Throughout my three years in the Emerging Leaders Academy, I have had many opportunities to be a servant leader and develop my servant leadership skills. Through the program I have been able to help lead on multiple different occasions, by either leading the experience myself, or by participating in others. Through these experiences, I not only got to help out a population in need, but gained a rewarding experience for myself. Here are the different opportunities I had:
Ropes Course Experience: During my sophomore year, I had the oppurtunity to go out to a camp in the Badlands with a group of students and a professor. During this experience, I was not only able to build stronger relationships with my ELA classmates, but learned valuable lessons about leadership and the trust/risk involved.
Anti-Texting and Driving Demonstration: I was in charge of a service project group that set up an anti-texting and driving simulation/demonstration. We started it off by having an officer from the North Dakota Highway Patrol come out to campus and give a talk to the students present. From there, we set up a demonstration in which the particpants got to see the real consequences of texting and driving by trying it for themselves. This experience allowed for me to organize a project, through many different hurdles, that helped college students see the real dangers of texting and driving.
Sophomore Connections: I was on a commitee during my junior year in which we were tasked with making connections with the sophomore ELA class and becoming their mentors. We did a murder mystery banquet with the faculty of the school in the fall and were also able to organize a few different times in which we got to do different team building exercises with the Sophomore class and bring unity to the ELA program.
Pasta Benefit for Camp Grassick: Our class's final project for our junior year was to raise money for a cause of our choice. The class decided to raise money for students attending Camp Grassick in North Dakota. This is a camp that supports individuals with different types of disabilities. The money we raised went towards a scholarship program that helped students go to the camp that otherwise could not have afforded to do so. The main way in which my class raised money was by putting on a pasta benefit. We all worked well together to put on this successful event and learned many valuable lessons about servant leadership and helping others throughout.
Due to involvement in other oppurtunites to lead on and off-campus, I was not able to attend everything the ELA program has done. To check that out, click below.