Schnurman-Crook. \u201cWe don\u2019t leave things unspoken; rather, we\u2019ll disagree out in the open. They see we are okay with that. It makes a real difference.\u201d<\/p>\n In addition to the expertise provided by the Batten faculty, the institute brings in representatives from businesses and organizations to work with students on negotiation and leadership skills. Paul Higgins, a vice president with the Trinity Wealth Management Group of UBS Financial Services in Roanoke, was invited to speak on interviewing techniques. \u201cThere are a lot of impressive young women there, and they are able to accept change very quickly. They\u2019re able to observe their environment and adapt to it. When change happens, they\u2019re able to pick themselves up, dust themselves off, and say, \u2018Okay, next.\u2019 That\u2019s very important because you can stop in your tracks and fall into self-pity, and that\u2019s not what I\u2019ve observed in Batten. Instead, they say, \u2018That\u2019s a learning experience, what are we going to do next?\u2019 In most industries you have to have that and I think they have great careers ahead of them. Batten is preparing students for life.\u201d<\/p>\n It’s a place that’s going to challenge you to make goals, widen your lens, look at things with a different point of view, relax and breathe, and yet throw yourself into the fire to see where it goes. \u2014Alex Herring<\/p><\/blockquote>\n At his first opportunity, Higgins hired an intern who was enrolled in Batten. Alex Herring \u201911, a mathematics major and dance minor, had completed a competitive internship with Holly Hendrix \u201975 at UBS in New York during Short Term of her senior year. Upon returning to Roanoke, she approached Higgins and his partner, John Saunders, about furthering her UBS experience and interning with the Trinity Wealth Management Group in the spring.<\/p>\n \u201cWe go through a bit of a rigorous interviewing process and we discovered Alex had the traits that were going to make her successful: task-oriented, goal-oriented, self-motivated,\u201d Higgins recalls. \u201cFor her internship I came up with a very detailed agenda and had every minute of the day organized for her. By the third day, she asked that I please quit spoon-feeding her. She just wanted to be put in a situation where she could find things to expand her capabilities, which I thought was wonderful.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBatten grew me as a person,\u201d Herring says. \u201cIt\u2019s a place that\u2019s going to challenge you to make goals, widen your lens, look at things with a different point of view, relax and breathe, and yet throw yourself into the fire to see where it goes.\u201d<\/p>\n The Trinity Wealth Management Group hired Herring as a full-time branch service associate after she graduated in 2011. Within a year, she had risen to become a client service associate. \u201cShe\u2019s technically our business manager, so she\u2019s handling day-to-day operations for a $250 million a year business,\u201d Higgins says. \u201cIt\u2019s very unusual for someone with that kind of tenure, but that\u2019s a testament to Batten and to Hollins.\u201d<\/p>\n Herring\u2019s achievement isn\u2019t an isolated case. Says Schnurman-Crook, \u201cI\u2019ve had Batten alumnae in both graduate school and the professional sector comment about how they have a different kind of insight than it seems their peers do who didn\u2019t have this kind of intense training. I think we\u2019re adding another important component to the already strong graduates Hollins is producing, so much so that employers approach us looking for Batten graduates for open positions. This model we\u2019ve created has teeth in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n As the Batten Leadership Institute\u2019s second decade gets under way, the BLI faculty are understandably proud of the initiative that began with just twelve students under the guidance of founding director Katherine Walker and now enrolls 150 or more a year, all of whom join the program by choice. \u201cWhat Batten is doing is not just unique across the nation; there\u2019s no one else in the world doing it,\u201d Schnurman-Crook says. \u201cThe original vision for BLI was to be the flagship leadership program in the nation for women who were serious about leadership development, particularly at the undergraduate level. And programmatically, the quality is there. Even so, we are more dedicated than ever to the work we are doing and honing and refining our model.\u201d<\/p>\n Brothers adds simply, \u201cWe want to be better and better and better all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n Jeff Hodges is director of public relations.<\/strong><\/p>\n Photo credit: Olivia Body \u201908<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Batten Leadership Institute began ten years ago with just twelve students. Today, roughly 150 students each year engage in BLI’s challenging curriculum, learning skills most people don’t get until much later in their careers, if ever.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2122,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[44],"class_list":["post-2113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","tag-summer-2012"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2113"}],"version-history":[{"count":27,"href":"https:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2113\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2769,"href":"https:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2113\/revisions\/2769"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}The Batten Leadership Institute began ten years ago with just twelve students. Today, roughly 150 students each year engage in BLI\u2019s challenging curriculum, learning skills most people don\u2019t get until much later in their careers, if ever.<\/h4>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/walsh_quote_300.jpg\" "\\"walsh_quote_300\\"")
\u201cWe help students expand their edge of what they are able to do as leaders and how they are able to lead their lives,\u201d explains Schnurman-Crook. \u201cWhen students accept our invitation to enter the program, they agree to give us permission to push and challenge them in an incredibly supportive environment. We think of it as a little tough love with a lot of positive, unconditional regard that everyone has the capacity to move somewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"Batten](\"http:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/bli_leaders_300.jpg\" "\\"bli_leaders_300\\"")