Fall 2007
Christopher Gergen Joins HLP Faculty
Christopher Gergen came to Duke almost twenty years ago, as a bright-eyed and enthusiastic student just when the Hart Leadership Program was in its beginning stages. After graduating with a B.A. in English and Fine Arts in 1993, he spent a year working at CNN as a writer for Headline News. Increasingly interested in how technology could be used to provide education in developing communities, he left CNN to spend a year traveling solo through Latin America to seek out in this arena. He ended up in Santiago, Chile developing distance education programming for the country's largest television network. But he also saw another great opportunity—thousands of young, creative people without a cool place to hang out. So with a group of local business partners, Gergen raised $40,000 and opened a coffeeshop/bar named Café Nunoa, featuring live music and theater seven nights a week. While building interest for his new venture in the community, he met a man who had founded a university starting with just two classrooms full of students. “He called himself a ‘cultural entrepreneur,'” Gergen says, “and I said that's what I want to be.”
Gergen ended up selling his Café and returning to the states to receive a Master's in Public Policy from the George Washington University and an M.B.A. from Georgetown University. After business school, Gergen stayed true to his interests and co-founded SMARTHINKING—an on-line tutoring company for college students. Now serving more than 200,000 students from 1,000 universities and colleges, the company has emerged as the leading provider of real-time academic support in the country. Gergen also started LEAD!, a non-profit focused on teaching leadership, entrepreneurship, and service to high school students; founded New Mountain Ventures, an entrepreneurial leadership development firm; and co-authored Life Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives (forthcoming by Jossey-Bass in 2008) .
And now he's back—still bright-eyed and enthusiastic. Where he once sat in a Duke classroom absorbing the wisdom of his leadership mentors Neil Boothby, Bob Korstad, and Bruce Payne, he now stands at the front of the class teaching young people how to become skillful entrepreneurs and successful leaders. He has also taken the helm of ELI, carrying forward the legacy of Tony and Teddie Brown who created the entrepreneurial leadership program that has become a signature program of the HLP.
“It's nice to come full circle, nice to be back at Duke, back in the community, to continue the legacy,” he says. And a full circle it is: Joel Fleishman, professor of public policy and of law, encouraged Gergen to explore the possibility of teaching with the HLP, but Gergen is also quick to mention that the opportunity to study under Fleishman was the reason he came to Duke as a student in the first place. He also mentions that he is the third generation of Gergens to teach at Duke—something he is very proud of.
Gergen's Fall 2007 course, PPS 144S: Enterprising Leadership, is the first class he's teaching in the Hart Leadership Program and at Duke. The course wasn't offered before he graduated, but it's a course he would have loved to take, he says. The students that he teaches are different in some ways from the enterprising leaders leaving Duke in the early '90s. Specifically, Gergen says he is highly impressed by the diversity of background and perspective the students have in his class. But other things don't change from generation to generation.
“What's stayed the same is passion for life, curiosity, sense of pride,” he says. “All the students I have feel like they can change the world, and that's great.”
Gergen will stay on as a permanent member of the HLP faculty for at least two years, and serve as the new director of ELI. Gergen calls entrepreneurship “a unique combination of opportunity recognition, innovation, and action” quoting Teddy Roosevelt as he says it requires “getting into the arena.” And ELI embraces this spirit, Gergen believes, both in where it's come from and in where it can go, including an expansion into a year-long program.
First, he says he would like to foster a strong exposure to the pedagogy of entrepreneurial leadership within a social frame, contained in a course taught in the spring semester. After that, selected students who wish to continue will be able to participate in a summer immersion program in Durham to investigate issues affecting the community. Through a fall capstone course, students would be granted the opportunity to create a business plan and launch a social enterprise focused on Durham. Fully realized, Gergen says they also hope to create an expanded ELI incubator for students who want to launch and sustain their social enterprises, as well as a year-long fellowship for graduating students to provide them with a stipend and additional support to help bring their ideas to scale. Overall, Gergen says he has two goals for the program: one is to provide a reflective experience for students to “think about who they are and where they want to go,” and the other is for students to take their learning out of the classroom and truly experience its practical applications by launching and sustaining high-impact social enterprises.
“What I want students to get out of the class is a sense that they can be active social change agents,” he says, identifying his major goals as a professor. “If they see a problem in the community, they can come up with an innovative solution and execute it.”
He has tried to drive home all these points in this semester's 144S class, but says more time is required in order to make it a robust experience for the students.
“Cramming it all into one semester has proven to be a challenge,” he says.
Nonetheless, many of his students are engaged in the course, developing innovative business plans, and devoted to the ideas Gergen's pedagogical model presents.
“We are processing this project more, thinking about it more, than for any other class,” sophomore Scott Peppel says. He and three classmates are developing a business plan to devise a program to help at-risk high school students in Durham stay in school and to create a scholarship fund to encourage college enrollment.
“I always found my passion in leadership in entrepreneurship—and it's now wonderful to be able to share this passion with others,” Gergen says with the enthusiasm that infuses everything he does. He says he's excited about taking the ELI reins and continuing to teach what he began learning at Duke and carried with him into a successful career.
- Iza Wojceichowska
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