{"id":18,"date":"2019-08-30T09:05:46","date_gmt":"2019-08-30T16:05:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/summer-2019\/?p=18"},"modified":"2019-09-23T13:09:37","modified_gmt":"2019-09-23T20:09:37","slug":"lessons-in-leadership","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/summer-2019\/lessons-in-leadership\/","title":{"rendered":"Lessons in Leadership"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dave Wilbur graduated from Harvey Mudd<\/strong> College in 1968 with a bachelor\u2019s degree in math. Following two master\u2019s degrees, his first career was in environmental engineering, which led to engineering management positions and then aeronautical engineering management. As a manager with AeroVironment, a pioneering aeronautics company and leading manufacturer of unmanned aircraft systems, Dave and his team helped improve military intelligence, agriculture, energy systems and the electric vehicle industry.<\/p>\n

Today, he and his wife, Linda, are working on a very different kind of challenge: transforming the lives of families in underserved communities through their nonprofit, the LinDave Institute.<\/p>\n

It all began at East Los Angeles College (ELAC), where Linda taught early childhood development. She and her colleagues asked: Why were so few Latino women moving into leadership roles in academia? They were successfully earning their associate degrees but not moving beyond that. Was it something within the culture or within academia itself?<\/p>\n

In addition to economic hurdles, they found that much of the problem appeared to be self-image. The students simply couldn\u2019t see themselves in leadership roles.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo we began a project,\u201d says Linda, one that would build self-esteem and leadership skills. That\u2019s when Dave, inspired by an economic management theorist, got involved.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Dave had learned about W. Edwards Deming and his management theory from management studies he undertook while at AeroVironment, where he put Deming\u2019s theory into practice as an engineering and project manager. The Deming philosophy incorporates systems thinking and encourages individual responsibility, teamwork and collaboration. Dave calls it \u201cthe scientific method and the Golden Rule applied to systems management. As you learn to trust the team, you learn to trust yourself.\u201d Dave and Linda wondered if the same techniques that motivated engineers in the workplace would work equally well for college students in child development. So, Linda started using these self-esteem-building principles in her ELAC intern leadership program.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d give them a project, I\u2019d structure it, but I wouldn\u2019t do it,\u201d says Linda. This placed the responsibility\u2014and the credit, once the goals were accomplished\u2014entirely on the students, who were accustomed to doing as they were told. They were free to think for themselves and to rely on each other to reach their goals, skills they\u2019d have to master to become leaders.<\/p>\n

As part of the project, Linda\u2019s best child development students were invited to conduct leadership workshops at ELAC. From there, they added new projects in the community. \u201cWe began a project of reading one-on-one to small children,\u201d says Linda. \u201cThen we grew into working with young adults with autism.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2013, the Wilburs formalized their efforts as the LinDave Institute. Since then, they\u2019ve been busy finding new ways to support underserved communities in East Los Angeles, like conducting a free camp for girls that builds self-esteem and sponsoring ongoing art and science workshops for children in Boyle Heights. They organize and prepare volunteers who read to preschoolers at ELAC\u2019s Child Development Center, local Head Start programs and preschools, and who mentor young adults with cognitive delays. Volunteers and interns run free, bilingual parenting classes, tutor kids and train teachers, allowing Linda to continue to teach child development to the caregivers. Their project also facilitates art and science activities for Cloud 9, a community program for homeless families.<\/p>\n

The LinDave team also helps middle school students in East Los Angeles learn coding and graphics using the Scratch computer language. LinDave\u2019s teachers learned Scratch from an online program led by Colleen Lewis, McGregor-Girand Associate Professor of Computer Science at HMC.<\/p>\n

If the Wilburs\u2019 goal is to improve the self-image of the students and encourage them to give back, then the best measure of their success is the work that their interns have gone on to do.<\/p>\n

\u201cThree have finished their master\u2019s and two have received first-year assignments as adjunct professors in the community college. Another is working on her master\u2019s in public advocacy, and several have moved on toward their B.A. after getting their A.A. from ELAC,\u201d says Dave with pride.<\/p>\n

These students are from Boyle Heights and Highland Park where less than 15% graduate from high school and less than 5% complete college. Dave also notes that some of the program\u2019s early participants are immigrants with DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) status and have entered careers that benefit their East Los Angeles community. \u201cThey\u2019re moving into not just leadership roles, but educational leadership roles,\u201d adds Linda.<\/p>\n

Now in their 70s, Dave and Linda have transitioned out of paid, full-time work, but are still active and engaged with their institute, \u201crefocusing\u201d as the Wilburs like to think of it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI started out in math and computer science. I morphed into environmental engineering. I morphed again into managing engineers at an aerospace company, and now I\u2019ve morphed into being education-oriented with this nonprofit,\u201d says Dave. \u201cAfter I morphed into child development, I realized that managing toddlers was not much different than managing engineers\u2014both wanted something interesting to play with all day. I think Harvey Mudd prepared me for a variety of things.<\/p>\n

\u201cI advise young people that there\u2019s an excellent chance that you will not just change jobs but change fields,\u201d he says. \u201cThe more well-rounded and capable you are, the happier you\u2019ll be as you make those transitions.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dave Wilbur graduated from Harvey Mudd College in 1968 with a bachelor\u2019s degree in math. Following two master\u2019s degrees, his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":115,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/summer-2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/summer-2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/summer-2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/summer-2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/summer-2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/summer-2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/summer-2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/summer-2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/summer-2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/summer-2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}