Minority Student Leadership Summit empowers students
This was the first summit to be hosted at MU.
Published Oct. 13, 2009
Students gathered at the Missouri United Methodist Church at 9 a.m. Saturday for the first Minority Student Leadership Summit held at MU.
The summit was broken into three separate sessions, with two or three workshops to choose from per session. Session options included "You as a leader," "Your Leadership Toolbelt" and "Taking leadership to the next level."
Sophomore Caitlin Hanson attended the workshop entitled, "Strengths-based leaders" by Dave Roberts in the first session.
"It talked about the psychology of strengths, and we learned to focus on our strengths as leaders and developing our strengths more as opposed to focusing on improving our weaknesses," Hanson said.
Hanson said keynote speaker Jo Lena Johnson, an MU graduate who now owns the leadership consulting firm Absolute Good was very effective.
"She was really powerful, and she really helped me realize that I need to focus my desire on the things that are important to me as opposed to other superfluous things," Hanson said.
Noor Azizan-Gardner, MU director of diversity programming and professional development, gave a workshop entitled, "Want to make things happen? Network and build relationships" in session three.
"It's no longer the way it used to be when you could just do things on your own," Azizan-Gardner said. "Student leaders need to have this vast network of people to help them get things done. It's all about getting everybody working together and especially with the world moving so rapidly. Lots and lots of people are working together and accomplishing remarkable things."
Networking is one of the most important components of being a leader in today's world, Azizan-Gardner said.
"Complex problems get solved when you have many minds together, so networking is really, really important, and people sometimes don't realize how important that is," she said. "If they can do that now, when they get out of school, they will be truly awesome and really accomplish a lot of things."
Dave Roberts, center for leadership and community involvement director, said because minority students and majority students have different experiences and challenges, their leadership opportunities will be different.
"(They have) to represent different groups, and a lot of the time that's hard for them because they may be the only person in a class of 400 that looks like them," Roberts said. "And so a lot of times, right or wrong, they are called out as the voice of that population."
The summit was not solely for minority students, Azizan-Gardner said.
"One of the reasons why we have that title is because many of the minority student organizations are small, for example, and they have many challenges that many of the big organizations don't have," Azizan-Gardner said. "We're trying to make sure that they understand how to engage better on campus and know what the resources are and be able to connect better as student leaders."
Regardless of a person's race or age, everyone has leadership potential, Roberts said. She said the best way to explore that potential is to get involved.
"Really every student on campus has the potential for leaderships, whether you're a 50-year-old non-traditional college student, or you're an 18-year-old student from Chesterfield," Roberts said. "You have the opportunity to make change and make an impact at Mizzou and beyond."