Season’s Greetings from the George Mason University Campus Changemaker Team!

 

With Christmas in full swing and the New Year quickly approaching, I cannot help but sit back and reflect on all the work we have done this past Fall semester as part of Ashoka’s first-ever Campus Changemaker Pilot Year.

We have all been told that “Timing is everything.” It seems as though the stars themselves have aligned to create an extraordinarily successful pilot year for Ashoka’s Changemaker Campus Program and the GMU Changemaker Team. Of all years to begin such an initiative, there could be none better than the 2008-2009 school year. Here are a few “coincidences” whose timeliness could not be better-suited to the work we are doing in bringing Changemaking to George Mason University:

• The election of Barack Obama to the United States’ Presidency

• An economic downturn unlike anything since the Great Depression

• The commencement of a mandatory element of GMU’s regional reaccredidation known as the Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP)

• The selection of Steve Case as this year’s graduation commencement speaker

Barack Obama has brought the spirit of Hope, Change, and Service to the forefront of millions of Americans’ minds. Those three words are exactly what we will need to bring this country forward into a fairer, more just, and cleaner 21st Century. While the current global economic crisis is becoming increasingly painful, it is reminding us all of the follies of greed and social irresponsibility. In addition to the broad atmosphere of Change that is sweeping across America, George Mason University is going through its own Change processes. The coincidental timing of the QEP has allowed our Changemaker campus team to submit a proposal that, if accepted, could institutionalize social entrepreneurship and Changemaking across the GMU curricula and throughout is extra-curricular activities. Please feel free to read and comment on our proposal here. To top it all off we will end this year’s Changemaker Campus year with a bang by having Steve Case speak at our graduation ceremony. The Case Foundation embodies the spirit of social entrepreneurship through their commitment to “finding lasting solutions for complex global problems” by “investing in people and ideas that can change the world.”

Now it’s not all about things falling into our laps, we are also working on several other exciting events to really bring the change to Mason. One of our team All-Stars, Ryan Merrit, is working with GMU’s Entrepreneur-in-Residence Jim Wolfe on the annual YEA! (Young Entrepreneurs Academy). This year’s YEA! theme will be Social Entrepreneurship, and the event will blend first-hand “lessons learned” from successful social entrepreneurs in addition to workshops that teach budding entrepreneurs key business skills and strategies.

I have also been working with Heather Hare from the Center for Leadership and Community Engagement and Lisa Snyder from the Undergraduate LEAD office, to bring the topic of social entrepreneurship and changemaking into this year’s Mason Leadership Institute. The theme will be CHANGE: Transforming Leadership and there will be a breakout session dedicated solely to the role of social entrepreneurship in leadership.

We are also working on 2 other large events. One is in collaboration with the Phoenix Project which will focus on Virginia and its role as a hub for social entrepreneurship. The 2nd conference, one that was masterminded by Dr. Phil Auerswald, will focus on the regional wealth offered by the DC Metro area. Phil refers to the region as the “Social Silicon Valley,” illustrating its role in global social change as analogous to the role of Silicon Valley, California in global technological change.  

These events and conferences will be extraordinarily helpful in allowing us to drum up as much positive publicity as possible regarding our Changemaker Campus initiative. We are also working on several items which will ensure that the spirit of social entrepreneurship and Changemaking flourishes well beyond this pilot year and our team's tenure at the university. Over the course of the next semester one of our top priorities will be to collect stories of outstanding Changemakers in the GMU community. We hope to collect stories of any faculty members, staff, administrators, students, or alumni who are out there working to create a better world. Our hope is that these stories, encapsulated in a publication and passed around the halls and dorms of GMU, will inspire and empower thousands of students to want to make their own positive impact on the world. Out of all the stories we collect and circulate, we then hope to nominate 30 “Mason Changemaker Fellows” who will be exemplars for the Mason community for years to come.

Our immediate next steps are going to be to develop a website, which will be hosted at <entrepreneurship.mason.edu>, to develop a marketing scheme, and a newsletter mechanism to keep all interested parties informed, mobilized, and inspired.

As we enjoy the warmth of friends, families, and the holidays we are all looking forward to the upcoming Spring semester; there is much work to be done!

 

Alex Gudich-Yulle ()

New Century College

George Mason University