West Virginia University students will join with students at Morgantown’s Skyview Elementary School today (Feb. 27) for a new program designed to help the build future leaders of West Virginia.

The Shared Student Leadership Academy is the brainchild of Clinical Assistant Professor Bernard Jones in the Department of Special Education of the College of Education and Human Resources. Jones said he was inspired to create the Academy by what he views as a serious need for proper leadership development skills and training.

The program is structured to promote collaboration from local public school students and college students while building analytical skills through school-based enrichment projects.

“The Academy will allow Skyview Elementary students to identify three to five school based-enrichment projects in which they would like their school to actively participate,” Jones said. “One example of an enrichment project could include a friendship bench that could be installed on the Skyview playground – the bench is not there now. As a part of the leadership program, the elementary students would spend the second day developing a plan of action: how to get that friendship bench from an idea to an actual element on the playground.”

Skyview counselor Matthew Tolliver says he’s excited to get the program started.

“I love the fact that each student will have their own college mentor to help work with them and assist them as they work to develop leadership skills and design and implement self-created projects at Skyview elementary,” Tolliver said. “I am a huge believer in the power of mentoring and always try to look for ways to help students develop more protective factors that will counterbalance the risk factors they may have in their lives.”

The Shared Student Leadership Academy will pair 21 fourth and fifth grade Skyview students with 21 or more WVU students in a two-day-long developmental workshop.

“We are very excited about this outreach program,” said Society for Human Resource Management member Ellis Roper. “We all come together, not as members of any organizations, clubs, fraternities or sororities, but as agents of change, hoping to touch at least one life along the way.”

The volunteer mentors include ambassadors of the College of Education and Human Services, Division of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, in addition to campus fraternities and sororities Sigma Phi Epsilon, Alpha Phi Alpha and Sigma Kappa.

The college students will mentor the elementary students through the different dynamics and implementation of the projects and follow-up with visits with their mentees three times throughout the course of the spring 2015 semester.

“A celebration will take place upon completion where the mentees will receive certificates of achievement, reveal all of their implemented projects and discuss how they worked along with their mentors to build and improve team leadership qualities from within the students,” Jones said. “We would like to continue the Academy each semester with different groups; our ultimate hope is to eventually pilot our mission out to other schools.”

Jones believes Skyview students can benefit from being exposed to the collegiate environment as well as leadership training opportunities.

“It’s a part of our mission as a land-grant institution to reach out to the schools in the state of West Virginia,” Jones said. “This is what we do as educators; we build collaborative efforts through shared leadership development.”

For more information on the Shared Student Leadership Academy, please contact Bernard.Jones@mail.wvu.edu.

-WVU-

cz/02/26/15

CONTACT: Christie Zachary: WVU College of Education and Human Services
304.293.0224; Christie.Zachary@mail.wvu.edu

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