Q&A WITH DR. EMILY KRICHBAUM, THE DIRECTOR OF THE CENTER FOR GIRLS’ AND YOUNG WOMEN’S LEADERSHIP

QA

WITH Dr. Emily Krichbaum Stepping Up

A Q&A with the Director of the Center for Girls’ and Young Women’s Leadership

Launching next spring at CSG, The Center for Girls’ and Young Women’s Leadership is designed to help girls and young women find their voice and know their power. This important resource will offer enrichment opportunities inside and outside the classroom for students starting with the Program for Young Children and continuing through the Upper School. The goal is to ensure that students are prepared and empowered for the leadership positions available to them at CSG. Through classroom activities, small-group mentorships and training, and partnerships with community organizations and universities, the Center will help our students realize their potential as leaders. During the summer months, the program will also be offered to students from the wider Columbus community.

To learn more about this exciting initiative, we sat down with Dr. Emily Krichbaum, who serves as Director of the Center for Girls’ and Young Women’s Leadership as well as Department Chair of History here at CSG. An expert in American women’s history and politics, Dr. Emily Krichbaum earned her doctorate from Case Western Reserve University and authored numerous articles on nineteenth and twentieth-century women’s reform leaders. Before joining CSG, Dr. Krichbaum taught at Ashland University, where she created the first women’s history and gender history class at both the undergraduate and graduate level and started 1girl on Ashland University’s campus, a student-led mentorship program where female undergraduates receive mentoring from community professionals and provide mentoring to middle-school girls in the Ashland community. She has also taught as a faculty-in-residence for POWER’s NEW Leadership program at the John Glenn School of Public Policy at The Ohio State University as well as Rochester Institute of Technology’s Center for Statesmanship, Law, and Liberty.

What type of resources will the Center provide for students? Dr. K: Ultimately, the Center is focused on providing experiences and opportunities centered on building leadership skills. Whether students are in the PYC or graduating seniors, they will experience a curriculum that is inspired and shaped by the latest research on girls’ and young women’s leadership. The goal is to instill greater amounts of confidence in our students and provide opportunities for them to succeed…as well as fail, helping them realize failure isn’t problematic or something to be feared—it’s simply part of the process.

The Center will also embolden and equip teachers by curating lessons and projects for their particular needs. I hope to also partner with teachers and develop classes that focus on experiential learning. Instead of telling students about legislation in their AP US Government class, why not allow them to research issues young women face in the greater Columbus area and have them draft their own bill to introduce to the Statehouse?

Learning and leadership development will also take place outside of CSG’s campus. Students will have the access to work on political campaigns, conduct interviews, and even carry out research projects at labs at The Ohio State University, for example. We’ll also be offering our own student leaders here at CSG—the Student Council officers, the head of the robotics team, the mock trial team, and so forth—the opportunity to participate in mentorship training, to help them learn how to lead as their authentic selves, with open mindedness and empathy.

How will the Center serve as a resource for faculty? Dr. K: Our faculty are some of the most committed and passionate individuals in education. They bend over backwards to do what is best for our students. I want faculty members to see the Center as a resource and bring me the ideas they haven’t had time to work on. I hope that the Center can serve as a catalyst for their ideas and ensure that our curriculum here is truly helping girls and young women find their voice and know their power. Additionally, the Center will stay abreast of best practices and the latest research to help augment and update existing educational programming.

How will the Center collaborate with community organizations? Dr. K: We’ll be working with the community in a number of ways. For the Senior May Program (SMP) experience, for example, we’ll connect students with various corporations and nonprofit organizations in four different fields including business and finance, the visual arts, politics and advocacy, and STEM. If a student has a particular interest in botany, for example, we might connect them with the Franklin Park Conservatory or an OSU professor. One of the most important aspects of my role is creating greater equity in this process by establishing relationships with community organizations to provide numerous opportunities for our students. In other words, their SMP experience will not be circumscribed by who they know but will be determined by what they are interested in.

Next year, as part of our Leadership Academy, students in Form IX will have the opportunity to meet and learn from some of the most impactful women across Columbus. Students will also be exposed to various career paths, potentially igniting an interest they didn’t even know existed.

Exposure and demystification are key in positioning young women to realize their potential.

Why was it important to offer this program to students beyond CSG during the summer months? Dr. K: Our goal is to have the funding to offer programming for girls outside of CSG by summer of 2023. We want to take the programming that we’ve developed at CSG and share that, positioning our school as a catalyst for all girls and young women to find their voice and know their power.

These opportunities should be accessible to all—not only developing young female leaders but also providing professional development to those who teach girls and young women. We’re very proud of our graduates and our faculty. We’ve created something at CSG that should not be kept hidden but shared for the benefit of all.

The sky’s the limit. We can start with Columbus, expand to Ohio. It can even become country-wide, because if we’ve learned anything from the pandemic, it’s that people can access resources, connect, and collaborate online. What would it look like, for example, for young girls from Columbus, Ohio to speak with other girls in Des Moines, the Bronx, Charleston, Phoenix, LA…about being a girl, about the challenges they face, about how to overcome adversity and know your power?

What does the research say about the importance of fostering leadership skills in young girls and women? Dr. K: Research suggests that leadership and development is absolutely imperative to foster at a young age. And, this work must continue through their adolescence. A study from ROX (Ruling Our eXperiences), a nonprofit organization providing evidence-based empowerment programming for girls, found that 23% of girls in elementary school and 46% of girls in high school don’t think that they are smart enough for their dream jobs. The study also found that almost half of girls report not speaking their mind or disagreeing with others because they want to be seen as likable. We also know that starting in the fifth grade and extending to the ninth grade, girls typically experience a significant dip in confidence and never fully recover from that. Fostering leadership early and often is key.

It’s clear that we need to harness every opportunity to affirm the strengths and unique qualities of our students. There’s no such thing as too much of this good thing.

Who is a female in history that you believe embodies the mission of the center? Dr. K: I think Miss Kelly and Miss Scott, the founders of CSG, best embody the Center’s mission. It was 1898, and they wanted an alternative to a finishing school. Instead of trying to find a spot at the existing table, they built their own table. A lot of the inspiration for the Center comes from our founders, who, with strength and grace, forged their own path. I want our students to have the confidence to lead themselves and others. I want them to know, deep down in their bones, who they are and never, ever apologize for it.