Communities of Practice
Ready to get involved and want to go deeper than a SPARK or Athena Film Festival experience? Join a community of practice and get:
- Meaningful connections with students who share your interests in a particular issue or a particular method of changemaking (e.g., entrepreneurship, advocacy, policy and government, tech, and research)
- Mentorship and guidance from experts and experienced changemakers
- An ungraded space to try something new, take a risk, get it wrong, and try again
- The guidance and support you need to consider your work through an equity lens, accessibility lens, and sustainability lens, in addition to the gender lens we're accustomed to applying here at Barnard!
- Funding from Athena or support accessing funding from external sources
We run multiple communities of practice and we're always launching new ones. In some communities of practice, members take on projects. In others, members practice skills. Some are anchored in internship experiences. No two are exactly the same.
This spring, most communities of practice will begin taking applications in the first two weeks of the semester.
Interested?
Here’s what to do next:
If you’d like to learn more about a specific community of practice, read about it here on our site by visiting its page under ‘Communities of Practice’. There, you will find information about when sign ups are accepted, what dates the program will happen, and the requirements for participation.
If you’d like to talk about applying to our programs or just learn more about the Center’s offerings, we encourage you to read all FAQ information and drop by Q&Athena, Athena’s biweekly Open House for new and returning students.
If you’d like to propose a community of practice or share an exciting idea (that you’re ready to create change with or just want to think through), you can reach out to Chriss Sneed, Athena’s Director of Applied Learning at csneed@barnard.edu or book office hours here.
Want to know more? Read our general FAQs below.
A few key things. First, communities of practice are not credit-bearing — which mean they're not graded. They're a safe and brave space for you to practice getting better at something, alongside others who share that interest. At Athena, that's changemaking.
Second, communities of practice are a space — which means that the work you do in them is self-directed, though you’ll receive plenty of guidance from our expert facilitators. Think of it as being handed a few ingredients rather than a recipe. What will you add? What will you make?
Each community of practice has its own application process. Click on the links above to learn more.
Yes, yes, and yes! Just be sure to read about the expectations for each one.
Show up, all in. Each community of practice has meetings - for example, Athena Fellows commit every Friday for a semester, members of the Williams Program for Women in Politics, the Athena Advocacy Institute commit 10 weeks of their summer to their internship or startup, alongside weekly gatherings with each other. It's different for each community, but the most important thing for you to know is that it's really a community - our meetings are where the work really happens.
Be open to collaboration. The change we need won’t come from a single approach or a single person, but at Athena, we don’t force you to do group projects. We do create the conditions for collaborations to emerge and flourish.