Held in the Horizon Room of the Idaho Commons, Vandals Lead is a leadership seminar built on collaboration and teamwork.
“We have I Lead and Vandals Lead,” said Lynsie Clott, assistant director of leadership and student organizations at UI. “I Lead is a little more introductory and it’s focused on personal leadership development. Vandals Lead is a lot more oriented towards group dynamics.”
The Leadership Development team creates series programs through a model called the social change model. This model has three spheres: individual values, group values and societal values. The team creates different series to help build each sphere, using I Lead to build the individual values sphere and Vandals Lead to build the group values sphere, and then connecting individual events to issues students struggle with.
“The topics are feedback we hear from students as well as what we know are issues from clubs and other groups on campus,” Clott said. “We walk around and actually ask the students, ‘What are some topics that you would go to’ and we walk around again and ask them ‘How would you name this’.”
I Lead, a leadership series the Leadership Development team put on in the fall, had topics such as core values, discovering strengths, leadership style and communication.
The Department of Student Involvement’s Leadership Development team was supposed to kick off the Vandals Lead series Feb. 13 with their first event “Making the Dream Team.” The event was cancelled after a campus closure that day at 1:30 p.m. due to weather concerns.
The following Vandals Lead event “Inspiring and Motivating others” was held Wednesday, Feb. 27. Vandals Lead will have two more sessions from 5 to 7 p.m. March 6 and March 20 in the Idaho Commons Horizon Room. The future events focus on learning inspiration, innovation and negotiation in group dynamics through discussion and collaboration.
Students can still sign up for Vandals Lead events via the event page. Clott said she does not know when the next round of seminars would be because it depends on the success of this iteration.
Lynsie Clott and Jacqueline Davis leading group discussion at a Vandals Lead event last Wednesday, Feb. 27.
Brianna Finnegan | Argonaut
I Lead and Vandals Lead differ not only in overall topics but in the ways they are facilitated as well.
“Compared to the I Lead series in the fall, Vandals Lead is more collaborative,” said Jacqueline Davis, a leadership coordinator at UI “The programs are more focused on leading a team as supposed to self-leadership. There’s more activities, it’s more hands on and moving around compared to I Lead.”
With these group activities, students can learn more about how they work in a group as well as the leadership styles they may come across, she said.
“I have to say my favorite part as a facilitator and a participant in any of the leadership things I’ve been a part of is the discussion,” Davis said. “I feel like that is where I learn the most, everyone gets to brainstorm, and you really get to see how people think and how they lead. I think getting to see that diversity in who you’re leading with is really cool.”
This is Davis’ first year as a coordinator for the Vandals Lead Series. She encourages anyone to experience Vandals Lead.
“It’s free, and once you get out of college, you’re not going to find anything like this for free,” Davis said. “This is a really cool opportunity to learn different leadership concepts that people pay lots of money and take a weekend to go learn about.”
Brianna Finnegan can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter at @briannafinnega8