Photo: Jason Miller
Fellowships:
Learning in the Classroom and Beyond
At Hathaway Brown, Ohio’s oldest continuously operating
college prep school for girls, the environmental focus starts with
students, literally. In 1988, then-junior Torrey McMillan founded
the school’s first environmental club. So it’s no wonder that
when McMillan returned to HB in 2011 to become its Director
of Fellowships in Sustainability, fostering student initiative and
action were at the heart of her job.
The Fellowships are a curricular option offering a
combination of classroom work and experiential learning,
meaning that HB girls get to help shape their own educational
experience, including engagement with the world outside the
classroom. (Besides Fellowships in Sustainability, Fellowships
are available in eight different subjects ranging from business to
equity to writing.)
All 9th grade HB students take a required Fellowship
seminar, and then interested girls can either just sample upperlevel
fellowship classes – in Sustainability, that may include
classes in political action and institutional changemaking – or
take it even further by earning a diploma designation in one
of the eight Fellowship areas. The capstone of the diploma
program is a two-year project shaped by the student in which
she applies her new knowledge to try to solve a problem she
sees outside the classroom.
“All of these different Fellowships are designed to give
students an opportunity to explore pressing issues of the day, to
apply their learning in direct and meaningful ways to the world
around them, and to find their voice and their interests, and
figure out where they fit in the world and what they want to make
of themselves,” says McMillan.
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