Forming Student Leaders Who Shape Culture

Throughout the next two months we will hire over 120 student leaders who will welcome new students to campus, serve as resident assistants, plan campus activities, and lead fellowship groups. Each role involves real responsibility with supportive guidance from a staff member.

Here are just a few of the student leader positions we hire for:

• First Year Experience On-boarding: Student mentor, design team, hospitality team
• Local Engagement
• Intramurals
• Fellowship of Christian Athlete leadership team
• Upper Room planning team – a Christian fellowship group
• City House: Living & learning in our local community
• Multicultural Engagement
• Resident Assistants
• Outdoor Adventure team
• Global Engagement
• Homecoming design
• Student Activities

What’s unique about the Geneva College student leader experience is that students are invited to see themselves as culture-makers. They are challenged not just to be consumers of culture, conformers, or critics, but to steward their influence and energy to create places of connection and belonging, the kind of places that invite others into relationship with God, His world, deeper friendship, and love of neighbor. Students are also challenged to carry this culture-making mindset into their academic fields. For example, what might it look like to learn the skills of engineering while also asking how engineering can be a way to love one’s neighbor?

The college years are when students develop habits and patterns that last their lifetime. Our desire is to see students grow in godly wisdom, mature appropriately, develop personal and professional purpose, and learn to lead effectively.

But knowing about something is different than doing it. To acquire these qualities, students need opportunities to practice, and freedom to make mistakes along the way. You can know a great deal about football, but it is only by getting on the field, taking hits, making errors, striving to make it further down the field than you did last time, and receiving feedback, that you truly become a player. As Teddy Roosevelt famously said, “It is not the critic who counts … the credit belongs to the one who is actually in the arena…”

This crucible is where we learn to practice wisdom, love neighbor, and lead effectively. Student leader positions are designed to do just that. How does someone learn to work with a team? By doing it. How do you learn to delegate? By doing it. How do you learn to love? By loving the difficult person on your residence hall floor. How do you learn to plan an event? We provide a framework and instruction, but your capacity only grows through practice. At Geneva, as students take these risks, we surround them with mentors, feedback, and good help for the journey. We would encourage you to talk to your son or daughter about applying for a student leader position that is of interest to them to continue their practice of culture-making.

By Becky Case, Assistant Dean of Student Engagement and Strategic Initiatives