The Schools of Business and Humanities & Social Sciences sponsored 4 fully paid scholarships for TCNJ students to attend The OpEd Project Seminar: Write to Change the World, in NYC in March, 2013.
The OpEd Project’s mission is to increase the range of voices and quality of ideas we hear in the world. It was launched with support and seed funding from Echoing Green in 2008. Founder Katie Orenstein and colleagues work with top universities across the nation—Stanford, Yale, and NYU among others. This highly-interactive program is built around experiential learning and thought leadership. Read more here: The OpEd Project Core Seminar.
Freshman economics student Courtney Wirths comments on the experience:
I jumped off the subway at the Spring Street Station and climbed the stairs, up into a windy New York day. Walking about a block over I stopped at the door with a sign reading, “WeWork.” Taking an elevator up to the eighth floor, I was greeted by an office of glass walls and colorful furniture. Immediately the women participating in the OpEd Project’s core seminar began introducing themselves to me. To my right is a woman in law school, and to my left fellow students, sitting near us is Sue Gardner, the chief executive of Wikimedia, the nonprofit that makes Wikipedia possible. Our mentors for the day are Jennifer Block and Katherine Lanpher. For the next six hours, we all, under their guidance would narrow our expertise, find the confidence to self promote, and learn to write and present about a cause we feel most strongly about. The hardest, and most rewarding, portion of the day would be watching the group, one by one, learn how impressive their achievements are and why they matter. Riding home from New York that night, I felt more comfortable with the idea that I could have something I had written published in a major publication, and that my voice, in general, was more powerful than I had ever thought.
I jumped off the subway at the Spring Street Station and climbed the stairs, up into a windy New York day. Walking about a block over I stopped at the door with a sign reading, “WeWork.” Taking an elevator up to the eighth floor, I was greeted by an office of glass walls and colorful furniture. Immediately the women participating in the OpEd Project’s core seminar began introducing themselves to me. To my right is a woman in law school, and to my left fellow students, sitting near us is Sue Gardner, the chief executive of Wikimedia, the nonprofit that makes Wikipedia possible. Our mentors for the day are Jennifer Block and Katherine Lanpher. For the next six hours, we all, under their guidance would narrow our expertise, find the confidence to self promote, and learn to write and present about a cause we feel most strongly about. The hardest, and most rewarding, portion of the day would be watching the group, one by one, learn how impressive their achievements are and why they matter. Riding home from New York that night, I felt more comfortable with the idea that I could have something I had written published in a major publication, and that my voice, in general, was more powerful than I had ever thought.
