Students honored for leadership skills

Students honored for leadership skills

Isabella Pacheco	Megan Wilmot	Meredith Gray	Jeremy Beasley	Megan Gray

BY LINDSEY FIELDER
Rice News staff

Leadership Rice recently honored the first-ever recipients of the newly created leadership certificate.

The Leadership Certificate Program is an opportunity for Rice University students to hone their leadership capacities in a variety of settings. In addition to academic requirements, students also must use their leadership skills on campus, in the community and even in a foreign country.

“I chose to participate in the certificate program because it required things that I already knew I wanted to do in college, like community service and study abroad,” Baker College senior Isabella Pacheco said. “This made me do the things that I might not have made time for otherwise.”

The final component of the certificate program is a capstone project where students must take their understanding of leadership and tackle a real-world problem on campus or in the community.

Sid Richardson College senior Megan Wilmot said the process taught her how to effectively work with others.

“I thought a leadership program would teach me how to boss people around,” she said. “But it was quite the opposite.”

Throughout the process, the students create a portfolio to serve as documentation of the journey. Wiess College senior Meredith Gray said, “The certificate process taught me that introspection and reflection are as necessary in a leader as dedication and accountability.”

Natalia Ksiezyk, interim director of Leadership Rice, said the office’s mission is to develop students’ capacity for leadership. The certificate program takes that mission one step further. “The curriculum is designed to allow students to get more out of what they were already planning to do, through guided reflection and interaction with peers going through the same process,” she said.

With their families in town for commencement, five seniors were presented with their certificates at a May 12 reception. Each of the students also received a boomerang, Ksiezyk said, because it is a fitting comparison for the certificate program. “The program stretches students to go far into the world, but like a boomerang that always comes back, they always remember where they came from,” she said.

Brown College senior Jeremy Beasley and Will Rice College senior Megan Gray also received certificates.
In the next few years, more than 20 students will follow in the inaugural class’s footsteps on their way to earning a leadership certificate.