Using posters, pictures, and quotes, several students displayed what they learned at the national LeaderShape conference on Tuesday and Thursday in the Hamilton-Williams Campus Center.
Starting the summer of 2012, Ohio Wesleyan has sent several student delegates each year to the intensive, week-long LeaderShape conference to explore how to “lead with integrity” and discover who they want to be.
Sophomore Rachel Morley applied to be part of LeaderShape after hearing about it through the OWU Daily.
“To me, LeaderShape means a complete lack of sleep and amazing people, and going way outside of my comfort zone to figure out what I want in life and how I’m going to get it,” Morley said.
Junior Meghan Finke said each delegate who attended the conference this year created a poster describing his or her experience and what was learned.
“Each of us came up with a vision of how we’d like to see the world involving an issue we’re passionate about,” Finke said. “For instance, my vision is ‘I’d like to see a world where people with mental illness thrive with community support, understanding, and respect while living without stigma.’”
Finke said it was “powerful” to meet so many passionate, involved college students from across the country and she now feels more confident in her leadership abilities.
“The most important thing that I learned from LeaderShape is how all the different personality types of leaders lead, as well as how I go about leading,” said sophomore Leslie Alton. “This is important because I now know how to better work with others to achieve a goal with limited problems and best outcomes.”
There is also a LeaderShape fellow position, currently held by junior Hannah Henderson, that involves coordinating the application, selection, and registration processes for LeaderShape at OWU.
“Upperclassmen leaders on campus are asked to recommend younger students they think would be a good fit for the conference,” Henderson said. “The application is then sent out to those students, but also advertised in several ways to the whole student body. It is an online application that becomes available in February.”