CSLEPS and Student Leaders
Mike Gaincola discusses the characteristics that make good students leaders--such as compassion, thinking big, and thinking about the connectivity of individuals--and the ways in which the CSLEPS program fosters those characteristics.
Interview on 2012-03-26 00:00:00 -0400
Transcript
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But if there were characteristics that were similar in the students that work with CSLEPS I would say compassion, wanting to think about things from others' perspectives
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and trying to be compassionate in the way they approach not only their education but the way they show up in the world,
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and I'm very proud of our student leaders for that.
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I think the willingness to think big, to not be limited by artificial boundaries that we put on ourselves,
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and they may not all come in with that but our goal is that they leave with that approach.
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We have a program called Leader Shape. It's a curriculum based program that really helps develop leaders with integrity
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and also to get our students to think about what it is they're most passionate about, what it is that they want to provide leadership for
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and what change do they see in their community or on campus, and so through that program it helps them with a concept called healthy disregard for the impossible.
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It gets us to think about not that which we think we can accomplish but that which we know we must accomplish if we're going to try to make changes in our campus community and in our national and global communities.
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So if they don't enter with that we want to make sure they leave with that healthy disregard for the impossible, that there's nothing we can't accomplish if we work together.
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If we're not worried about who gets the credit and we focus on the real needs and opportunities within our communities the power of the Wolfpack can get things done,
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and we say we're a pack of action so I think a lot of the students have that same commitment to getting things done and to do so in partnership.
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We're not interested in solving people's problems; we're interested in working together in relationship to come to mutually beneficial solutions.
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So I would say that compassion, the willingness to think big, and to think about the connectivity of individuals and how we can work together for a greater good,
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those are the main characteristics that most of our students have and we really want to make sure that when they leave us they certainly have those competencies.
This video is an excerpt from a longer interview. Contact the Special Collections Research Center to request the transcript of the full interview.
