At a glance
Zac Barbis, residence director and coordinator of Student Leadership, and Brittany Richards, coordinator of Student Activities, presented at the Mid-Atlantic Region Conference for the National Association of Campus Activities in Buffalo, and the College Student Personnel Association of New York State Annual Conference in Corning.
Members of the Alfred State Office of Student Engagement and the Center for Civic Engagement recently presented at multiple conferences, sharing their expertise on leadership and explaining some great things happening on campus.
Zac Barbis, residence director and coordinator of Student Leadership, and Brittany Richards, coordinator of Student Activities, presented at the Mid-Atlantic Region Conference for the National Association of Campus Activities in Buffalo, and the College Student Personnel Association of New York State Annual Conference in Corning.
At these conferences, the two presented, “The Five Essential Elements: Infusing Clubs and Organizations with Leadership Development,” which focused on the leadership development of Alfred State students by incorporating Gallup’s “Wellbeing: The Five Essential Elements” as a basis for involvement.
Barbis stated, “Our presentation focused on caring for the wellbeing of involved student leaders, while also promoting the growth and development of new student leaders within clubs and organizations. The presentation stimulated productive discussion among those present and provided new ideas for everyone at the presentation.”
Next, Jonathan Hilsher, director of the Center for Civic Engagement, and Troy Morehouse, director of Student Engagement, presented at the SUNY Applied Learning Conference in Niagara Falls. Their presentation, titled, “Applied Learning: The Alfred State Leadership Minor,” demonstrated to colleagues across SUNY how the Alfred State leadership minor came to be.
Along with this, the two discussed how applied learning principles were infused into the minor’s courses, thus allowing students to take the skills they are learning and apply them to real-world leadership and civic engagement challenges.
Morehouse said, “It is rewarding to see how innovative this program is. Other schools are working to create similar programs, and to know they may be modeling them off what we have already created further demonstrates Alfred State is a leader in this area.”