Students LEAD non-profit groups
7/28/2010 5:39:21 PM
(July 28, 2010) Dr. Mark Jordan, an associate professor at North Georgia College & State University, runs his class like a business -- and he's its chief executive officer.
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| LEAD presenter Kyle Jarrard discussed motivation with non-profit leaders. |
Class sessions are considered business meetings and the students are divided into different divisions such as logistics and technology. The group of students, called the Summer 2010 North Georgia Leadership Engagement and Development Group or LEAD Group, have to be on time and on budget.
The class is run like a business for good reason -- most of the students taking BUSA 3910-Business Leadership are seniors pursuing bachelor's degrees in the Mike Cottrell School of Business.
"It's been a great experience so far," Jeni Thomas, a student in the class, said. "We have a chance to work on our communication skills and our leadership skills. It's great material."
Developing leaders is an important aspect of North Georgia, a state-designated leadership institution, and students in this class not only learn leadership skills themselves, they also teach others in the community.
This past week, for the third year, LEAD staged a leadership development workshop for managers and leaders of nonprofit organizations. The workshop was held in Forsyth County, but all 40 slots in the workshop have been filled with participants from nonprofit groups from several area counties.
Jordan said this year's participation in the workshop was double that of the first two years. The topics to be covered include motivation, emotional intelligence and organizational change -- areas identified by nonprofit leaders themselves in a recent survey, Jordan said. This year's survey elicited 66 responses, more responses than ever for the project, he said.
Three teams of students -- one "company division" was assigned to each topic -- spent the first few weeks of class gathering materials on their topic, then spent the next two weeks testing discussion questions and group exercises. Three students, each a division leader, present the material using slides and multimedia and a team of two facilitators at each table guide workshop participants through group discussion and exercises to reinforce the ideas.
LEAD Group held a dress rehearsal earlier in July for a group of university faculty and staff, looking for feedback to help polish up the presentations.
Thomas, who admitted during her presentation on organizational change that public speaking is one of her biggest fears, learned that nobody's perfect.
"Everyone can stand for improvement in public speaking. Every chance you get, get up and start talking," Thomas said. She had done some public speaking before, but that was in front of fellow students. "Here, it's a lot different because you're presenting the academic point of view to people who have been in these organizations for years."
The two other presenters in the workshop are Brittany Kall discussing emotional intelligence and Kyle Jarrard discussing motivation. Kall's presentation features video clips from "The Office," a television show about a fictional paper sales company and its employees. Jarrard opens his presentation with a magic trick and challenges participants to build a structure from mini marshmallows, popsicle sticks, drinking straws and dry spaghetti noodles.
After the dress rehearsal, was the LEAD Group ready for the real workshop?
"I'm ready, but I'm a little nervous," Thomas said after last week's run through. "We're going to present a very good product, so we're excited for it."