Dick Phillips is named the sixth Executive Director of the AYF and serves until 1980.
Phillips was focused on expanding the experiences offered for leadership instruction at the Older Boys and Older Girls programs. He initiated the Community Forums, bringing in guest speakers to the Council Circle to open and close the conferences, viewing these two keynotes as a convocation and a commencement. He prioritized inviting people who are experts in different fields who lived the four-fold way.
Not only does Phillips bring changes to the instructional style of the OB and OG conferences, but he also brings shifts in pedagogy and faculty. Women are allowed to serve as faculty at the conferences, and the instructional setting changes from strictly note-taking and lecture-style courses to experiential courses in leadership. This pedagogical shift brings about a new style of group learning and team challenges, including activities like “the wall.”
These changes to curriculum and instruction style at OB and OG became fully emplaced in the Conferences in 1983, when the programs combined and became coeducational.
