Triangle Youth Leadership Services will host the first annual Triangle Youth Leadership Conference for high school students.
Adam Dunn and Steven Mazur, both freshmen Parks Scholars, founded the organization in an effort to teach high school students the true values of leadership.
“It’s a leadership development conference and our goal is to redefine leadership as a set of qualities and attributes that allow you to positively influence others instead of a title or a position you hold,” Dunn said. “The conference will include multiple student leader workshops and guest speakers, including Paul Kent, vice president of research and development at SAS. Another speaker will be Deborah Ross, the representative for N.C. House District 38.”
Mazur said they did not anticipate the program would attract people so quickly.
“We had 150 applicants for this years conference and we had space for approximately 75,” Mazur said. “Next year we will be hosting a similar conference in November of 2010 for 300 high school students from across the state. We picked up a lot of momentum this year, and we’ll be able to expand greatly next year, but we still need a lot of help from students at N.C. State. It’s our goal to have all of these conferences completely student coordinated and to expand next year means we’ll need at least 100 student volunteers.”
The conference is fully funded by Student Government, Mazur said, along with a grant from the Parks Scholars.
“We really believe that you have a lot of power through local leadership and want to expand this organization to a national scale that encourages local leadership in communities across the country,” Dunn said. “We’re hoping to be able to expand to this national level within our college careers.”
Mazur said he was involved with a similar organization in high school, which motivated him to inspire others.
“In high school I worked with a nonprofit in Michigan for two and a half years and planned similar high school leadership conferences,” Mazur said. “When I came to State I found someone else who was willing to help me and we saw a need to redefine leadership and enhance leadership skills in high school students. I was able to learn a lot about both leadership and life in general from hearing the different speakers and meeting hundreds of other students with similar passions. Coming down here I wanted to give the same opportunity to high schoolers in North Carolina.”
Dunn said he was interested in the program because as a local student, he knew there were no similar programs in the area and he thought it would be a great opportunity to help local students develop their full potential.
Claire Lucas, freshman in industrial engineering and workshop coordinator for the conference, said she believes teaching the real meaning of leadership to students is essential.
“It’s really an area that should be addressed is teaching students to discover more about themselves as leaders and that it’s not a title, everyone can be a leader,” Lucas said
Lucas said the workshops concentrate on several areas of leadership
“Each N.C. State student who is leading a workshop, is helping the students to become enlightened that they possess one of these intrinsic leadership qualities,” Lucas said. “The conference is based on professionalism and networking with students, but also it’s about the leaders that we admire possess so much more, they possess great communication skills, they’re servant leaders. They also have emotional intelligence. Those are just a few things the workshops are touching on.”
