Learning, Sharing, Networking, and Collaborating: We Can't Wait!

Hello! I must say, I am very excited that I have the opportunity to attend the IMPACT conference this weekend and to facilitate a workshop on Saturday morning. I am a sophomore at Miami University in Oxford, OH who has been involved with several leadership and engagement initiatives. I am a Service Guide with our Office of Community Engagement and Service -- for this role, I lead Miami students on Saturday morning volunteer outings to social service agencies in Cincinnati and Oxford. I also work as the Community Service Associate in the University Honors Program; in this role, I plan our Urban Plunge immersion programs and coordinate an EITC tax campaign and the PLEAS (Peer Leaders in Engagement and Service) program. I'm also working with a visionary Oxford resident by leading the student volunteer charge on a grant-based disaster relief kit project, which provides low-income families in Oxford and surrounding communities with emergency kits.

Miami University is a unique place, and there are many good people here who know a lot about engagement, networking, collaboration, and leadership. I established my adopted definition of leadership through an enlightening October conversation with Dr. Denny Roberts, our former Associate Vice President for Student Affairs who is now in Qatar building his own division of student affairs at Education City, a consortium of prestigious universities that came together in the Middle East (I have a feeling that a few of these universities will be well-represented at the conference this weekend). After we met at LeaderShape last August, Denny nominated me to be the student representative on our Leadership Steering Committee. In our October meeting, which took place a week before he left for Qatar, Denny and I were discussing my steering committee role, as well as my LeaderShape Vision. The topic of defining leadership came up, and Denny, author of Deeper Learning in Leadership, gave me my adopted definition: leadership equals conviction in action. I and many of my colleagues at Miami are putting our convictions in action, and we can't wait to hear what everyone else is doing.

At Miami, we face a variety of issues ranging from the divide between Greek students (35% of our student body) and non-Greek students to mobilizing students to be civically and politically engaged to defining our leadership hallmark. Because I work in two service-based offices (OCE&S and Honors) and am invested in so many initiatives, I've witnessed collaboration result in wonderful things, but I can't wait to learn how offices and organizations at other universities work together. Another issue that comes up at Miami is building community in our residence halls. Rachel Chase, Stephanie Raill and I will be facilitating a workshop titled, "Scholar-Leader: a Self-Governed Community." I am a current Scholar-Leader, Stephanie is our associate director, and Chase is the RA for the program, which is housed in Elliott and Stoddard Halls, the two oldest residence halls west of the Allegheny River in Pennsylvania. Admission to the Scholar-Leader program is through application and students receive scholarships that cover approximately half the cost of housing each semester. We are a unique community because of our small size (70 residents between the two buildings) and because each corridor creates its own policies, and residents -- not the RA or the director -- are responsible for creating programming within Scholar-Leader, on campus, and in the larger community. We are running our workshop like it's the first corridor/all-community meetings of a new year school year; using this framework, we'll be addressing issues such as the role of the RA and advisory council, how we engage through programming, group leadership, our autonomy, and how we build community. We are anxious to hear what other universities are doing -- our seminar is highly interactive, so we encourage you to come to our 9:00 workshop on Saturday and share your perspectives!

Chase, Stephanie and I met yesterday to finalize our plans -- we'll be leaving Miami's campus tonight at midnight to catch our flight to Boston. We're a little worried about the weather. Three students from Miami's Wilks Scholars Program/Wilks Leadership Institute will be joining us. I can't wait for the IMPACT conference to commence.

-- John Hummell, Miami University Sophomore, hummeljd@muohio.edu