Syracuse University students and community members gathered in the Sheraton at Syracuse University Hotel and Conference Center on Saturday to discuss different aspects of leadership in today’s world.

The Student Leadership Institute hosted the event “Channeling Change: Bridging Knowledge and Action to Lead Effective Movements.” Students who attended participated in workshops with current leaders in the community and SU employees in order to gain experience about leadership in action.

The symposium was a project created by a group of 10 students within the Student Leadership Institute.

“We wanted to give people practical knowledge and experiences from people in our community and Syracuse,” said Mary Ricchezza, chair of the symposium and a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences.

The community members included keynote speaker Chastity Cooper, a class of 2011 alumna and a digital communications associate for Catholic Charities. In her speech to start the day’s events, Cooper highlighted her strong belief in the millennial generation and emphasized the power that generation has bestowed upon them.

After the keynote speech, the group broke off into different rooms to begin the workshops that the SLI had planned. SU employees and non-employees alike led these workshops, which included a variety of topics.

Chase Catalano, director of the LGBT Resource Center at SU, gave a workshop entitled “How to be an Ally to a Movement.” Mike Beckstrand, the only other SU employee to present, led his workshop on “How to Negotiate Effectively.” Beckstrand is a Ph.D. candidate in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs.

Other workshops focused on topics including how social media affects social movements and how to fund a movement. Tiffany Steinwert, the dean of Hendricks Chapel, gave the closing remarks.

Moises Torres, a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences from Los Angeles, said it was his hometown that brought him to Sheraton on Saturday.

“Where I come from is a neighborhood that’s predominantly Hispanic, and there’s a lot of social problems there,” Torres said. “What I want to do is go back, in time, with these new skills, and be a better leader for myself and the people.”

Torres was not the only student whose home was part of the reason they attended the symposium. Esmir Omerovic, a senior political science major, said it is his parents, and the world they came from, that inspire him.

“I was born during born during a war in Bosnia, so my parents and I came here with very little, but with hard work and the value of education,” Omerovic said.

Omerovic said he aspires to become a leader in the education community, saying that even the president had a teacher. Whether that work takes him back to Bosnia remains to be seen, but he said he’s not ruling it out.

These are just two people’s inspirations, and Ricchezza said she knows that the symposium that she and her colleagues planned can reach the students that attended and many others.

Said Ricchezza: “There are people who are completely gung-ho and ready to go, and there are people who want to do something, but don’t know where to begin. So we want to reach all of them.”

Published on February 8, 2015 at 11:02 pm

Contact Joe: jpleonar@syr.edu