By Sarah Metcalf
With the addition of an office in the Curry Student Center, a new director and a new leadership minor to be offered in the fall, Northeastern’s leadership program, Leadership Education and Growth Opportunities, or commonly known as LEGO, has taken several steps forward in extending its program on campus.
LEGO was formed in 1997, and was originally called the President’s Leadership Institute (PLI). Since the beginnings of the organization, it has focused on guiding three designated levels of “leaders” — emerging leaders, developing leaders and experienced leaders.
In order to expand and get more student groups involved, the founders of PLI decided to form LEGO.
According to the LEGO pamphlet that is routinely distributed at summer orientation sessions, LEGO will give students the ability to “Go beyond the classroom and express yourself, emerge as a leader, become a decision maker and establish relationships that will impact the rest of your life.” LEGO achieves this by focusing on core issues that students face in daily life, including communication, ethics, diversity, health and wellness, conflict resolution and mediating and service learning. There is also a service project that students are required to complete.
“This program was designed for emerging leaders in the community,” said Gail Olyha, co-founder of LEGO and the associate dean and director of the student center and activities. “We want to introduce them to these concepts and help them apply what they’ve learned in the program to their life at Northeastern and their future careers.”
Todd Shaver, the director of student activities, is also a founder of the program, and firmly believes in its importance to all students at NU.
“Yes, everyone comes to Northeastern with innate leadership skills,” he said. “The question is, how we use them, what we do with them and how we step forward and make our mark.”
In order to complete the LEGO process, students must participate in the emerging leader series, developing leader conferences and experienced leader seminar. And though it is geared towards mostly freshmen, anyone can enter the emerging leader series, a free, six week course that begins with an overnight retreat.
“At the retreat, we do team-building activities in order to get the kids to bond and communicate with each other. It’s a pretty small group, so we want people to get to know each other,” Shaver said. “We put them through a ropes course and introduce them to the concepts that they will be learning about.”
After students complete the emerging leader series, they move onto the developing leader conference. The program is open to anyone, and students may enter this portion of the program at the beginning of their involvement with LEGO if they have been in leadership positions before and feel as though they already have the skills focused on in the emerging leader series.
On February 7, the developing leader conference begins with a presentation in the Curry Student Center on exploring and nurturing the spirit within.
“Anyone with an interest in the topics can come,” Olyha said. “It’s about looking at and exploring values of each individual student. All of this is open to anyone, you just have to sign up and do it. It’s free of cost, and students can enter at either developing or emerging.”
The experienced leader seminar is open to juniors and seniors, and is by invitation only. This part of the program ties everything the student has learned together and attempts to apply it to the real world.
“This is for those juniors and seniors who have been there and done that,” Shaver said. “People who have stood out in the community and really achieved high levels of leadership. We provide a way to take what they’ve experienced and utilize it to their best advantage. It’s a diverse program, and it consists of many students on campus with very similar backgrounds, but who might not have known each other otherwise.”
Shaver and Olyha both hope that having one position and one place for the program will provide more focus and organization than was previously present, leading to new ideas and developments. The LEGO office is now located in room 222 and will be headed up by John Silveria, who was recently named the associate director of leadership development.
“It doesn’t necessarily have to be about building leadership skills, it doesn’t have to be about turning every student we meet into the next president of the SGA or the next chair of CUP or the next president of a fraternity on this campus,” Silveria said. “I think more importantly it’s giving some students just the opportunity to reflect on what they see as important towards their own personal growth. And whether it’s something they are going to apply as being a part of a student organization or something they are thinking about for their career.”
Some of the programs that Silveria, Shaver and Olyha hope to implement in the next few years include holding a speaker series, combining student leaders and mentors and having leadership classes for academic credit.
“The program as a whole provides great ties with co-op and career services,” Shaver said. “For some people, it’s about making friends while getting through the program. For others, it’s about substance and leadership. Either way, it’s about making college a richer experience for the students.”
– Staff writer Heather Allen contributed to this report.
