Over Valentine’s Day weekend, three North Central College distinguished Leaders, Marie Butnariu, Jon Kingzette and Lexy Schwarzwalder attended a leadership conference at the University of Arizona. At the conference, the students participated in a case competition. The competition entailed a poster presentation on the group Operation: Military Kids (OMK). Each team at the competition came up with a suggestion for how the organization could help improve retention rates at colleges, especially for students with parents or other close members in the military. Teams designed posters and then presented them for five minutes to a panel of judges. The Distinguished Leaders from the Leadership, Ethics & Values program suggested that OMK reach out to colleges and ask them to set up mentoring programs for students with family in the military. Mentors, who would be high achieving upper-class students in the model, would serve to guide younger students through the college transition process.
While at the conference, the students also attended various workshops to learn more about different elements of leadership and hone leadership skills. In addition to the workshops, students participated in service projects and listened to two keynote speakers discuss their personal leadership experiences. One of the speakers was Eric Fortenberry, who started the company OrgSync, which is an online tool for student organizations to centralize information. The other keynote address came from Ben Simon, who began a Food Recovery Network in 2011 at Maryland University, which takes extra food from college cafeterias and delivers that food to people who need it. The network is now present at over 50 universities.
The Leadership, Ethics & Values program sponsored the students’ participation at the case study competition. For more information about LEV, contact Tom Cavenagh at tdcavenagh@noctrl.edu , Renee Kosiarek at rkkosiarek@noctrl.edu or Renique Kersh at rtkersh@noctrl.edu.
