Something to aspire to
You can’t aspire to something you are not aware of. That has been one of the driving tenets that I have built my teaching philosophy around since I arrived here at UNH. My definition of teaching extends beyond the classroom. The purpose of our undergraduate major is to prepare students for careers in healthcare leadership. That cannot be accomplished strictly within the confines of the classroom, so as soon as I started teaching here at UNH, I started working with professional organizations to introduce the students to leaders working in the field. That included developing a conference at UNH in conjunction with the Northern New England chapters of both the American College of Healthcare Executives (ACHE) and the Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA). This past Friday we hosted the 8th annual Shaping the Future conference. It was a great day. We had almost a hundred participants from a wide variety of healthcare organizations as well as the students. The students looked like young professionals (you can see for yourself), and they behaved like your professionals. It was pleasing to get many compliments from the attendees about them.
It’s not that the students aren’t aware that hospital CEOs or insurance executives exist, so they are, in that sense, aware of them. But to sit at a table and talk to one over lunch is an entirely different experience. That is why I keep organizing these conferences, as well as dragging the students along with me to other professional conferences. Meeting successful people and hearing their stories helps you be able to imagine yourself following in their footsteps - all the way to the top. It makes the goal concrete rather than abstract.
I know when I was a kid, and I think it’s a pretty ordinary thing, I had a relatively narrow range of professions that I was exposed to. As a result, the choices I made professionally were relatively uninformed. I would actually say I was pretty lucky because both of my parents were college-educated professionals. There are many kids who didn’t even have that example. I don’t assume my students have been exposed to healthcare leaders. After almost 10 years of teaching in this program, I know I’m right to not assume that, because most of them haven’t been. They mostly bumble into our program with a vague idea that they’d like to help people by working on the management side of healthcare. Beyond that, they’re usually pretty clueless. So it’s important to give them this exposure so they can start to form a realistic vision of what they can aspire to.
The sad thing is, I think there are many kids who don’t get to go to college, who don’t have great role models, and who are exposed to perhaps even less professional opportunity, so they can’t really imagine what they can aspire to. They vaguely know there are better opportunities out there, but they can’t imagine how they might take the steps to get from where they are to that better place. And so they can’t aspire.
I am privileged to do what I do. I love helping kids build their dreams to aspire to, and help them with their first steps. I’d love to find a way to help more kids. I guess that’s something for me to aspire to.