Bonner Foundation  •  10 Mercer Street, Princeton, NJ 08540  •  609-924-6663 office  •  609-683-4626 fax  • info@bonner.org

In the third decade of the Bonner Program we must cultivate student experts on pressing issues of social justice in our communities and around the world. To be a Bonner is not simply to serve, but to love. In order to love, we must challenge ourselves and our beliefs while also seeking to understand others. Then again, to be a Bonner is not simply to love, but to advocate--to challenge--to rile up--to think critically.

We must think more critically about our impact. We can no longer assume that our goodness in service is self-evident and effective. We must push ourselves to look deep into our communities, ask relevant and community-driven questions, utilize resources from a diverse pool of campus academics and experts, and be prepared to change seemingly consistent programs toward higher levels of engagement such as public policy, strategic visioning, and impact assessment. We have spent 20 years grabbing hold of the basics--it's now time to elevate into the types of engagement that were dreamed about from the Bonner foundation's very beginning.

While reconsidering our impact through this more administrative and academic lens, we must also simultaneously focus on the impact of the Bonner Program on students themselves. To do so, we must work to define what "student expertise" on social justice issues look like.

A Bonner's journey should consist of meaningful and expansive exploration, challenging self-discovery, immersed engagement with a community, and a culminating service contribution. This contribution should be the hallmark of the Bonner Program--in which each Bonner gives back in a meaningful and lasting way to the issue, cause, or organization they worked most closely with during their time in the program. Each Bonner should work closely with the organization to determine what this contribution may look like-- such as the sustainable development of a new program or initiative, the writing of an issue or policy briefing, the creation of crucial resources for the organization, the assessment of community demographics and statistics related to the organization, or the creation of an academic thesis that brings experience and issues of justice from the field into the gaze of the academic community. In other words, we must challenge ourselves to go beyond the Presentations of Learning-- we must create opportunities--perhaps requirements--for every Bonner to develop measurable and meaningful capstone contributions to the issues they care most about.

By focusing on student expertise, we will be able to create a core of motivated, enlightened, engaged students who may go on to influence their communities as advocates, academics, community organizers, public officials, religious leaders, business executives, teachers, healthcare workers, mothers, fathers, friends, and citizens. Yet, these young and committed experts must humbly maintain their lifelong role as students--students who are able to think critically, wrestle with tough questions, and propose new ways of serving our communities and each other. This is what the Bonner Program was meant to cultivate. In the third generation of the Bonner foundation we must return back to the visions upon which it was founded and challenge ourselves to reaffirm our faith in student leadership.