Skills for UR Leaders, a series of workshops created to develop a variety of programs to connect college students to their community, began on Thursday with a “Meeting Management” seminar.
“This program will be reaching out to others in the university and those off-campus,” Assistant Director of Student Activity Programs Laura Ballou said.
The Skills for UR Leaders Student Leadership Series will consist of seven, one-hour programs over the next three months. The topics of the programs run from “Navigating Systems I,” which will teach students how to use the campus informational, technical and logistical systems, to “Public Speaking.” The other programs are “Goal Setting,” “Critical Issues In Leadership,” “Programming 101” and “Leadership Styles.”
In January, the Rochester Center for Community Leadership was created to encourage college students to become engaged citizens and leaders during their college years and in the future.
“[The program series] was created to provide students the opportunity to enhance and explore their leadership abilities through interactive and thought-provoking discussions, workshop programs and service activities,” according to its brochure.
All of these programs are going to be taught by on-campus experts.
The first program, “Meeting Management,” was taught by Senior Associate Director of Academic Support Marcy Kraus.
“The focus was on how to be an effective facilitator, how to organize an agenda, put together that agenda and things that you may want to take into consideration when you plan a meeting, such as who is attending, and who are the members of your group,” Kraus said. “The program consisted of mostly juniors and sophomores who were already very active in groups, although there were some who were just interested in becoming better leaders.”
According to Rochester Center for Community Leadership Coordinator Bryan Rotach, different programs will attract different amounts of students with different leadership backgrounds.
“The programs teach both to individual needs as well as to the group as a whole,” he said.
Because RCCL is a combination of offices from all over the school, its hope is to bring together students with a variety of interests. The programs are structured so that whether you are a captain of a sports team or a member of hall council, the skills being taught will be geared to you personally as well as to the entire group.
“The more areas of campus we can bring together, the more interesting the conversations will be,” he said.
So far the series seems to be a success. “The students who were there seemed to really enjoy it,” Rotach said. “They learned some really core pieces of management and were really interested in follow up programs.”
The next program, “Goal Setting,” will be held on Thursday, Sept. 29th at 7:00 p.m. Registration is at the Common Connection.
Every January for the past sixteen years, the Paychex Leadership Institute has held an all-day leadership program at UR for 80 to 100 students. This program, as well as other programs run by various campus offices, taught students many different skills necessary to be an effective leader both on and off-campus.
In the summer of 2004, however, representatives from offices throughout UR, such as Wilson Commons Student Activities, Athletics and Recreation, Residential Life and Fraternity and Sorority Affairs, came together to form a centralized leadership program that was meant for everyone.
“This is something everyone should take advantage of,” Ballou said.
Jarret can be reached at bjarret@campustimes.org.
