CCSU’s Student Activities Provides Learning Opportunities & Develops Leadership Skills
Jean Alicandro, Associate Director of Student Activities/Leadership Developmet

Central Connecticut State University’s program of Student Activities/Leadership Development aims to prepare future community leaders.  The basic approach is to provide out-of-classroom learning experiences where students can develop leadership skills. An important resource for these learning experiences is the 110-plus registered clubs and organizations that provide opportunities to combine classroom studies with planned extracurricular activities.

At Central, there is something for every student.  As indicated by Alexander Astin, a leading student development theorist, students who “participate in extracurricular activities of almost any type are less likely to drop out”. According to Astin, once college students get involved in clubs or organizations, they become connected to the campus community and to others, and thus their experience becomes more meaningful.

All clubs and activities at CCSU have a leadership component.  For example, our school newspaper and radio station are living, learning laboratories for students to manage and run student operations that are much like real businesses.  Our student government, with its senators and other elected officials, provides students opportunities to manage their own budget requests; they purchase equipment, design their own programs, build constitutions, and propose policies and procedures.

Through campus involvement, students can also gain a more global perspective by interacting with people different from themselves.  To broaden their experience beyond campus, students can travel on cultural-awareness or service-learning trips.  Recently, for example, students have gone to Ghana to learn more about its rich culture and to Miami, Florida, to assist at a Habitat for Humanity worksite. While students learn more about other areas of the country and the world, they also receive the training and on-going support they need to become successful leaders, and this in turn builds productive, more open and diverse members of our community.

Student involvement in these kinds of activities provides meaningful, endless opportunities for leadership and learning. It also helps students build their résumés and creates some great credentials for a future career.  Most significant, these opportunities allow students to make mistakes, have successes, and learn from all of these exciting experiences.  Academics are vital to a student’s college success; of course. And when this kind of experiential involvement is added to students’ academic efforts, it fosters student growth and development.

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