New Student & Transition Programs

Whitewater rafting, hiking, camping and rock climbing in West Virginia were on the docket this month for 64 incoming first-year students as part of Adventures in Leadership, a summer experience for rising freshmen sponsored by the Center for Leadership and Campus Recreation.

They want to buy more books for their middle schools and renovate bathrooms with fresh paint. They’d also like to expand extracurricular programs, and introduce biodegradable trays to the lunchroom. For students in the Alamance Youth Leadership Academy, Wednesday morning’s closing ceremony in McKinnon Hall was a time to share school improvement projects for the year ahead with parents and local educators.

Students from a half dozen Alamance County middle schools will conclude the 2011 Alamance Youth Leadership Academy on Wednesday morning with presentations to parents and school leaders on how they plan to improve their building communities with potential yearlong projects for 2011-2012.

Nineteen Elon University alumni from the Class of 2011 will return to the classroom this fall as part of Teach for America, a national nonprofit that recruits and trains new college graduates to help erase educational inequities found in many urban and rural low-income communities. It is the largest number of Elon alumni ever selected into the program for the same academic year.

Student leaders from a variety of academic disciplines were honored April 28 at the annual Omicron Delta Kappa awards ceremony in Whitley Auditorium, an annual ceremony that coincides with CELEBRATE! week. ODK recognizes students who have provided outstanding leadership in their junior or senior years, and who have maintained high academic performance.

Sometimes, for some people, it’s not clinging to a job or an idea that requires strength - it’s knowing when to let go. For former Oklahoma congressman J.C. Watts, that meant knowing when to leave Washington. In a Wednesday morning question-and-answer event, Watts reflected on his political life and shared with students the things he learned about himself through a career of public service.

America has “squandered” opportunities afforded it by the World War II generation, a prominent former congressman said Tuesday, and current lawmakers on both sides of the political divide need to put aside partisanship to solve national problems. J.C. Watts, the 2010-2011 Isabella Cannon Distinguished Visiting Professor of Leadership, offered those observations in an evening lecture attended by hundreds of people inside McCrary Theatre.