LINDSBORG, Kan. – The Kansas Leadership Center (KLC) has selected 20 new organizations and 57 returning organizations across Kansas as 2021 Leadership Transformation Grant partners. One new recipient is Bethany College in Lindsborg.
KLC partners with different organizations each year and guides them through a three-step leadership program. Dr. Adam Pryor, Vice President for Academic and Student Affairs applied for the grant on behalf of the Diversity and Inclusion Committee at Bethany. Members of the Diversity and Inclusion Committee will act as the Bethany College Core team. The members of the committee are: Dr. Adam Pryor, Dr. Mark McDonald, Jessica Esquivel, Laura Jackson-Stenlund, and Brittany Torres.
This program was highly recommended by other organizations who have participated. The Diversity and Inclusion Committee recognizes that fostering a true spirit of inclusion on campus is not as easy as fixing a technical problem. It requires examining our capacity for self-evaluation, adopting common language for articulating the challenges we face, and finding ways to celebrate the successes of slow, gradual change in our community. KLC helps organizations develop the adaptive leadership skills to address large-scale, seemingly intractable, challenges and measure progress toward goals that can be difficult to quantify like promoting inclusion. In the coming weeks, the Diversity and Inclusion Committee will be soliciting additional employees to participate in the KLC program.
In the past six years of awarding these grants, KLC has given 257 grants, trained over 8,700 people and invested $7 million in Kansas organizations and communities. Applications for Leadership Transformation Grants are accepted between June and August each year.