Student Leadership Summit
By John Hare
The fourth Student Leadership Summit was held on Friday, October 5, at the Germantown Campus. Over thirty students from the three campuses and Workforce Development and Continuing Education--a record number--spent the afternoon learning about leadership, participating in discussions, and just having fun.
The afternoon opened with lunch, and the students continued to go back for sandwiches, chips, and cookies between activities, leaving only clean plates in their wake. Properly fueled for the afternoon, the students began the afternoon's program with welcoming remarks from Dr. Mary Kay Shartle-Galotto and Dr. Clarice Somersall. Dr. Shartle-Galotto emphasized that the summits prepare students for leadership roles in important College activities. Dr. Somersall reminded the students that in a learning-centered institution, everyone is a learner, and as leaders, they have an important role in helping other 
students, faculty, and staff learn more about the activities in which they participate.
Following the welcoming remarks, the students saw a video, "Why MC Shines: Our Students." Some of the students in the room were featured in the video, produced by Instructional Television, but they had not had the chance to see themselves.
Next on the agenda was an exercise in tower building conducted by Dr. John Hare. Using such materials as chart paper, coffee stirrers, and paper cups, groups built towers. During the exercise, however, the teams were interrupted several times and members were transferred to other teams. This taught students to work as teams, in fact, several towers grew as tall as five feet tall.
The main activity for the afternoon was a leadership decision-making exercise led by Professor Jim Walters. In this exercise, students were given a hypothetical leadership situation and asked to work their way through a series of decisions, making notes on why and how they made their choices. Once the students had gone through the situation individually, they compared notes with others and their tables and then with the entire group.
As the afternoon wound down, Prof. Debi Higbie-Holmes showed a Stephen Covey video on how leaders see differently. A brief discussion followed, which allowed students to express concerns and identify ways in which the student leaders from the three campuses can work more effectively together. When Dr. Somersall reminded them that this was the only Student Leadership Summit planned for this academic year, students volunteered to organize another event themselves with assistance from the Directors of Student Life and the Office of the Vice President for Academic Initiatives & Partnerships .
