{"id":121509,"date":"2019-01-18T10:44:01","date_gmt":"2019-01-18T15:44:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=121509"},"modified":"2024-07-08T13:46:15","modified_gmt":"2024-07-08T17:46:15","slug":"video-clayton-spencer-outlines-purposeful-work-innovations-with-washington-post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2019\/01\/18\/video-clayton-spencer-outlines-purposeful-work-innovations-with-washington-post\/","title":{"rendered":"Video: Washington Post interviews Clayton Spencer about Purposeful Work innovations"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Joining a select group of nine U.S. education leaders for an edition of <em>Washington Post Live<\/em> on Thursday, President Clayton Spencer explained that Bates&#8217; Purposeful Work initiative meets a major \u2014 though not always fulfilled \u2014 responsibility of a liberal arts college: helping students find jobs that feel meaningful.<\/p>\n<p>Colleges have long shortchanged students, said Spencer, by claiming to teach \u201ccritical thinking, collaboration, creativity \u2014 all those things \u2014 but then just telling students \u2018good luck\u2019\u201d at graduation.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBates is a classic liberal arts college, but we also recognize and embrace the fact that college has always been about preparing students for life and work,\u201d Spencer said.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><em style=\"color: #009779;\">View President Spencer explaining how Purposeful Work helps Bates students align their interests with work that brings them meaning in life:<\/em><\/p>\n<p>\n<iframe style=\"width:100%;height:460px\" seamless frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"auto\" src=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/video\/c\/embed\/dda8c24a-a54c-421c-8cc1-20393b8a6443\" class=\"\"><\/iframe>\n\u201cWe\u2019ve always said that the liberal arts is the most powerful and adaptable kind of education there is,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut we need to make sure our students are aware\u201d of those powers and can use them \u201cas they move through the world. That&#8217;s what it\u2019s going to take in a global economy with high-velocity change.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>Washington Post Live<\/em> is the paper\u2019s live-journalism initiative that convenes U.S. leaders and emerging voices on various topics. Thursday\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/post-live-2019-transformers-education\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">education-focused program was part of the \u201cTransformers\u201d series<\/a>, with prior editions looking at topics like national defense, artificial intelligence, space exploration, and medicine.<\/p>\n<p>The format features participants interviewed in small groups by different <em>Post<\/em> reporters and columnists. Spencer\u2019s segment, dubbed \u201cEducation 360\u00b0,\u201d included former U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services and now U.S. Rep. Donna Shalala, D-Fla., and Dr. Wayne A.I. Frederick, president of Howard University.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Meaningful and purposeful work &#8220;aligns your values and your interests with how you act in the world.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>In explaining Purposeful Work, Spencer began with two simple statements. First, \u201ceveryone in life is looking for meaning.\u201d Second, people want the ability to \u201cact in the world in a way that brings them meaning.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>We act in the world through our work, and work is fundamental to how we find meaning. And that\u2019s what purposeful work is, she said. It\u2019s not a <em>kind<\/em> of work \u2014 \u201cYou might want to be a forest ranger or a ballet dancer, or work for JPMorgan\u201d \u2014 but work that delivers personal meaning.<\/p>\n<p>And meaningful and purposeful work &#8220;aligns your values and your interests with how you act in the world,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>At Bates, Purposeful Work programming \u2014 with elements infused into the overall curriculum; a range of specific, practitioner-taught courses during Short Term; and a broad-scale summer internship program\u00a0\u2014 \u201chelps students understand that it\u2019s that <em>alignment<\/em> they\u2019re after.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Finding alignment starts with discovering what interests us. In college, it means \u201ctaking courses that you\u2019re actually <em>interested<\/em> in,\u201d rather than courses that don\u2019t feel interesting but feel like a proxy for getting a job.<\/p>\n<p>Purposeful Work counters the notion that students arrive at college knowing what they\u2019re passionate about and then, with the help of college, learn to \u201cimpose that on the world, or let it out. If you\u2019re Yo-Yo Ma or Leonardo da Vinci, that probably works. But for most people, passion is a byproduct of doing different things and achieving mastery.\u201d<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><em style=\"color: #009779;\">View the full Washington Post Live segment featuring Spencer, Shalala, and Frederick:<\/em><\/p>\n\n<iframe style=\"width:100%;height:460px\" seamless frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"auto\" src=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/video\/c\/embed\/fbf0fc2b-3a94-40b0-8655-66c203c6a701\" class=\"\"><\/iframe>\n\n<p>In addition to Spencer, Shalala, and Frederick, the program featured Russlynn Ali, CEO and co-founder, XQ Institute; Ryan Craig, founder of University Ventures; Robert McMahon, president of Kettering University; Sanjay Rai, senior vice president for academic affairs, Montgomery College; Cynthia Miller-Idriss, professor of education and sociology, American University; and Thomas Nichols, professor of national security affairs, Naval War College.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Purposeful Work meets a major \u2014 though not always fulfilled \u2014 responsibility of a liberal arts college: helping students find jobs that feel meaningful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":104,"featured_media":121558,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[4,130,224,234,11009],"tags":[12356,10935],"class_list":["post-121509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-life","category-collaboration","category-society-culture","category-teaching-education","category-the-college","tag-center-for-purposeful-work","tag-clayton-spencer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/104"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121509"}],"version-history":[{"count":35,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121509\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":121562,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121509\/revisions\/121562"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/121558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}