2008 Woodie Awards
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Conference gets students involved in leadership
Saturday's Leadership Summit at the University stressed the importance of public service
by Talia Schmidt | Freelance reporter |
It was a day of workshops, a day of motivational speakers and a day of pressed button-downs and pin striped slacks.
Approximately 115 students spent their rainy Saturday from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. at the University's first Leadership Summit conference held in the Knight Law Center.
The conference's featured speeches and workshops culminated in the grand finale Call to Action that featured 20 agencies varying from Planned Parenthood of Southwest Oregon to Teach For America to Big Brothers Big Sisters.
The theme of the conference was civic engagement and making a difference in the community.
"The point of it is to bring the campus together around the theme of civic engagement and leadership and getting the UO community involved with organizations in Eugene," said educational leadership graduate student David Rae.
"We take them through an evolutionary day and at the end connect them through actual volunteering opportunities," Rae said. "So it's like theory meets practice."
Among featured lecturers for the second workshop was Eugene Mayor Kitty Piercy, who gave a speech titled "The Community and You."
Piercy thanked students for attending the workshop and said that the University is a core part of the Eugene community.
"The University of Oregon brings leadership to our community in so many forms," Piercy said.
She discussed how University students can get involved: volunteering at the library, the Hult Center, with the police or planting trees with urban foresters.
"Volunteerism is the pathway to leadership," Piercy said.
She explained that she was once a shy person, fearful of giving speeches at rallies. But once she started getting active in the community, things fell into place.
"Then I found myself, because no one else would, taking on more and more leadership positions," Piercy said. She said that sometimes leadership can happen if a person is thrust into a vacant role.
"It comes when there's a vacuum and somebody has to step into it. And you're the one willing to do it," Piercy said.
Approximately 115 students spent their rainy Saturday from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. at the University's first Leadership Summit conference held in the Knight Law Center.
The conference's featured speeches and workshops culminated in the grand finale Call to Action that featured 20 agencies varying from Planned Parenthood of Southwest Oregon to Teach For America to Big Brothers Big Sisters.
The theme of the conference was civic engagement and making a difference in the community.
"The point of it is to bring the campus together around the theme of civic engagement and leadership and getting the UO community involved with organizations in Eugene," said educational leadership graduate student David Rae.
"We take them through an evolutionary day and at the end connect them through actual volunteering opportunities," Rae said. "So it's like theory meets practice."
Among featured lecturers for the second workshop was Eugene Mayor Kitty Piercy, who gave a speech titled "The Community and You."
Piercy thanked students for attending the workshop and said that the University is a core part of the Eugene community.
"The University of Oregon brings leadership to our community in so many forms," Piercy said.
She discussed how University students can get involved: volunteering at the library, the Hult Center, with the police or planting trees with urban foresters.
"Volunteerism is the pathway to leadership," Piercy said.
She explained that she was once a shy person, fearful of giving speeches at rallies. But once she started getting active in the community, things fell into place.
"Then I found myself, because no one else would, taking on more and more leadership positions," Piercy said. She said that sometimes leadership can happen if a person is thrust into a vacant role.
"It comes when there's a vacuum and somebody has to step into it. And you're the one willing to do it," Piercy said.
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