Reflections: Time Spent With Program Partners

PC Training 2015

In early October, we spent a few days with many of our Program Coordinators for some training and good conversations around our partnerships. Program Coordinators, or PCs as we like to call them, are our primary contacts at the colleges and organizations we partner with. They are the work-force behind the campus-based sessions of the Institute. In my role at LeaderShape, I get to talk with many of them daily. Since those conversations happen over email and phone, it was nice to see these folks face-to-face in October!

In our conversations at PC Training about partnerships, we talked about how knowing more about each other helps us to strengthen those partnerships; how identifying overlaps in our organizational values can help us also identify our common goals; and how strengthening connections with folks on campus can help broaden and deepen a sense of community. We worked through some exercises and discussed some ways to do each of those things.

We also talked about LeaderShape’s new branding and the language we use when we talk about our organization and our programs. You can refer back to this blog post for more information about the branding. With planning under-way for many sessions of the Institute, this new language and the use of our new logos are being put into practice! We love seeing the flyers, t-shirt designs, Instagram posts, and tweets with the new logos! 

Since our time with PCs this October, we have been continuing the work around strengthening our partnerships with campuses and learning more about what they value for students on their campus. We look forward to continuing the meaningful conversations about how LeaderShape programs can enhance leadership on each campus and for each participant. 


Post from Abby Prince, LeaderShape's Director of Program Quality & Management.

You can learn more about the Institute by visiting our website or emailing Vernon Wall at lead@leadershape.org.

Partnerships and Milestones

Each year it’s exciting to take a look at the milestones of our organizational and campus-based Institute sessions. These milestones are important to us because one of the things they represent is our on-going partnerships with institutions that are also committed to making our campuses, organizations, communities, and world the best that they can be.

We are serious about the partnerships we build. This work, the work of creating a just, caring, and thriving world, is work we cannot do alone. It is work that our partners, board members, participants, facilitators, and other community members cannot do alone. But we can make an impact together. Together we create positive change.

Although we recognized our milestone partners at Program Coordinator training in October, many will have their actual milestone session over the summer. If you catch any posts or tweets from them, share our appreciation by offering them an encouragement or message of congratulations. Because we are all in this together.

Cheers to all of our 85 campus and organization partners and to those planning and participating in the 99 sessions that will occur in 2015! And a very special tip of the hat to those who are celebrating a milestone this year.

5 years

Association of Fraternal Leadership and Values

James Graham Brown Foundation

University of California-Berkeley

University of Iowa

University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill

University of North Texas

University of Tennessee-Knoxville

University of Texas-San Antonio

10 years

George Mason University

University of Texas-Pan American

15 years

University of North Carolina-Charlotte

20 years

Michigan Technological University
University of Georgia

Imagine a World Where…

Earlier this month we partnered with ACPA on a project for their national convention in Tampa, FL. In the marketplace of the convention we set up a booth and invited people to reflect on and respond to this statement: “Imagine a World Where…”.

And this is what happened.

At the Institute we talk about "embracing a healthy disregard for the impossible." The responses to this prompt truly brought this idea to life. Each person who contributed can see potential in the world. Our campuses, communities, and countries can be better when we embrace the possibility that contributing to the causes and people we care about will indeed create the world we imagine. And through the variety of lenses and experiences that others in our community give voice to, we become open to possibilities that we didn't even consider individually. 

Our challenge to the LeaderShape community is to remember each day how we want to see the world. To make decisions that support the creation of the world we imagine. This is how we build a just, caring, and thriving world.

To our friends who weren’t able to join us at ACPA… what is your response to this prompt? How are you helping to create that world? Tell us in the comment section.