Cultivating leadership skills in students
Campus leaders understand first-hand that many students have lost crucial social and leadership skills during the pandemic, but how do you bring those back?
This week I have insights from a dean who is pioneering a new type of leadership-training program as a way to re-engage undergraduates in campus roles and reinforce skills like strong communication and connecting with others.
The program, known as the Student Leadership Academy, was once a poorly attended one-day event. But this year LaToya Stackhouse, dean of students at Gordon State College, in Barnesville, Ga., overhauled it completely, developing a seven-week course that ends with students presenting a portfolio to their mentors and taking on a campus leadership position.
Stackhouse, who grew up 10 minutes from the college and took the job, in part, to be near her aging parents, reimagined the program with a team of student-affairs officers, encouraged by Gordon State’s new president, Donald J. Green. His buy-in has empowered the staff, she said, and revitalized efforts to build support systems for underrepresented student populations.
“That’s a liberating experience for a lot of people,” Stackhouse said, to have backing from the highest levels for that work.
After a pandemic drop, enrollment is beginning to grow again at Gordon State, which has close to 3,000 students — mostly commuters and about 500 who live on the campus. Retention also rose this year, she said.
Like many institutions, Gordon saw a pandemic dip in students who expressed an interest in leadership. The revamped leadership program is designed to tackle that challenge for the long term.
How it works: Stackhouse and her team developed the curriculum around The Servant, by John C. Hunter, and related ideas, namely what they call the “Five C’s” — caring, change, character, connection, and communication. The student cohort meets once a week for six weeks, first for an introduction and then one week per C.
How it’s going: The new program drew more interest — 30 students signed up, compared with fewer than 10 in the past. The student-affairs team divided the teaching among people with various backgrounds and expertise.
It’s been powerful, Stackhouse said, to see students’ mindsets shift. Some had thought of themselves as helpers and now see themselves as leaders with agency who can affect change and model good behavior.
Many of the concepts the course covers are similar to the principles in the popular book Nudge, by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein, on how to influence decision-making, which happens to be a favorite of Green, the president. “We’re basically nudging our student leaders in a direction of what the expectation is,” Stackhouse said.
Next steps: At the end of the course, students will be matched with a campus leadership role, either one they applied for or another that staff members identify. Then the students will branch out into more specific training for their positions, which could be paid or unpaid, as orientation leaders, resident assistants, or serving on the campus-activities board or the student marketing team.
Stackhouse said her team plans to evaluate the program after this semester to tweak it going forward. It has already become a required course for students who serve as dorm staff.