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 Winter Leadership Conference 2004: Leadership. Our Passion. Our Potential. Winter Leadership Conference pictures are up and can be viewed under our Leadership in Action section. In October 2003, the staff and student SALSA (Strategic Approaches to Leadership in Student Affairs) committees once again began planning for DePaul's annual winter leadership conference. Due to the overwhelming support for and acceptance of the "institute-based" leadership experience from WLC 2003, both committees agreed the structure for this year's conference would remain the same while the curriculum, leadership text, and leadership values would be re-evaluated to provide a different experience for this year's participants. After much time and consideration, the text selected for the WLC 2004 was Leadership Reconsidered: Engaging Higher Education in Social Change (Astin & Astin, 2000). This book takes a pragmatic look at how students, faculty, student affairs educators, and presidents/CEOs can effect social change on their campus(es) by displaying transformative leadership. The values identified for this year's conference experience included individual and group qualities of transformative leadership, as defined by Astin and Astin (2000). Individual qualities were Self-Knowledge, Authenticity/Integrity, Commitment, Empathy/Understanding of Others, and Competence. Group qualities were Collaboration, Shared Purpose, Disagreement with Respect, Division of Labor, and A Learning Environment. Throughout the weekend, students actively engaged in a variety of large group immersion exercises and small team meetings that required them to act, reflect on, and discuss these values. The final group project asked each group/team of students' to present 2-3 current campus issues that were hindering the community's ability to infuse transformative leadership into the entire DePaul campus and identify realistic strategies to effect positive change. A few major, new directions allowed for significant changes to this year's leadership conference. Peer Facilitators were added to the WLC 2004. This core group of 12 students facilitated small-group team building exercises and group discussions. Additionally, conference participants were asked to read the leadership text prior to the start of the conference, the small group meetings included discussion of the leadership text, and the final group project was intentionally redesigned to have students apply critical and creative thought processes to examine how they could initiate and implement the principles discussed in Leadership Reconsidered. Based on our evaluations, the WLC 2004 proved to be another success! 96% of conference participants believed the values chosen for the conference were important to their development as a leader; 92% of conference participants believed the conference added to their personal development; and 95% of students would recommend this type of conference experience to another student! A special thank you must go out to all of the departments that helped out with this year's leadership conference: Student Life, Residential Education, University Ministry, Campus Recreation, Student Centers Administration, Multi-Cultural Student Affairs, and Barat's Residential Education & Student Activities. In total, one hundred and twenty five student leaders participated in this year's conference - Leadership. Our Passion. Our Potential. |
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