McKenna Barks ‘27 (Zanesville, Ohio), an Applied Biochemistry major with a minor in Leadership Studies, was among about 100 Marietta College students who presented posters focused on experiential education during Marietta’s annual Experiential Education Day. (Photo Provided)
MARIETTA — The 2024 Experiential Education Day at Marietta College highlighted the work and real-world experiences of students who presented their summer internships, capstone projects and experiences from education abroad.
The event, held throughout campus, was a celebration of academic and professional growth, where students showcased how their classroom learning has been enriched by hands-on work in their respective fields.
The event also attracted local high school guidance counselors invited by the Office of Admission, offering them a firsthand look at the caliber of work that Marietta students are doing and the support systems available to them throughout their academic journeys.
Alayna Francis, Class of 2026 at Irwin, Pa., focused her presentation on tennis legend Billie Jean King and her transformative impact on women’s sports. Francis’s poster explored how King redefined leadership and paved the way for future generations of female athletes.
“She was able to transform women’s leadership. So my abstract is Billie Jean King helped to engineer a path forward for women in sports using the transformational aspect of gender and leadership,” Francis said. “She allows for more representation, diversity, inclusion, and leadership roles for future athletes. Part of the way that she was able to help with these roles for future athletes was she founded the Women’s Tennis Association, which provided a new avenue for female tennis players to play professionally and keep doing what they want to do. And then she was also the first female commissioner, and through that, she was able to break through the glass ceiling by becoming the first female commissioner of a professional sport. So that was pretty big for her and her sport of tennis and for sports everywhere.”
In addition to her advocacy for equal pay in tennis, King’s legacy was cemented by her activism and advocacy for gender equality.
“While she was getting ready for her match against Bobby Riggs, she was also fighting for equal pay,” Francis said. “By threatening to boycott the 1973 U.S. Open unless they adopted equal pay for men and women, it became the first major tennis Grand Slam to have equal pay.”
Andrew Walsh, class of 2027, Pittsburgh, a finance and economics double-major with a minor in Leadership Studies, posed the question “What makes Lionel Messi a Legendary Leader?” in his presentation.
“I applied his leadership to the skills approach we learned about,” Walsh says. “His leadership style is a little more unique because he’s not very vocal. He more so leads by his actions. So when you look at his Skills Approach, there are three key skills: technical, human and conceptual.”
McKenna Barks of Zanesville, class of 2027, an applied biochemistry major with a minor in Leadership Studies, integrated her passion for emergency medicine with leadership theory.
“I work in emergency medicine as a tech, so I incorporated the team leadership model into emergency medicine,” she said. “More than 50 percent of the adverse effects in the acute care setting are due to leadership problems.”
Barks used the Hill Model of Leadership to explore the roles of leaders in an emergency setting. She demonstrated how leadership is distributed among experts in different fields, such as respiratory care and surgery, who step into leadership roles as needed.
“This also includes external leadership-your management, your EMS teams, and others-and internal leadership-how you facilitate a trauma bay, how you take a patient to surgery, how you can communicate and more,” Barks said.
Barks will pursue a career as a physician assistant or in hospital administration and her presentation was an exploration of how leadership can improve patient outcomes in high-pressure environments.
Matthew McAra, class of 2027, Clarksburg, who is majoring in computer science with minors in Leadership Studies and history, offered a presentation that combined his academic passions. McAra’s poster focused on the 34th President Dwight D. Eisenhower and how his leadership during World War II exemplifies leadership.
“My presentation goes through the start of his military career all the way up to when he was Supreme Commander of allied forces,” McAra said. “It goes through how he embodies that authentic leadership by working well with followers, keeping his ego in check, and inspiring others.”
McAra, who was initially interested in majoring in history, said the study of Eisenhower and World War II sparked his interest in the field.
“It was Eisenhower and World War II that got me into history, so this is an homage to what made me interested in history,” he said.