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Colleges and universities all over the United States play an integral role in shaping tomorrow’s leaders. At Saint Leo University they take this charge to heart, infusing visionary leadership into the curriculum. I recently sat down with, Arthur F. Kirk, Jr., president of Saint Leo University to discuss his approach to leadership preparation.

Q: Saint Leo is known for its commitment to developing leaders. Would you tell us about your university’s approach to developing future leaders?

A: The notion that leaders are born and not made was once widely accepted. However, this belief is fading, as research suggests that much can be done to help grow leaders to their fullest potential. That certainly has been my experience as a university president for nearly 30 years.

When students arrive on our campus, they quickly realize that much will be expected of them. The days of sitting in the back row of a classroom and going through the motions as a college student are no more. That type of attitude is unacceptable to potential employers, and eliminating it while on campus is the first step to cultivating future leaders.

For this reason, our classes are intentionally small (our student-teacher ratio is 15:1) and students do not get lost in a crowd or back row, rather we engage them assuring greater opportunities to develop their skills and prepare for leadership roles.

At Saint Leo, all first-year students must take SLU 100, a foundational course upon which freshmen can build their leadership skills throughout their education, and long after. The course focuses on understanding and applying the university’s core values of excellence, community, respect, personal development, responsible stewardship, and integrity. The only way to cultivate leadership qualities among our students to ensure each of these values is thoroughly explored as principles of leadership—and followership.

Q: How does the curriculum at Saint Leo prepare students for future leadership?

A: One thing we know for certain is that the 21st century manager will need to know more about leadership than the 20th century manager. The world is changing at an ever-increasing rate, so we knew Saint Leo’s approach to leadership development would need to keep pace with and anticipate those changes.

Saint Leo’s new liberal arts general education program (the core of all our undergraduate degree programs), University Explorations, is designed with an emphasis on topics of special interest to the 21st-century student. The curriculum takes a cross-disciplinary approach to teaching students to think critically; to read, write, and communicate effectively; to act ethically; to appreciate beauty and exercise creativity; to develop a capacity for reflection; and to work in teams. Using a problem-based learning approach, students develop the skills they will need to be thoughtful citizens of the world and responsible leaders in their communities.

Additionally, woven throughout all our classes is Saint Leo’s Quality Enhancement Plan, A Model for a Challenging World: Critical Thinking + Core Values = Effective Decision Making, which requires students to apply critical thinking and our university core values to solve problems. Saint Leo University also offers a 12-credit Certificate in Leadership as well as an 18-credit Leadership minor that includes a capstone course in leadership, as well as an internship. Additionally, 17 sophomore student athletes picked by their coaches, representing each of our intercollegiate athletic teams, take a year-long leadership course.

Q: What are the needs of the nation and how should higher education address them?

A: There is no shortage of problems in our country at the moment. Challenges abound in all sectors—economic, political, environmental, militaristic, etc., because current “leaders” don’t lead responsibly and pass from generation to generation, problems that grow worse over time.

But the pass-the-buck mentality is not sustainable, and our nation’s young people will be faced with grave challenges to keep our country great. It is our responsibility to ensure that the future generation of leaders is equipped with the tools to confront in ethical and courageous ways.

Q: How does Saint Leo respond to this need?

A: I hear from many employers that our students are not only qualified with the practical skills necessary to hit the ground running in an entry-level position, but that they also have the ethics, critical thinking, problem solving, and decision-making skills to take on more responsibility within their first year on the job and move quickly through the ranks; they tell me that recent graduates from other institutions, in effect, start slower or hit a brick wall. Our students go on to become leaders in their fields and in their communities.

As an example, after Hurricane Sandy hit the east coast a recent alumnus in Florida reached out to fellow alumni—both those in need and those who might offer assistance or resources—to figure out how he could help. Within days, he coordinated the donation and delivery of more than 20 pallets of supplies and was soon helping to distribute those items in Staten Island and New Jersey with other alumni. So, again, I believe instilling values and challenging students to think critically to solve problems ethically is essential to educating the people we want to become our future leaders.

Another way Saint Leo responds to this need is to understand that one particular source of future leaders too often goes untapped. Our active duty-military members and veterans return from their service to our country having already received leadership training. And yet too often they are not given the support necessary to translate that experience into the civilian workforce or their communities.

Military members are resilient. They know how to be a team member. They have a clear understanding of the mission and how to achieve objectives, and many times over have demonstrated courage and skill under high-pressure situations.

These are all skill sets that will make them effective in the workplace, especially when partnered with a degree in their field. Putting that package together in the workplace and in the community is a powerful dynamic. They have already made a tremendous contribution to our society through their military service, but their potential for greatness at home too often goes unrecognized.

Q: What does the future hold for Saint Leo University?

A: While we already offer our students many opportunities to study leadership and leaders and to practice leadership skills in classes, clubs, and athletic teams, we are engaging more students in the study and practice. Leadership seminars, retreats, and non-credit short courses for fraternity and sorority leaders, student government representatives, and club leaders will soon be offered. Virtually all of our classes in our school of business require students to solve problems in teams. Many other disciplines are also emphasizing team approaches. There is so much more we can do.

I would like to thank Dr. Kirk for consenting to this interview and for all that he does to develop America’s future leaders.

Every since their inception, community colleges have always been viewed as the step children of higher education. Sure, anyone with a brain knows how significant they are and the important role that they play in America. However, many people can’t see past their perceived lack of “prestige” or “swagger” if you will. Without much acclaim or fanfare, they continue to be the backbone of America’s higher education system. I recently sat down with Dr. Alicia Dowd, associate professor of Higher Education at the University of Southern California, to talk about the importance of community colleges, as well as their problems and issues.

Q: Community colleges are often viewed as the step child of higher education, but they are critically significant. Would you explain why?

A: Community colleges are critically significant for the fact that they enroll about 7 million students; that’s more than half of all undergraduates at public colleges and universities in the United States.

Beyond that, it’s not an overstatement to say that community colleges are an integral part of the national narrative in the United States about the “American Dream.” Sandwiched between high school and four-year colleges and universities, they are an important rung in the ladder of our very stratified society and educational system. We are a “winner take all society”—we love winners, contests, and stories about elites—as the economist Robert Frank has pointed out. And you simply cannot have elites without having lower rungs of the educational ladder.

Community colleges may be viewed as step children by some, but they are the real deal to many who work and study there. And they’re often the one chance a person has for gaining social mobility. The idea that anyone can get ahead by hard work and smarts is important in the American psyche. Never mind that most students who start at a community college don’t finish and don’t end up with a degree or certificate. There’s a chance you’ll make it, it’s relatively cheap (compared to other colleges) and you don’t have to quit your job, move away from home, or be 18 years old to enroll there. Community colleges are a life raft for poor students and students who need a second (or third) chance to get an education or job skills.

Q: Aside from the lack of resources because of budget problems, what other pertinent issues affect community colleges ability to do their jobs?

A: It’s difficult to set aside budget problems, because these are very real. Students are getting turned away for lack of seats, classes are overcrowded, and it can be difficult to complete a degree program if you can’t get the classes you need. Plus if you would like help figuring out the requirements for your degree or to transfer to a four-year university, it can be a long wait. By most estimates, there are more than 1000 students for every counselor, or even as high as 1700 to one, as in the California system, which enrolls over 20% of all community college students today.

But problem-solving with the resources currently available (and continuing to advocate for a fair share of funding), it’s important to recognize that the biggest resource at any college or university are the people who work there. At community colleges, 80 percent of expenditures go towards personnel. With funding cuts, more and more faculty today are part-timers. So one big issue is being sure to give part-time faculty enough hours of teaching at each college so that they can get to know students and be a resource for them.

Plus they need to earn a living wage and receive benefits so they can feel good about teaching in these colleges. It is also important to involve part-time faculty in developing new instructional delivery models and curricula. There’s a lot of demand today for innovation, but one-size-fits all programs are not likely to work very well. Curricular and programmatic changes will need to be tailored by faculty at each college and faculty will want to feel ownership of the program before they commit to its success.

The second issue is that the diversity of the faculty doesn’t match with the diversity of the community college student body. When colleges hire they should be sure to recruit a diverse pool of eligible applicants and increase faculty diversity. Faculty demographics need to catch up with the student demographics. California, Texas, Florida, and New York have such large community college systems that they enroll over a third of all community college students in the U.S. These states also have large Latino populations and many of the colleges have been designated, based on their enrollment, as Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs). But the number of Latino faculty is still very small and colleges haven’t been intentional about developing their Hispanic serving identity, for example through curriculum development.

Finally, some argue that faculty unions and byzantine bureaucracies created by shared governance are major impediments to the types of innovations that are needed to do more with less in these times of budget cuts. There’s something to that, but that’s a smaller part of the problem. Faculty intransigence, such that it exists, reflects the actions of people who feel under siege. They have something valuable to protect—the community college’s unique role as an open access, “democratizing,” college—and they want to be sure to protect it. It’s important to understand their motivations and then really speak to them, as well as the community college role in promoting the public good, when attempting to institute changes.

Q: So despite their significance, community colleges have comparatively low rates of completion. Why is that, and what can be done about it? [Q: Community colleges will need to significantly increase their graduation rates for the Obama’s college completion agenda to succeed. Can they do that while many of them are fraught with severe budget crises?

A: In part it’s because some students who go to community colleges are not interested in completing a degree or certificate or they quickly move on to another institution, where they do complete their studies. Other students test the waters and decide that college is not for them. Others, including the majority who are placed in non-college-credit developmental courses after taking assessment tests, can’t get past certain gatekeeper courses, such as algebra. The students who complete degrees tend to be those who are savvy about enrolling in the right courses, self-directed, resilient, and well supported financially and emotionally by their parents, families or significant others. Even though community colleges have relatively low-cost tuition, finances do matter especially when you consider the impact lost earnings have on a low-income household. Community college students are typically working a lot of hours and of course that slows up their academic progress.

One thing that’s being done is to create more detailed data bases of student academic progress to see which students are truly being lost from community colleges (and higher education more generally) and which are “stopping out” or “swirling” for good reasons, for example taking a higher paying job or taking classes at another college closer to their home. A number of accountability strategies are also emerging, like President Obama’s College Scorecard and college completion agenda, which is backed by major philanthropies such as the Gates and Lumina Foundations, to hold colleges accountable for doing a better job in serving the students who do want to earn degrees and credentials. Redesign of financial aid, matriculation, and transfer policies to “incentivize” highly directed student enrollment behavior is also taking place, at the state, federal, and institutional levels.

Community colleges have been a focus of these initiatives because of their low completion rates. The colleges should use the new, detailed data systems that are being built up in many states to tell their success stories better as wells to identify the gatekeeper courses that are blocking student progress. Those gatekeeper courses are then ripe for reform. These should become the focus of curricular and pedagogical experiments with new course structures and culturally inclusive curricula. College leaders, faculty, and policy makers should acknowledge that faculty will need professional development and the tools for inquiry to engage successfully in these transformative change processes. At the Center for Urban Education at USC, we’ve created the Equity Scorecard to assist colleges in using their data to set equity goals for completion and design action plans to achieve those goals.

Another strategy is to redefine completion in terms of short-term, modularized, or “stacked” credentials that students can build on over a career span of lifelong learning. It might be possible to make progress towards President Obama’s goal for 10 million more graduates through this strategy. But, it would be a shame to over-rely on this approach. The considerable rhetoric that the college completion agenda has created will generate real and equitable change only if it leads to improvements in the quality of education available to all students at community colleges. Beyond the rhetoric, policy makers, funders and college leaders should make resources available for experimenting with new teaching and curricular strategies, learning from successes and failures, and participating in professional networks to evaluate and improve on new ideas.

Q: Many incoming freshman at community colleges end up taking remedial courses that are designed to prepare them for college level work. However, these courses do not count towards graduation and end up putting a band aid on academic deficiencies. What is being done about this problem? What is the role of high schools in reducing the need for remedial college courses?

A: The number one task is to improve schooling in primary and secondary schools. Number two is to vastly improve the capacity of schools and colleges to validly assess student knowledge and academic abilities. Too many assessment and placement tests are unfair and result in inequitable educational opportunities for African American and Latino students, who are disproportionately placed in and lost from remedial courses. Number three is to rethink how we teach adults and young adults who weren’t taught well the first time around. There are quite a few new models of instruction being developed, such as the Carnegie Foundation for Teaching’s Statway and Quantway curricula, various accelerated learning approaches, better curriculum alignment and clear pathways to careers and certificates.

Well, that concludes my interview with Dr. Alicia Dowd. I would like to thank her for taking time out of her busy schedule to speak with us.

Thousands of veterans are returning home each month and transitioning back to civilian life. For many, this includes going back to college or taking college courses. As they reintegrate into the routines of civilian life, special attention should be paid to easing the transition process and providing a supportive environment.

Dr. Victor Schwartz, Medical Director of The Jed Foundation, a leading not-for-profit organization dedicated to promoting emotional health and preventing suicide among college students, answers a few questions regarding the mental health and transitional issues many U.S. veterans face and what college campuses are doing to address the issue.

Q: Is mental health and/or suicide an issue among military veterans returning to college?

A: Many veterans coming to college show great maturity, discipline, motivation and focus. Nevertheless a significant number of returning veterans have reported mental health challenges. These “hidden injuries of war” are not surprising given the challenges of serving in a combat zone. It is important that veterans struggling with emotional health issues get the support they need as unaddressed problems can lead to serious consequences like substance abuse or suicide. With the right support and treatment, veterans dealing with mental health issues can still have a smooth transition and a healthy future.

Q: What challenges do many veterans face when returning to daily life as a college student?

A: Challenges many veterans face can range from a missing the camaraderie from their troops or dealing with misunderstanding university faculty members and classmates to physical, mental or emotional wounds of war. These issues can magnify barriers and challenges that make earning a college degree difficult.

Q: What can the student body do to help a veteran acclimate back to daily life on campus?

A: There has been significant news coverage of the emotional and physical injuries that veterans deal with as a result of serving in a war zone. There are significant assets veterans bring because of their experience and training. If you know or attend school with a veteran, the best thing you can do is help them have a normal experience: let them decide how much they want to discuss or emphasize their service, and be patient as they acclimate to their new routine.

Q: What boundaries must we follow to respectfully communicate with student veterans?

A: It’s sometimes easier for veterans to talk to each other than to civilians who may not fully understand their experiences, however, on campus, it’s important that civilians and veterans communicate as members of the same college community. Sometimes, civilian students can feel uncomfortable talking to veterans because they don’t know what is appropriate and what is off limits to discuss. Below are some tips for respectful communication from the Jed Foundation’s Half of Us website:

• Welcome them home
• Offer to help with their transition to (or back to) campus
• Support with patience and listening
• Understand that the transition home is a process and can take time

Q: What signs should administrators or students be aware of regarding mental health of veterans?

A: Veterans who have experienced trauma in war and combat might suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress (PTS), depression, and suicidal thoughts. It is important to know the warning signs of these conditions and, if there’s a problem, how to get involved in order to help your friend or family member cope and begin to get well.

Common warning signs of a problem include:
• Hopelessness about the future
• Difficulty concentrating or making decisions
• Jumpiness and constant over-alertness
• Troubling dreams, memories or flashbacks
• Increased heart rate and rapid breathing
• Insomnia and constant exhaustion
• Increased smoking or alcohol, drugs and/or food consumption
• Feeling nervous, helpless, fearful, sad, shocked and numb
• Irritability or agitation
• Self-blame, negativity or withdrawal

Q: How can I become an advocate for the student veterans on my campus?

A: There are many organizations that focus on making sure student veterans succeed in post-secondary programs. The Jed Foundation and the Bob Woodruff Foundation have created a training tool that helps campus health professionals understand the student veteran perspective, engage with them on campus, and provide the resources they need to succeed. You can support our troops by participating in The Bob Woodruff’s ReMIND movement. You can also become an advocate by joining IAVA’s (Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America) action network. There are also great resources available from Student Veterans of America and American Council on Education’s website for military students and veterans.

Q: Where can I go for more information?

A: For more information, visit https://www.jedfoundation.org/professionals/programs-and-research/helping-our-student-veterans-succeed or http://www.halfofus.com/veterans/.

This article originally appeared on www.diverseeducation.com