LOYOLA UNIVERSIY CHICAGO- In June, 1991 the all female college Mundelein joined forces with Loyola University Chicago. It’s legacy of empowering women through knowledge still lives on in the Loyola community today through the Gannon Center for women and leadership. The center resides on Loyola’s campus on the second floor of Piper Hall as does the office of the Gannon center’s director, Janet W. Sisler. The Gannon center may not take up a lot of space on campus but Sisler has proved with her involvement that they have made and will continue to make an impact on the Loyola community and it’s neighbors.
“We really are into developing the leadership of women across the Loyola spectrum.” Sisler said that the Gannon center has a ten-year plan in place that includes reaching out to other Jesuit institutions throughout the nation, and then throughout the world. She said that she wants the Gannon center to work with these institutions in order to become a collaborative center of leadership for women with an eventual global impact on society.
The Gannon center is prominent throughout the Loyola community in three ways. They offer professional research and internship programs for undergraduate students, graduate students, and alumni students.
For undergraduates, the center offers the Gannon Scholars program, which is a mentorship and leadership program that is offered to a select 20 undergraduates every year. The program provides scholarship aid, mentoring, and service opportunities for undergraduate students. Sisler says that the program is really focused on how the service opportunities reflect and build upon students understanding and development of their own talents and skills. Sisler points out that it is the students understanding of their own talents that helps them to provide better service to others.
Another program the Gannon center sponsors is the WISER program. The WISER program, Women In Science Enabling Research, is offered to five undergrads that are interested in becoming researchers for science, math, and technology. “These five young people work with a researcher here at the university all summer… and they work on really cool projects that have real significance”, Sisler said.
One student who worked in the WISER program last year did extensive studies on tracing the chemical elements of antibacterial soaps in our water. The research done by the student showed that our ground water still has residue of antibacterial chemical elements even after it is filtered in a water filtration plant. The antibacterial elements that still remain in the water are thought to have detrimental effects on human life. Sisler comments, “What’s happening is that it’s reducing our own opportunities to develop immune systems that are vibrant and robust.” She also said that this will be looked at and possibly confirmed with further research. Sisler said, “Sometimes science thinks they’re doing a great thing, but they don’t look at the long term ramifications.”
The Gannon center prides itself on the WISER programs ability to provide real research opportunities for students and also to help them develop a relationship with researchers. Sisler says the hope is that this opportunity may stimulate their interest in their area of research for the consideration of a life long career. According to Sisler, the students who have participated in this program have an excellent track record of getting PHD’s.
“We want to focus on encouraging women to go into areas in which women are still pioneers and obviously scientific research is still an area of pioneer activity for women.”, Sisler said.
A new scholarship program is on the horizon for the Gannon center called the Johnson scholars program. The program is named and financially supported by an alumna from Mundelein college, Adela Johnson. The program will focus on researching into even more socially important justice areas than they have done in the past. Sisler offered an example to what a student might research in the program such as why there are not a better percentage of women CEO, CFO, or COO’s in fortune 500 companies. This program will also connect students with professional researchers and possibly a business professional such as a current female CEO.
The Gannon center has many professional contacts from the work they have done over the past years but Sisler is also a great aid for connecting students with research professionals. “I’ve worked in leadership capacities in the Chicago area for the last 30 years so I know a lot of people, but we are also going to be talking to our board of trustees and have them recommend people in the profit, non profit, or the public sector who would be a really good match for their interest and their research activity”, Sisler stated.
Graduate students also benefit greatly from the Gannon center with vast opportunities for internships. This fall, one of the Loyola graduate students in higher education is going to apply findings from a professor in the school of education who has done extensive research on the most effective strategies for developing leadership in collegiate women. The student will use this professor’s research findings to help evaluate the Gannon centers leadership development programs and find ways to improve them.
Sisler said, “In a program like ours where we have scarce resources, we have to make sure we maximize the opportunities to really develop synergy between programs that we sponsor.” Anytime a Gannon center research project can be done with help from another professional or program within the Loyola community is a great example of how the center develops synergy and uses the resources at hand, comments Sisler.
The Gannon center also provides programs for Loyola faculty members. “Every year people send in proposals for us to fund in terms of leadership opportunities. This next year we’ll be funding Dawn Harris, who is in the school of business, who will be doing some more of that fortune 1000 analysis”, Sisler stated.
The Gannon center also does a visiting scholars program for post doctorates that are moving forward with research in areas that have not been explored in depth before. This spring a woman from the Netherlands, Veerle Draulans, will be “studying the interception between women and the practice of religion as change agents within social and public arenas”, according to Sisler. She has done extensive research in the past in the field of bioethics and the social transformation of women. Draulans will be searching into the archives the Gannon center holds in order to complete this mission.
The Gannon center not only provides research opportunities for Loyola students and neighbors but also puts on educational and inspirational programs for them throughout the year. One such program Sisler mentioned was one which the Gannon center celebrated the success of four retiring city council women from Edgewater, Uptown, Lincoln Park, and the Beverly areas. She said these women are the first to endure criticism within their field of work so the Gannon center wanted to turn the tables and celebrate all the productive work they had done in public service throughout their careers.
Another program that Sisler mentioned with pride was one such that the Gannon center worked in 6 high schools with 80 at risk young women in the northwest side of Chicago. The program focused on women who live in poor families with an income of less than $28,000, also with women who live in neighborhoods where the high school drop out rate is higher than the graduation rate, women who live in places where gangs are active and recruiting, and also students who tested below average on high school standardize tests. According to Sisler, what the Gannon center did for these women was worked with their families to provide them necessary resources to flourish, and then worked with the girl’s high schools in order to provide the girls the tutoring they needed to succeed. All 20 girls in the program last year all graduated from high school and 100% of them went on to college.
“It is really possible to develop leadership within young people if you provide the framework and the infrastructure when it’s done in a just way, a way that promotes human dignity, and in a way that really helps them maximize their liabilities”, Sisler said.
Sisler was hired as the director of the Gannon center last summer. She said one of the most fulfilling aspects of the job is being able to “collaborate with people to develop and implement programs that enable people to find their gifts and to use those gifts in service.” She said, “Every day I get to do something good... all these fires are being kindled every day.”
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