Teaching students to become leaders—starting in freshmen year—holds a prominent place in the Nichols curriculum. For the second year in a row, all first-year students are taking the course Lead 101, which develops their self-awareness and skills as potential leaders. Last fall, a group of Lead 101 freshmen took that approach to heart and founded Bison Bites, a volunteer organization that collects unused food from the College’s dining hall and transports it to a local food pantry.
This fall, more than 50 of these former Lead 101 students—now sophomores—are taking the next step in their leadership education through our Emerging Leaders Program (ELP), which will take them through senior year.
Over the next three years, ELP students will complete a variety of program requirements, from attending a speaker series on leadership and analyzing case studies to taking leadership roles on and off the Nichols campus.
On Sunday, September 27th, they started that journey at the Emerging Leaders Declaration Day, the program’s induction ceremony. They heard two highly successful Nichols Trustees, Jennie Caissie and Randall Becker, share their own definitions of leadership.
This leadership program embodies the College’s mission “to transforms today’s students into tomorrow’s leaders.” And it helps us take a giant step toward our vision of becoming a college of choice for business and leadership education.
This special group of Nichols students is off and running, and I can’t wait to see where they go.