At the start of the academic year or the semester many colleges and universities conduct leadership programs and retreats for student government officers, members of the campus programming board, emerging leaders programs, and residence life. Many of these programs include a variety of topics including servant leadership and developing effective communication between team members. Usually, there is a team building element to these events where students get to know each other better and make connections that will hopefully make the year a success.

There is another large pool of student leaders on your campus who sometimes get overlooked and who also need to develop their leadership skills. Those are the officers and prominent members of other campus organizations. A half- or full-day training program can help run their organizations more effectively, get more students involved, and do some great things for your school and community. A great benefit of this training is that you increase involvement of more students through the organizations. This should lead to increased retention of those students at your institution, give them a greater sense of connection to the school, and diminish the challenges and disciplinary situations that you and other administrators may have to face. Overall, these students will have enhanced their educational experience and be better prepared for life beyond school.

Consider a combination of events in order to use your time and leadership budget more effectively. In 2008, I did a program for University of Texas-Brownsville/Texas Southmost College SGA officers on a Friday night and then led their campus organization leadership training the next day and it was a great success. On Friday night, the SGA officers worked on communication as a team, recognizing diversity within the team, and team building. The next day, they served as the support staff for the organization leaders’ training program by setting up in the morning, running registration, serving lunch, and more. This helped to melt away some the “us versus them” mentality because everyone worked together to have an excellent day of training.

These types of events are great, but they are only the beginning! Students are on a steep learning curve as leaders. Their situations evolve rapidly throughout the year as they face new challenges and learn more about themselves, their leadership styles, and new leadership techniques. These all combine to help them improve themselves and further their leadership skills. What do you do after the fall retreat to keep the learning curve going up? Here are five ideas you can use right away:

1) Have a monthly leadership series with short seminars either on topics that were not covered in the fall retreat, or to expand on some of those topics that were presented. Try this on a weeknight for maybe one to two hours and offer food! Another option is to have a single three-to-four hour session during the semester for the same purpose. Consider it continuing education for campus leaders and give out certificates for participation. It will also help those students who have stepped up to take over a leadership position because someone else resigned after the initial fall event.

2) Publish a short newsletter that can be emailed to all campus leaders, posted on your department’s Facebook page (or set up a specific page just for this purpose), and/or printed and left in campus mailboxes. Devote this newsletter to upcoming events and activities, a single leadership topic, and use it as a forum for students to ask leadership questions. In the case of the latter, assign a group of students to write the responses, ask for ideas from faculty members, or use your contacts in student affairs to get professionals from other schools or experts in the field to offer answers and solutions.

3) Create a campus organizations presidents’ roundtable. This group would meet to discuss issues, share ideas, work on synergistic opportunities, and more. You may or may not have a specific agenda for this meeting, allowing for free flow of dialogue and sharing amongst the group. On some campuses, such roundtables meet every other week; others, once a month. Find out what works best for your campus leaders. A variation on this is for the advisors to have their own roundtable group. This approach can greatly benefit your students’ leadership growth because the advisors learn from their colleagues how to better help the students deal with issues, “drama”, and a myriad of other situations certain to come up during the year.

4) Keep your campus leaders focused on their goals. At some point, possibly the fall leadership retreat, the officers of the organizations, as well as each student themselves, should establish a series of goals for their term. What vision do they have? What stepping stones will they need to achieve that vision? At designated points during the year, follow-up with them to make sure they are working towards their goals. This could be through the follow-up seminars, the roundtables, or maybe even by tweeting to all of the students on Twitter.com reminders and tips to help them achieve their goals.

5) End the school year with a celebration of leadership! Have a party, a banquet, a fun day, or something to recognize everyone for making it. This celebration should be announced at the fall event so that the students have something to look forward to. It may be the one thing to get them through the challenging times they may face. Make it an annual tradition and it may become part of the “package” that causes a student to step up to become a leader in their group or even in one of the campus-wide organizations such as student government.

By creating a culture of student leadership on your campus, you will be playing an important part in student success!

About Dave "Gonzo" Kelly (37 Posts)

Dave "Gonzo" Kelly, America's student leadership Trainer™, has been working with students on leadership development since he was a student himself. As an experienced college speaker and trainer his programs maximize student retention by linking student success through extra-curricular activities.