鈥楥ommunity Express鈥�: A Service and Leadership Lesson My Six-Year-Old Taught Me
In the spring of 2021, I was Chair of the School of Professional Communication, and like most of the 成人大片 community, I hadn鈥檛 set foot on campus in more than a year. We were deep into the pandemic lockdown, navigating the strange reality of building an academic community through webcams, breakout rooms, and livestream links.
That spring brought a wave of challenges that no one had prepared us for: How do you make a virtual convocation, and the reception afterward, feel like the milestone it鈥檚 meant to be? How do you host final student showcases when many of those students haven鈥檛 been in a classroom together for over a year? How do you welcome new colleagues into a school they鈥檝e only encountered through a screen?
I spent a good part of those weeks recording and re-recording remarks for year-end events, trying to channel warmth and presence through a tiny laptop camera. At some point I realized I kept forgetting to introduce myself, so I stuck a bright Post-it beside the webcam that said: 鈥淩emember: Introduce yourself!鈥� So every take began the same way. I would imagine myself in the same room as the people I was addressing and say warmly and calmly, 鈥淗ello everyone, my name is John Shiga, Chair of the School of Professional Communication鈥︹��
I won鈥檛 admit how many takes it took to get those sentences out naturally, but I will say that the next morning, my then-six-year-old daughter had heard them enough times to deliver her own version over breakfast. Between mouthfuls of cereal, she looked at me and announced:
鈥淗ello everyone and welcome to a special event. My name is John Shiga and I鈥檓 sitting on a chair in 鈥� Community Express.鈥�
At first I laughed - her take on 鈥淧rofessional Communication鈥� as 鈥淐ommunity Express鈥� was certainly inventive. But as I thought about it later, I realized her phrasing was more accurate than I had given her credit for. 鈥淐ommunity express鈥� was exactly the challenge of that moment: how to create, sustain, and express community - quickly, responsively, and creatively, and when none of the usual forms of connection were available. Our graduating students were presenting capstone projects they had completed during a year when most of their interactions with classmates and instructors took place online. Our one-year master鈥檚 students were about to finish the entire program without having set foot in a classroom together. New faculty were joining us in a Zoom-tired world, yet deserved every bit of the welcome, mentorship, and belonging we normally cultivate through shared spaces.
In many ways, the work of service and leadership that year was 鈥渃ommunity express鈥�: building connections under extraordinary constraints, creating a sense of belonging across distance, and reminding myself as well as our students, instructors, and colleagues that we were part of something larger than a curriculum or a research agenda. With our offices and classrooms sitting empty, the need to feel part of a shared community was as urgent as ever.
That strange spring crystallized something I鈥檝e encountered again and again in service roles at 成人大片: whether we鈥檙e on campus or online, facing ordinary demands or extraordinary challenges, service in the university is ultimately about cultivating the conditions where community can take shape. The real work of service isn鈥檛 in the paperwork, meetings, reports, or events (important as those are) but in how we create a sense of connection across whatever divides we鈥檙e facing.
That spring also made me think more carefully about what service and leadership actually mean in a university today, especially at a time when everyone is carrying a full plate and already feels pulled in many directions when a new service opportunity arises. Faculty want to contribute, but they鈥檙e doing so against a backdrop of shifting external pressures and a sector that is being asked to do more with less. These conditions can gradually push us toward more task-oriented, efficiency-driven approaches to service - approaches that don鈥檛 always leave much room for the relational, care-based side of academic life.
John Shiga at an end-of-term social event with first-year PhD students in the MDI program he directs.
We are fortunate at 成人大片 to work within a system of collegial governance. When we participate in service - whether on a curriculum committee, a hiring committee, a working group on equity, or a university-wide initiative - we are not merely fulfilling a requirement. We are exercising leadership. Service becomes meaningful not because the tasks are glamorous (they rarely are), but because each role lets us participate in steering our academic community toward something stronger, fairer, and more connected.