The undergraduate leadership conference runs parallel to the faculty portion of the Conference on Inspiring College Teaching. The conference provides undergraduate students with a unique opportunity to reflect on their leadership development with peers striving for depth and excellence. Attendees enjoy a developmental and social experience designed intentionally for undergraduate students interested in becoming impactful, reflective leaders.
Undergraduate Leadership Conference
Conference participants will:
explore critical topics such as influencing the communities around them, thinking reflectively, and engaging curiously in school, work, and throughout their lives.
participate in dialogue groups where they will grapple with these topics and explore their leadership capacities and dreams.
identify values in order to understand and articulate what is most important to them through the lens of their talents, strengths, worldview, goals, and purpose.
think critically and creatively.
The ideal participant is an undergraduate who is hungry, humble, and people-oriented, who wants to engage in lifelong learning, and who desires to be a leader of character who makes a positive impact. At the conference, undergraduate students gain a new understanding of themselves, their peers, and their professors, making connections that lead to long-term mentorship with the potential to change their lives.
At the end of the conference, students should be able to:
Lead with character.
Build community amongst any group, team, or environment where they work and live strategically and with vulnerability.
Think reflectively about thinking, ideas, their values, goals, and impact.
Learn with initiative by engaging their education as a pursuit of meaningful learning, rather than pursuit of a high grade.
Exhibit curiosity by seeing the whole world as an interesting place and learning as a hobby.
After the conference, undergraduate students will have the skills and confidence to go back to their institution as lifelong learners ready to engage meaningfully in positively transforming the communities to which they belong.
Students learn to be authentic leaders true to themselves in the spirit of the American Youth Foundation motto:
My own self at my very best all the time.
Students make strong bonds with their peers studying an array of disciplines at universities across the country. Undergraduate students come away with a bevy of new practical strategies, approaches, and knowledge about leadership. They engage in the benefits of reflecting on their own leadership journey past and future.
“[The conference] helped change the way I viewed leadership. Growing up, I felt like leaders had to fit a certain mold. Through this conference, I learned everyone has different personalities and can be motivated by different values. The best leaders aren't the loudest in the room but rather those who listen and make everyone feel valued.”
-Larry Zhang, Texas A&M University alumni (pictured to the left)
