Leadership U empowers students with workshop

Hellen Akinyi
Staff Writer

The Student Leadership workshop is program that hosts workshops which are all about empowering anyone who wants to be a leader.

The workshops are organized by Leadership U which is a student-led program within Student Activities and the board consists of five students who work together to plan the workshops. 

It offers different opportunities to students at Minnesota State University, Mankato like workshops and a retreat once a year. 

Before any workshop, they often try to do activities to break the ice and once in a while they bring in guest speakers to enhance the whole experience.

Emi Menk, who is the assistant director for the Student Activities, talked about how the skills she learned through the program helped her in her life. “I learned a lot of leadership skills that I did find myself using in the real world after I graduated,” said Menk. “I am not just saying this because this is my current job,” she added with a giggle.

Most students who attend the workshops often thank the organizers because of how useful they found them to be. 

Their plan is to expand, and be able to go to the different student groups and events, while also offering the workshops as more students will be there who get to learn about what they do.

When asked about how they pick the topics for each workshop, Menk said, “When it comes to the topics, we often give surveys to the students just to make sure the topic is relevant because that is the whole point.”

She went on about how unhelpful it’ll be if the topics they taught and talked about during the workshops were irrelevant. Apart from just using the survey as a way of getting the relevant topic discussions, they also use the survey to get the feedback they need and get to know what the students took out from that particular workshop.

The workshops often enable the students to not only acquire leadership skills that they may need, but also skills that they can use wen looking for employment in their fields.

Their next workshop will be about empathy on Feb. 5 in CSU 245.

Header photo by Mai Tran/MSU Reporter.