Leadership Challenge Program
Develop your leadership skills with Leadership Challenge. Regardless of previous experience or involvement, you only need to have an interest in furthering your leadership experience.
The program helps you build a student involvement portfolio demonstrating your leadership skills and involvement, and establish an excellent network of connections to students, community members and college faculty and staff. It also enables you to learn more about yourself and the essential skills for becoming a better leader.
The program focuses on developing leadership skills on a personal, group and community level, and looking at how leaders:
- Challenge the process
- Inspire a shared vision
- Enable others to act
- Model the way
- Encourage the heart
(James M. Kouzes, Barry Z. Posner, Leadership Challenge, Third Edition, 2002).
To complete the challenge, you must participate in following four components:
Leadership Challenge provides a variety of intrinsic rewards, but there are also some tangible rewards that lie at the finish line.
Previous Challenge completers ...
- Earned over $150,000 in scholarship money
- Transferred to a variety of schools including the University of Maryland, College Park, Shippensburg University, the University of Baltimore, the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and Mount St. Mary's College.
- Earned a cumulative grade point average of 3.6
You can use your student involvement portfolio for transfer school interviews, scholarship applications, career and academic interviews and as a supplement to your resume.
After successfully completing the challenge, you will receive a certificate and honor pin and be recognized at the Student Leadership Banquet and Commencement in May.
Learn
There are a variety of leadership development workshops and conferences offered throughout the semester. To complete the challenge, you must attend at least two workshops per semester on any of the following topics.
- Personal leadership styles
- Team-building
- Change-management
- Myers-Briggs type indicator
- Public-speaking and interpersonal communication
- Diversity
- Marketing your student leadership experience
- Ethics
- Civic engagement
Serve
Service projects integrate leadership skills and principles with practical experience and provide an opportunity to interact meaningfully with the community. To complete the challenge, you must participate in at least one project during the academic year and complete a reflection form through the Center for Service-Learning. The service experience can be done in conjunction with a class, a student club or organization, an Academic Community, the Center for Service-Learning or as an individual project (e.g., after school tutoring).
While planning your service endeavor, keep in mind projects need to meet Campus Outreach Opportunity League's five critical elements for true service:
- Community voice
- Education, orientation and training
- Meaningful action
- Reflection
- Assessment
Lorrie Brown and Caroline Huck-Watson, 2006
Adapted from the Campus Outreach Opportunity League (COOL), 1991.
and Janet Eyler and Dwight Giles, Where's the Learning in Service Learning? 1999.
Lead
The third piece of the leadership challenge is campus involvement. This can take place in a variety of forms from working on campus, serving on a college committee or getting involved in campus events and activities. To complete the challenge, you must demonstrate significant campus involvement, which the student involvement portfolio documents.
Campus involvement may include:
- Involvement in student government, honor societies (i.e. Phi Theta Kappa, Alpha Beta Gamma, Psi Beta), student clubs and Academic Community leadership
- Campus committee work (i.e. search committees, academic council)
- Working on campus
- Being an open house tour guide or new student orientation leader
- Attending and anticipating in campus activities
- Many others!
Student Involvement Portfolio
This final and most important piece of the challenge helps you package your experiences and highlight your achievements. Your portfolio is a reflection of you. It's an opportunity to record all of your accomplishments including your academic achievements, leadership experience, campus involvement and career readiness, which you will have an opportunity to share at the end of the year.
Learn more about the Student Involvement Portfolio.
Up for another challenge? If you have successfully completed the first year of the Leadership Challenge, the Advanced Challenge program offers a more in-depth look at leadership theories, skills and development.
