Notes from Springboard Fellows: Thinking Outside the Box
Notes from Springboard Fellows is a series of deep dives into the work of first and second year Springboard Fellows who play transformative roles in their Hillel communities. Read on to learn more about Craig Carroll, the Springboard Fellow at American University.
Interested in becoming a Springboard Fellow? Apply today.
Craig Carroll, a first-year Springboard Fellow at American University, started thinking about working for Hillel early in his college career. “I was what you might call a pipeline kid,” he joked. “Hillel was like my second major — I spent all my time at the Hillel building.”
By the time he was a senior, Craig knew he wanted to pursue a career where building relationships was key. “I really wanted something that was people-focused,” he said. “And where the main work is in connecting with people. Because that is what I love doing, and I’m very good at it.”
The Springboard Fellowship brings recent college graduates with raw talent, passion, and skills needed to reimagine and redesign Jewish student life to college campuses across North America. This was the perfect opportunity for Craig to combine his love for the Jewish world with his desire to work in an environment where every day would be different, where he’d get to focus on connection and community-building, and where he’d find great mentoring and professional development.
For Craig, having the support and structure of the Springboard environment has been one of the most rewarding aspects of the fellowship. “Springboard really puts such an emphasis on the growth process,” he said. “It’s made clear what you need to work on and where you need to do better, but it’s not expected that you’ll have all the answers immediately.”
One area where Craig invested a lot of professional development work has been building creative problem-solving skills and learning to facilitate brainstorming sessions with students. He recalled a moment earlier in his fellowship when he and his supervisor were working with students to plan a Wellness Shabbat, and had to go back to the drawing board several times to make sure their programming ideas aligned with what the community was looking for, and Hillel’s values regarding a Shabbat experience.
“It can be hard to encourage students to turn their ideas into reality,” he said. “Sometimes they hold themselves back if they think an idea is too weird, or if they don’t think they’re the right thing…”
To work through this problem, Craig called on the insights he’d gained from a workshop at Hillel International’s New Professionals Institute (NPI). “We were given a problem to solve, and our instructions were to come up with the worst possible idea to solve the issue. Then we passed it along the table, and the next person had to make it even worse, and so on. What it encouraged us to do was come up with ridiculous ideas and then say, ‘What could make this into a good idea?’ And then model it into something better.” With this strategy in mind, Craig, his supervisor, and the student leaders were able to put together a successful and engaging Wellness Shabbat, and many other programs since.
Asked what advice he’d give a prospective Springboard Fellow, Craig suggested that the most important thing an applicant can do is self-advocate. “You’ll want to make sure you ask for what you need,” he said. “And sometimes that means coming in with your own needs and advocating for them. That’s what I did, and I ended up very happy and fulfilled in my work.”
Join a network of changemakers like Craig and transform Jewish student life— visit hillel.org/springboard-fellowship and apply today!