SLLO Where Are They Now: A Public Speaker

 About 11 months ago I packed up my (too many) belongings and moved to Waco, TX to start the next chapter of life…graduate school at Truett Theological Seminary. As I look around at my life I realize I have come to love this place. I get to spend my time reading and studying God’s word and learning about the church, my “work life” consists of engaging with the community at Waco Habitat for Humanity and doing research on the topic of missions for an incredible professor and mentor, and I am in love with my church. My free time is spent reading books and really digging deep into community with the people God has placed here in my life.

I sit here now writing on the same laptop that carried me through my last semesters at Texas A&M University and an experience that when I look back upon I can only describe as surreal…serving as 62nd President of the Memorial Student Center. I was thinking about this chapter in my life the other day and realized that what I love most about my time as President is that it wasn't something that I wanted to do. In fact, I turned down the opportunity multiple times. I’m not trying to be arrogant when I say this. I know and appreciate that there are many people who wanted the job…I just didn't feel equipped. I knew, in detailed description, the intensity of what I would be agreeing to do. Yet, as I look back on the experience I realize that I was prepared. It was something I was preparing for years before I even knew what an MSC President was. I attribute a vast amount of my preparation to the Student Leader Learning Outcomes.

My first interaction with SLLO was via trickle-down contact. I was a shy freshman in MSC FiSH and the student staff in the organization engaged with the rubrics and tools behind the scenes and incorporated them into their leadership. I think I probably filled out a survey or two.

Fast forward to my sophomore year and I found myself in their shoes. Sitting around a staff table setting goals for myself and marking off boxes where I felt I landed in skill level at project management. Then I sat and talked with my Chair and Vice Chair about where I would like to be and what tools and practices could help me get there.

Fast forward once more and you find me as a junior, back on the other side of the table. This time I was serving as Chair and my Vice Chair and I spent hours brainstorming with our advisor, Katy King, about how we could push this project even further and engage deeper with our staff and freshmen. We simultaneously focused on our personal growth and each picked specific rubrics to follow, drafted learning contracts, and developed staff activities to get everyone thinking beyond just planning programs.

The rubric I picked to focus on personally was public speaking. My learning contract included signing up for a speech class. Two years later I found myself sitting in front of a news camera the morning that the newly renovated Memorial Student Center was to be rededicated and reopened after a $120 million renovation and expansion. The next day I was on a stage speaking to an estimated 3,000 people as we opened the doors and invited our Aggie family back into the campus living room for the first time in three years. Life is weird and unexpected.

What I love about the SLLO project, and where I think its primary impact lies in my life, is the focus on utilizing small steps and choices. I am a huge advocate for intentionality and reflection—and this is what I consider to be the core of SLLO.

I am a big picture person, often I really don’t want to recognize that the little choices I make can actually prepare me for the next opportunity. The SLLO tools required me to slow down and to examine my long-term goals and think about what I can do now to prepare. It is a model that relies on honest self-reflection and a willingness to be open to feedback from others. The funny thing is that it prepared me for far more than any of the goals I ever conceived.

Not only did SLLO prepare me for student leadership at Texas A&M but interacting with the project instilled skills within me that I continue to utilize every day. These are things that I don’t often even think about because they have become so ingrained in me. When I allow myself the time to sit and reflect I am always surprised at how far I have developed since I entered this season of life as an 18 year old freshman. I am comfortable receiving constructive criticism at my job. I am willing to provide feedback to peers and superiors. I am willing to step out of my comfort zone and challenge myself to do the things I think I can’t.  

If I were to offer one piece of advice to people considering engaging with the SLLO resources it would be: just start. Choose one tool or practice and help your students implement it. And then challenge them to do a little more, and a little more.

I am so grateful for Katy King’s passion. She not only provided me opportunities to engage on paper and in the safety of her office, but she actively pushed me to do the things I didn't think I could do. She never doubted that I could stand on a stage in front of 3,000 people and represent our student body…even though I questioned my ability. The SLLO project gave me an avenue to practice little things every day. It was these seemingly little things that ultimately gave me the confidence to go boldly and serve in ways I never considered possible. 

- Liz Andrasi

SLLO Where are They Now: Dedicating Time to SLLO

As a graduate student, my use of SLLO, best described as restricted exploration, was challenged by limited hours, stress from classes, and 9-month stents with a specific organization. Given those constraints, I have still been able to utilize several tools effectively and seen significant impacts.

Having been exposed to SLLO (without knowing it) as an undergraduate student and getting the opportunity to attend a SLLO orientation at the start of my graduate assistantship with Student Activities, I was eager to test the waters of student leader learning. I spent the first year of my assistantship advising a freshmen mentorship organization. With a moderately sized executive staff of fifteen students, I primarily utilized 1-minute papers (or more accurately, note cards) to encourage the staff to reflect on two key areas: 1) the impact they wanted to make on the organization and 2) the personal growth they wanted to achieve as a result of their work with the organization. I also worked with my chief student leader attempting to work through a rubric but struggled with buy-in from the student. I found the 1-minute papers to be moderately effective as we revisited different ones throughout the year.

As I, myself, reflected on my year in the shallow end of SLLO, I discovered two key obstacles. I struggled to obtain buy-in from students, which I believe to be a product of my limited time with them. I also found my intentionality to be lacking. With these two obstacles in mind, I set some goals for my advising position with a different organization the following year. I resolved to be more intentional in planning out how I would use SLLO tools and more receptive to my students’ reactions to the tools I introduced.

During the second year of my assistantship, I stuck with the same tools as before; 1-minute papers and rubrics. The difference this year came from my goal of increasing intentionality with SLLO. I took time at the start of each semester to select 1-minute paper prompts to introduce throughout the year that related to their experiences with the organization at a specific time. For example, I prompted them to reflect on transition, both as it relates to the organization and to their life, in April.  I also exposed my chief student leader to all of the SLLO rubrics and outcomes, allowing that student to choose a rubric they wanted to work on. That ownership led to significant student investment and improvement in our work with the effective meetings rubric. In addition to 1-minute papers and rubrics, I also employed leadership moments in weekly director staff meetings, disguising them as “advisor times,” a seemingly more fun agenda item from the students’ perspective.

I achieved much more success with SLLO in my second year, compared to my first, and I found the main cause of that increased success to be intentionality.  I sacrificed extra time to give real thought and attention to finding the most impactful way I could incorporate SLLO into my advising experiences. That extra time made all the difference.

As I transition into my first full-time professional position, when it comes to SLLO, that extra time is what I will remember. I know the principles. I have been exposed to the tools. But, if I do not make time to be intentional with how I align my work with those principles, if I don’t take the time to strategically plan out how I will use the tools, my efforts will be, at best, diluted. And, while students will change and my personalized style with SLLO will develop, without the dedicated time and attention, my student impact suffers. Time will tell exactly how I use SLLO in my next role, but the one certainty I know and keep in those regards is that time will be spent to intentionally figure that out.

- Leo Young

The Downlow on SLLO: The Importance of the First Follower

So, the universe has been trying to teach me something this week.  And, as is so often the case, it has taken more than just once or twice for the message to sink in…but I think I've got it now. 

It all began earlier this week when, as a personal celebration for surviving another semester of my own academic pursuits, I convinced a friend to go see The Hobbit with me.  For the most part I was just decompressing from the Fall and enjoying the sheer magnitude of the film, but I also, as is so often the case, heard that voice in my brain interject at a few key points in the story with “This would be a great leadership moment”, and “You could weave that into a social justice module for class, etc”.  As I was in relaxation mode, I promptly ignored those voices...but the lesson wasn't over.

Fast forward to Thursday, and I am sent this clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fW8amMCVAJQ

Although the message from the TED talker sounded a little bit more like “Transform a Lone Nut into a Leader”, what really stuck out to me was his emphasis on the importance of the first follower.  I began to reflect on how often I talk with my students about the courage and strength it takes to be the first follower, rather than the leader, and I couldn’t come up with much.  That’s just not a conversation we have (or have had before…).  As I prepared to leave for the night, these thoughts continued to swirl around in my brain looking for a place to latch on and mesh into next year’s assignments.

And then, the universe delivered the final blow: My grandparents wanted to go to the movies for Grandparents Night (our Thursday night tradition), and of course…we were going to see The Hobbit.  This time, with actual sleep having been had this week and my brain not still fried from writing a final flurry of papers, I watched the film for the lessons.  And I found a ton!

I won’t go into too many, but the one that stuck out the most that I knew needed to be addressed here was the moment when Bilbo Baggins did his own version of running up and joining the crazy guy dancing in the park.  Bilbo, who spends the first two hours of the movie reminding Gandolf and the dwarves that he’s never been a fighter, watches as the leader of the dwarves rushes away from the group and faces down his nemesis.  But rather than being paralyzed by fear or awe like the others, he braces himself to follow.  When the leader is struck down, Bilbo and Sting charge down the Orcs and, in doing so, bolster the others to fight back as well.

I was struck with the parallels to what I see in my own organizations.  While the dynamics rarely involve Orcs or Dwarves, they do often involve one or two leaders who seem so confident, that many of the other students sit back and watch in awe rather than stepping up to join in.  It’s only after one or two additional students break away from the pack and vocally support the “leader”, that the momentum builds and others fall in line. 

And so, this morning I find myself plotting with more intentionality about where this lesson in followership will fall into Spring’s curriculum.  And reminding myself to stop resisting the teachings of the universe…it always wins in the end.

- Sarah Edwards