We take on quite a few interns.

The magnificent advantage of having a university in your market is there is no shortage of young talent. Which means intern resumes overflow in your inbox. And sometimes you get one who is so special that you want to keep them forever.

That was Emma Foley.

She was a graduate of the Residential College in the Arts and Humanities at Michigan State University. As such, she got to combine the small-college living-learning experience with the all the opportunities available on a major university campus. And do it all in a program that has a phenomenal post-graduation placement rate.

Emma’s RCAH experience grew her into the kind of employee we crave—someone who has nimble critical thinking skills, a deep appreciation for the creative process, and an awareness of her work’s impact on culture and humanity.

In someone barely legal to enjoy our bar cart.

This also meant that, despite our best efforts to keep her in Lansing, Emma was destined to move on. She wasn’t the first to go, and she won’t be the last.

It’s frustrating to feel like a revolving door for talented people, leaving us constantly in search of the next Emma. But when I talked with Steve Esquith, RCAH’s dean, I started to see that our role as an employer—similar to the college’s role—is to prepare young people for their next step the best way we know how, by fostering a challenging, creative, unique environment that grows their talents and turns them into the world’s best spokespeople for a pipeline of new people coming to learn from us.

Here’s a bit of my conversation with Steve.

Jen: We take on a lot of interns at Redhead. Most of the time they find us. We’re so lucky to be in a university space, where young talent is everywhere. The thing I noticed about Emma—who is an RCAH graduate—was that her critical thinking and her understanding of what design can do for culture and equity and empathy, was really, really deep. That might be a personal trait, but I think it has something to do with how you foster thinking in your college. I was sad to lose her.

Steve: So, you’ve lost a good employee that you’ve invested a lot in. Our students graduate. We lose all of our students. So, what’s the silver lining there?

Jen: As a small studio, when we have someone leave us for another awesome studio in a larger market, that speaks well about our work and what we’re able to do. We have Reds in Chicago and New York and Amsterdam and the Czech Republic and Knoxville. We’ve lost people to really interesting places.

Steve: Right. We lost Emma too. But we knew we were going to lose Emma. The point is, what will Emma say to her network who will then send us another student? That kind of advising and development of your employees, the development of our students, so their job placements are in line with their desires and their passions, creates a double feedback loop. Your footprint is bigger, people know who you are. When Emma graduates, she graduates as an RCAH major. We couldn’t have a better way of advertising who we are than our graduates.

Jen: That’s true.

Steve:  And they spread the word for incoming students to take a look at our program. So, it’s a pipeline. From one satisfied customer to another, you might say.

Jen: It’s interesting to hear you talk about that. As educators, you think about these things more than I tend to. I think there’s been a significant shift in how businesses mentor their staff and what that relationship looks like. And, of course, none of us entrepreneurs are trained in these things, right? So, we find we’re learning as we go.

Steve: Just like our students.

Jen: Exactly. Would you talk about the role of critical thinking in developing students?

Steve: I don’t know that there’s a single definition of critical thinking or critical reasoning that all our faculty would subscribe to. I think one of the things that’s been a value and a challenge for us is that we give the faculty—like the students—a lot of freedom. We have a required curriculum. We might have five sections of an introduction to the arts and humanities that all of our students have to take in their first semester. But those five sections are going to be very different. Instead of having an introductory textbook that everyone who teaches the course has to follow, we say, “Here are the goals of the course. And you get there the way you want to get there.”

Jen: Interesting.

Steve: So, if you want to get there by teaching Indian dance, that’s fine. If you want to get there by teaching American literature in the 19th century, that’s fine. But the important things are the skills and the competencies that we want the students to have at the end, not any kind of body of knowledge that they’ve absorbed and will probably forget in five years anyway. It’s the skills we want them to have.

Jen:  There’s not one right way to get to any solution. And there often is more than one solution. It’s the same for us.

Steve: One of the essential skills, then, is critical reasoning or critical thinking. And in the arts and humanities, that’s very much about finding your own voice. In college, it’s time to synthesize that. For me, critical reasoning is not a certain attitude about, “Well, let’s rage against certain norms in society or struggle against conventions or prejudices.” I think that’s all important, but critical thinking has a kind of self-reflective quality. We’re capable of recognizing when we’re speaking in our own voice about the things that matter most to us, as opposed to trying to figure out what it is I need to say. How do I fit in? This is a place that allows that kind of experimentation in all of its classes. Most of our classes don’t even end with a written final exam. They end with a creative project, whether the course is on ancient literature or indigenous rights or book arts. There’s always something at the end where the student can say, “This is me. This is how I understand the subject.”

Jen: So, they’re really showing you their knowledge and their process of that subject, rather than reciting facts about the topic.

Steve: Exactly.

Jen Which is probably what makes them useful to an employer like me, who needs someone who can think problems through and produce in the end.

Steve: Right. If we have a mantra, it’s “Show, don’t tell.”

That feels, in a way, like our mantra too.

We are drawn to critical thinkers—regardless of their age or experience level—who can help us elevate projects and solve problems for our clients in new and creative ways, who work to deeply understand a problem before they rush toward a solution. We want people who can develop thoughtful work with an impact on culture and humanity.

And then we have to be OK with them taking flight. Hopefully, in their next chapter, they’ll remember Redhead fondly, send good people our way, and continue to positively impact their world.

Emma, we still miss you.