Organization Conference

On Saturday, Student Senate hosted our first Organization Conference. We wanted to gather as many campus leaders as we could to spend part of a day learning about how to be an effective leader as well as passing on important information as a new semester begins. The Senate Executive Board, below, was fired up for a fun day!

L to R: Hayden (Communications), myself (Treasurer), Anna (President), Max (Vice President), and Christina (Recording Secretary)

We had a brief lunch before heading over to Cherry Auditorium (in Peterson) for our keynote speaker, Justin Jones-Fosu. He talked about how we, as leaders, need to be an ACTion H.E.R.O. He stressed the importance of making a mark in an organization yet making sure the legacy and impact of the organization lives on after you are no longer leading it. Justin was also just a fun speaker, often doing crazy things (like singing and dancing) to make the audience laugh.

After the speech, Hayden, Max, and I each had a 20 minute presentation for club leaders. Hayden discussed successful PR techniques, Max showed off our new club pages on Moodle (our online class database/resource center), and I talked about the tasks, like writing checks or filling out supplementary allocations, treasurers should know how to do during the semester. The conference ended with another presentation from Justin, where he discussed how we each have our own social styles. My style is "amiable." Basically, I usually have emotional and personal reactions to experiences and will watch out for everyone in the group. There are four social styles (amiable, analytical, driver, and expressive). We discussed the pros and cons of each and how we can work with all social styles in our organizations. It was a fun way to end the conference.

This was the first time Student Senate had ever hosted an event like this. We did a lot of things right but of course, there is always room for improvement. It was nice to get the executive board together in creating a conference. We hope the organizations that did come got a lot from it; I know the five of us sure did!