Courageous Leadership Research Articles

The legacy of Rip van Winkle

AbstractTo overcome adversity in today's newly competitive world, colleges will need clear purpose; courageous leadership, with the abilities to plan, innovate, take risks, and inspire; and a measure of good fortune.

Bloomfield College

AbstractBloomfield College used a declaration of financial exigency, a Chapter XI bankruptcy reorganization, and courageous leadership to solve its problems.

Gaspar de Portolá: Disenchanted Conquistador of Spanish Upper California

During the year 1969 Calif ornians celebrated the bicentennial of the origin of their state's modern period the birth of Spanish Upper California. Those familiar with that historic event know that delivery came only after a prolonged period of severe labor pains ; for over two years the Spanish midwives of the colonizing expedition experienced extended voyages over unfriendly seas, lengthy marches over unfamiliar and difficult terrain, and agonizingly long vigils for overdue supply vessels. And through it all they had as their constant companions the twin scourges of hunger and disease. Credit for the enterprise's ultimate success despite such adversity has been generously distributed, and this is as it should be, for all of its participants displayed extraordinary courage and shared the common sacrifice. It generally is conceded, however, that a major factor in the preservation of Spain's precarious hold on Upper California during that crisis period was the capable and courageous leadership of the expedition's military-commander Captain Gasper de Portola. Recognition of Portola's contribution as Upper California colonizer rests upon a broad and solid base. A grateful Spain promptly promoted him to the rank of lieutenant colonel. Historians invariably have lauded him both as a man and as a leader. Modern California has honored his

PEARL HARBOR: Why, How, Fleet Salvage, Final Appraisal

PEARL HARBOR: Why, How, Fleet Salvage, Final Appraisal

The Mind of B. O. Flower

IN 1882 Benjamin Orange Flower arrived in the East from rural Illinois. An energetic and idealistic young man of twenty-two, he was to spend most of his life as a radical editor in the big city. The tumultuous years that saw the farmer, the laborer, and finally the middle-class city-dweller rebel against the Gilded Age witnessed Flower's angriest editorial exhortations. Heir to a family tradition of radicalism, he was the last of a long line of obscure agitators. His great-grandfather was a confirmed republican who left England at the age of sixty-three to find a congenial political climate in Edwards County, Illinois. Flower's grandfather provided courageous leadership in the local antislavery movement, and his father channeled the Flower zeal into the frontier ministry. Two of Benjamin's brothers followed their father's profession, though one quit serving God to become first a quack doctor and then a stock swindler. B. O. Flower (as he always signed himself) also looked to the ministry, but during his year at the Bible School of Transylvania University, he came under the spell of Herbert Spencer and abandoned himself to the perils of free thought. It was this heritage of liberalism and nonconformity, moral passion and evangelical fervor that Flower brought with him to the East.'

Lincoln Ellsworth, 1880-1951

Lincoln Ellsworth, a pioneer in arctic and antarctic exploration by air, and first to fly completely across both polar regions, died on 26 May 1951 following a heart attack. He was in his 72nd year. A restless desire to see new lands, cross new seas, and to expand earth's frontiers was the expressed motive in all that Ellsworth did. Born of wealthy parents, he decided early in life to devote himself to exploration, and gave up a life of leisure to fit himself to lead expeditions by aircraft, ship, canoe, submarine, dirigible, and on foot to Alaska, the Canadian Northwest, the Andes, and both polar regions. His expeditions were not mere stunts for fortune or self glory, but, in spite of the quiet way in which he organized them, they were often spectacular and in total added much to geographical science and to the record of courageous leadership. After brief periods at Yale, Columbia, and McGill universities, Ellsworth left college to become an axman on the first Canadian transcontinental railroad survey. Later he was a prospector and mining engineer in Alaska and the Canadian Subarctic. Going to France as a volunteer in the First World War, he qualified as a flier only to have his service curtailed by pulmonary illness. In 1924 he led a geological expedition across the Andes from the Pacific to the headwaters of the Amazon. In 1925, with Amundsen and Riiser-Larsen he attempted a North Pole flight from Spitsbergen, but was forced back after one of the two aircraft was lost. On the return Amundsen stated that Ellsworth with almost incredible hardihood and personal risk had saved the lives of the entire expedition. In 1927, with Amundsen and Nobile, Ellsworth flew across the North Pole in the dirigible Norge. In 1931, as representative of the American Geographical Society, he flew in the Graf Zeppelin on its arctic flight. For a time he supported Sir Hubert Wilkins' early attempts in the field of arctic submarine exploration. Although the submarine venture was unsuccessful, the association of these two explorers, when directed to the Antarctic, brought geographical results of the highest order. From 1933 to 1939, Ellsworth made numerous flights with Balchen, Hollick-Kenyon, and Lymburner in which he discovered nearly 400,000 square miles of the Antarctic Continent. His books include: 'The last wild buffalo hunt', 'Our polar flight', 'Search', and 'Beyond horizons'. He collaborated with Amundsen in 'The first crossing of the Polar Sea'. Although awarded high honours by his own and foreign governments and by scientific and exploring groups, Lincoln Ellsworth remained a sincerely modest man, quick to seek and act on the counsel of his expeditionary associates, whom he chose with care, but yielding to no one his unequalled leadership in courage and determination.

MEDICAL EDUCATION AND MEDICAL SERVICE

In my address to the House of Delegates, 1 I called attention to the serious difficulties in medical service that are developing under our present policy in medical education. But the subject is so large that a summary of it was all that was possible in that address. I am therefore returning to it here in order to consider more fully some of its most important aspects. Twenty-five years ago, medical education was in a disorganized state. There had been no lack of honest effort in most institutions to live up to their responsibilities as best they could, but there was no dominating force of national extent that could effectively insist on what these responsibilities were and how they should be met. In this situation, the Association stepped in and assumed direction and, through the Council on Medical Education under the courageous leadership of Dr. Bevan, produced a revolution. The