This presentation gives an overview of how to enhance student leadership through structured conversations that include goal setting, career focus, critical thinking, and personal reflection.

1. Enhancing Student Leadership through
Structured One-on-One Mentorship
Matthew Cummings
Coordinator of Community Service
matthewcummings@depauw.edu

2. Speaker Introduction
• MA Urban Studies and Community
Development
• Coordinate Civic Programs
• The Hartman House:
– Spiritual Life, Social Justice, Civic Engagement
Programs
– “People of purpose building community to
improve the world”

3. DePauw Community Service Model
• 25 structured volunteer programs with over 350
students participating, each with a student leader
• Student leader duties include:
– Bi-weekly one-on-ones, 30 minutes
– Monthly group meetings
– Leading end of semester reflections
– Recruiting volunteers
– Tracking volunteer hours
– Promotion, communication, and PR of Civic
Engagement
– Paid $250 per semester

4. What we want our Student Leaders to
Learn?
• Develop professional competencies through
DCS leadership experience (NACE)
• Provides evidence of experience in civic
engagement activities and describes what
she/ he has learned about her or himself as it
relates to a reinforced and clarified sense of
civic identity and continued commitment to
public action (AACU)
• Connect to Servant Leadership philosophy

5. Influential Framework for Leadership
Development
• Robert Quinn, Gretchen Spreitzer, Matthew Brown
– Changing Others through Changing Ourselves
– Seeking to create an emergent system
– Recognize Patterns of Hypocrisy and patterns of self-deception
– Personal Change Through Value Clarification and alignment of behaviors
– Freeing oneself from the system of external sanctions
– Developing a vision for common good
– Taking action to the edge of chaos
– Maintain Reverence for others involved in change
– Inspires Others to Enact their Best Selves
– Models counterintuitive paradoxical behavior
– Changes to self and the system
– Advanced Change Theory
– Deep Change, Change the world

6. Influences
• Student Leadership Challenge
– Model the Way
– Inspire a Shared Vision
– Challenge the Process
– Encourage Others to Act
– Encourage the Heart

7. Other work
• Leadership for a Better World (Social Change
Model)
• The Servant Leader by James Autry
• Myth of Leadership, Creating Leaderless
Organizations

8. How do we bridge all these theories…..
…… to practice?

9. Structure One-on-Ones
• Meaningful conversations, moving beyond
“updates” and “how’s your program doing”
• Active note taking and recording through
Google Docs
• Bi-Weekly, 30 minutes
• Emphasize oral discussion to enhance verbal
communication

10. Curriculum Implementation
• August- Student Leadership Orientation
– Assessments: Strengths and Student Leadership
Practices Inventory
– Individual and group goal setting
– Introduce basic leadership theory

11. September 1x1s
• Develop Leadership Action plan
– Revisits Goals
– Set vision for program
– Describe how they want volunteers to be
impacted and how to interact with volunteers
– Set up volunteer encouragement plan

12. October
• Value Clarification
– Identify top values from a list
– Who have you seen implement these values
– How did these values become important to you in
your life?
– What values do you struggle with and how would
you like to grow

13. November
• Appreciation
– Leaders go back to appreciation plan, write thank
you letters, pizza party, etc..
– Organize end of semester volunteer reflection
• Resume Preview
• Start to identify possible plans for the summer

14. December
• Blog Prompts for Student Leaders
– What have you learned from doing service that
you hope to take with you after DePauw?
– What was one big problem that may have
surfaced through your leadership experience and
how did you solve it?
– What was your most memorable experience of
the semester at your service site?
– Revisit Goals, did you reach them?

15. February
• Summer Preparation
– Identify 3-4 internship/post-graduate
opportunities
– Letters of Recommendation Criteria
• Goal setting for second semester, program
development, improvements

16. March
• This I believe NPR Series
• Leaders formulate “This I Believe” blog
prompts (2-3 paragraphs)
• Continue summer plan development
• Identify personal narrative of service
– How did service become important in your life
– Key influences

17. April
• Connecting Service to Justice
– What were the major social issues explored at your
service site?
– Do you perceive your work is making a positive
impact?
• End of Semester volunteer reflections
– Leaders take volunteers out pizza, ice cream, brief
reflection meeting
• Review Goals and if they were able to accomplish
them

18. What we’ve learned
• Students develop demanded skills
– “I was able to recruit more male volunteers through partnering with a
Greek House”
– “I integrated the first STEM-based activities at Headstart”
– Work in teams, solve problems, learn to verbally communicate with
persons (NACE)
• Students are ready for the summer/post-DePauw
– 23:25 students had plans from internships, jobs, to going to graduate
school
• Students are learning to be leaders
– “I received over $2,000 in grant support for my organization”
– “My volunteer retention was much higher this year as I was able to
connect with more volunteers”
– “Our community impact has risen from serving just 20 families to 150
families in the last three years”

19. Questions?
• Matthew Cummings
• matthewcummings@depauw.edu
• 765-655-4862 (office)
• 500 East Seminary, Greencastle, Indiana 46135