So far my experience at Wellesley College has been an excellent one. I have had many opportunities to learn and grow, but I think most of all I have been experiencing the way a different type of college environment works.

Working at Wellesley is very different for me because it is a selective women’s college and seems to work in an "old school" fashion. Many of its activities and buildings have long traditions behind them, and neither the students nor the faculty seem to take well to change.

I have been working with the recently appointed Director of Student Activities. This is the first year for this position, and it appears that the students have responded to it favorably. I find this position to be particularly challenging because the office must spend a lot of its time defining its role with the students. The women of Wellesley are very independent, and they often do not want guidance or help in their activities.

The student body at Wellesley is incredibly diverse, and yet there seem to be definite similarities among the students. It is common knowledge that they are very concerned with their academics. This is a far cry from my days at Framingham, when talk around the lunch table focused around who was going where on Thursday night. Instead, the women of Wellesley talk constantly about their academics and how much work they have for Thursday night. They send e-mail messages to Kelly, (the Director of Student Activities), and myself, requesting e-mail conferences, because they just don’t have enough time to walk across campus to meet with us.

"Time is a valuable commodity here, as you well know," one student wrote to me. Student organizations do most of their planning over these e-mail conferences, as opposed to having actual face to face meetings. They claim this saves them time. This I find particularly bothersome because of an article I recently read about Americans becoming less able to communicate effectively with other people in daily conversation. Apparently we are becoming so used to sending voice mails and e-mails that we are becoming less skilled in actual face to face conversation. I would think that the institution would discourage the use of these conferences for planning and try to make an effort to help these women hone their interpersonal communication skills.

The students also tend to value their quiet space. At Framingham, I lived in the quiet residence hall, and students would complain that it was too quiet! There are no such complaints at Wellesley. No one ever complains about the lack of noise.

One of the projects I am currently working on is increasing the amount of activity in the perpetually noiseless Schneider Center, the Student Union. Schneider is a unique place. On the first floor is a cafeteria that serves fast food type items and has seating. The second floor has more seating, some scattered televisions, and Molly’s Pub, which only opened about three or four years ago. On the third level is more seating, TV’s and a defunct pool table, in grave need of renovation. On the weekends, the students use this space for dining, socializing at the pub, studying during the day and occasional dances and bands.

I have been having a difficult time changing things in Schneider, and I attribute this difficulty to several different obstacles. Firstly, I think it has something to so with my style of leadership. While I was at Framingham State College, I was very much a "Lone Ranger" style leader. If I had an idea, people would usually say "good idea" and would go along with it. Changes that students proposed, or programs that we wanted to bring to campus, were never really met with any opposition. At Wellesley, you have to worry about the thoughts and feelings of many more people. It makes me think about Dr. Chait’s class, and the issues of Governance, and who really runs the school. Every idea that we come up with has to go through Kelly’s boss, and then the director of the Schneider Center, and then the Dean, the students, and sometimes even the cafeteria workers! Ideas have been killed right with Kelly’s supervisor, Mary Beth, the Director of Experiential Programs and Leadership. This type of position in leadership, where ideas must be approved by many different people, is really helping me to become more of a team player. It is helping me to look beyond myself for ideas and help.

A second obstacle to change is the fact that Wellesley is very set in its ways. They don’t want change. I have heard the phrases "We tried that before" and "the students wouldn’t go for that" so many times that it will make me ill soon! I am trying not to be discouraged, although I was quite frustrated at first. I am slowly coming to the understanding that Student Activities needs to be very careful to avoid stepping on the toes of any number of students, faculty or staff. Everything that is done in Schneider Center needs to be run through everyone. I have found the student e-mail conferences are at least helpful for soliciting students’ opinions on things. However, change is inevitably slow and the process seems impractical at times. I understand the need for everyone’s input, but it seems like things are dragged out on purpose in order to make change difficult.

A final challenge is that the students are so academically oriented, that it makes it almost impossible to get them to participate in activities during the week. They simply don’t want anything noisy in their student center. This doesn’t make increasing activities in Schneider Center easy. Through every step of the planning process we need to be concerned with how the students feel about the noise in the student center. Both the new dean, Geneva, and I believe that the student center should be for fun and the library should be for studying. Geneva has told Kelly and me several times to "just do it" when it comes to making changes in the building, but both Kelly and I are afraid that this would bring major protests from the students. Again, students don’t want change. These women are so into having things stay the same that when the school’s computer services changed the served to a new Y2K compatible one, the students protested, wore black and made up T-shirt commemorating Sallie, the old Internet server and the date it was turned off!

This is such a huge change for me because where I went to school, it seemed like the students were always looking for more activities and ways to avoid doing more work! The students were almost always open to change and new activities. I feel that Framingham really fit the average college student model portrayed in the book When Hope and Fear Collide, whereas Wellesley is a far stretch from it. Of course, that is Wellesley’s claim to fame; they are not average.

Overall, I feel that my FEP is turning out to be a beneficial experience. I think that it is good that I become familiar with working at not only an elite school, but also a women’s college. I am able to observe the things we have been discussing in class. To me, theory in motion is wonderful. I look forward to continuing this FEP.