

What are you learning from life’s curriculum right now?
I am asking myself, in this moment of alarming and rapid change, “what is it that I need to be learning?”
Goshen College President Rebecca Stoltzfus offers regular and intimate reflections on campus, interesting people she’s met, conversations she’s part of and higher education today.
Email her: president@goshen.edu
I am asking myself, in this moment of alarming and rapid change, “what is it that I need to be learning?”
Jim Collins, author of the business books Good to Great and Built to Last, defined a Hedgehog Concept as what differentiates great companies from good ones. He writes, “A hedgehog concept is not a goal to be the best, a strategy to be the best, an intention to be the best, a plan to be the best. It is an understanding of what you can be the best at.”
One of the great things about gardening is that the garden talks back. I am constantly learning what works and what doesn’t work, grappling with the realities of my garden and myself, and yielding to them.
Here’s to all the GC students and faculty who are “doggedly” teaching and learning new ways of being and doing. It is the most powerful and the most human way we teach and learn.