UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Even before she came to Penn State, recent alumna Emily Briselli knew that she wanted the opportunity to learn from Penn State President Eric J. Barron through the University’s Presidential Leadership Academy (PLA).
Her older sister had gone through the PLA, a program in which students from across disciplines have the opportunity to learn directly from the University president and the dean of the Schreyer Honors College. The academy is designed to help students foster critical thinking and leadership skills, with a focus on navigating complex topics while representing diverse communities and stakeholders.
“That experience made a big impact on her, so I knew it was something I wanted to be a part of,” Briselli said. “Honestly, before my first class I was pretty nervous, but President Barron immediately knew how to make everyone feel comfortable conversing and sharing opinions on challenging issues. I had some amazing professors during my time at Penn State, and I absolutely count Dr. Barron as one of the best.”
PLA Director Melissa Doberstein has seen firsthand the amount of dedication and passion that Barron brings into the classroom. She said his course is discussion-based, with Barron facilitating conversation around issues impacting Penn State and higher education — often the very topics that he is currently navigating as the University’s president.
Doberstein said that Barron excels at helping students understand the PLA’s tagline of “thinking in the gray” — the idea that leaders must navigate nuanced topics that are rarely black-and-white, all while representing constituents from many different backgrounds and perspectives. By giving his students a behind-the-scenes look at the challenges he faces as a leader, Barron helps students work through real-world problems by embracing the “gray area” of complex issues while developing leadership skills they can carry forward into their academic, personal and professional lives.
“Dr. Barron really values the conversations he has with students,” Doberstein said. “He takes notes during every class. He follows up afterward. He has been in meetings with Penn State’s Academic Leadership Council or with the Council of Academic Deans and he’ll say, ‘I talked with my students about this, and this was their perspective.’”
Teaching ‘servant leadership’ by example
Victor Airyo — a PLA and Penn State alumnus who went on to develop a creator economy startup with help from the resources available through Penn State’s entrepreneurial support ecosystem — describes Barron as warm, engaging, approachable and extremely dedicated to students he serves as the University’s president.
Hearing Barron discuss the considerations he takes with every decision he makes as a leader, including the careful deliberation with which he considers all of the University’s communities and stakeholders, helped Airyo understand the kind of leadership he wanted to emulate as an entrepreneur and business leader.
“Through Dr. Barron, I really learned what servant leadership meant through our in-class discussions. Whenever you’re starting something and you’re at the head, you have to be willing to lose the most to allow the people working with you to see those gains in the short term,” Airyo said. “At the end of the day, if I want my team to be cohesive and get where we’re trying to go, then I have to be willing to make the sacrifices and tough decisions to keep the operation going. Being a leader means you’re looking out for others, and you need to put your own desires second. Dr. Barron helped me to understand that.”
Being a part of Barron’s class also has helped current PLA student and Schreyer Scholar Maryah Burney understand how a leader endeavors to understand differing viewpoints and navigate challenging conversations — skills she now employs as the co-creator and co-instructor of a new student-taught course on anti-racism in the College of the Liberal Arts. Observing how Barron facilitated productive discourse in his class helped prepare her to do the same in her own, she said, and seeing how he approaches his role as a leader has affirmed how she aims to approach her own efforts as a student leader.
“Something that’s very important to me is accessibility — how accessible we are as leaders to the people we serve and the communities we represent. Programs like the Presidential Leadership Academy show that Dr. Barron always takes being accessible to the communities he leads into consideration,” Burney said. “He is always actively trying to have conversations with people, including with his students. He always says, ‘If you have any issues, then see me, talk to me; I will put time on the book, and we will work on it.’”