It was a day of workshops, a day of motivational speakers and a day of pressed button-downs and pin striped slacks.
Approximately 115 students spent their rainy Saturday from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. at the University’s first Leadership Summit conference held in the Knight Law Center.
The conference’s featured speeches and workshops culminated in the grand finale Call to Action that featured 20 agencies varying from Planned Parenthood of Southwest Oregon to Teach For America to Big Brothers Big Sisters.
The theme of the conference was civic engagement and making a difference in the community.
“The point of it is to bring the campus together around the theme of civic engagement and leadership and getting the UO community involved with organizations in Eugene,” said educational leadership graduate student David Rae.
“We take them through an evolutionary day and at the end connect them through actual volunteering opportunities,” Rae said. “So it’s like theory meets practice.”
Among featured lecturers for the second workshop was Eugene Mayor Kitty Piercy, who gave a speech titled “The Community and You.”
Piercy thanked students for attending the workshop and said that the University is a core part of the Eugene community.
“The University of Oregon brings leadership to our community in so many forms,” Piercy said.
She discussed how University students can get involved: volunteering at the library, the Hult Center, with the police or planting trees with urban foresters.
“Volunteerism is the pathway to leadership,” Piercy said.
She explained that she was once a shy person, fearful of giving speeches at rallies. But once she started getting active in the community, things fell into place.
“Then I found myself, because no one else would, taking on more and more leadership positions,” Piercy said. She said that sometimes leadership can happen if a person is thrust into a vacant role.
“It comes when there’s a vacuum and somebody has to step into it. And you’re the one willing to do it,” Piercy said.
Piercy shared that it took her seven years to overcome her fear of speaking in public. But she said once the passion outweighs that fear, great things are possible.
Piercy advised up-and-coming leaders that it’s essential to keep the things that are important to them in life.
“I always sought to keep a balance between being with my family, my job and my volunteer work – or as I like to think of it – what I do for the world,” Piercy said. “When I keep that balance I’m a happy person. And when it gets out of balance, I know it, and I’ve got to put it back in balance again.”
Other advice from the mayor included a dose of reality. She tried to prepare students in the audience for what the real world may be like.
“Often things don’t turn out exactly the way you want them to be,” Piercy said. “As a mayor of a very outspoken community that has very strong feelings in many different ways, I’ve chosen to look at that as an asset.”
Piercy said she’s learned a lot in office and relayed to the audience that there will always be someone who doesn’t like her ideas and that decisions are very rarely unanimous. But in the end, she said, you have to be willing to fight for whatever issue it is you are passionate about.
Piercy said she believes each person in the room has the capacity to go out and really do something in the community to make a difference. The main prerequisite is willingness, she said.
“Leadership often comes because you’re stepping up to do something that needs to be done, and you’re willing to do it,” Piercy said. She said that “leadership isn’t some special class of people. Each of us has that ability and will have the opportunity (to be leaders).”
“Leadership is work,” Piercy said. “But you get a lot out of it. You learn a lot, you have experiences you wouldn’t have otherwise and will enrich your life.”
Director of the Leadership Resource Office John Duncan said he hopes the summit will help match the person to the right resources. He said that is the goal of the Call to Action program at the end of the day.
“I am, my staff is, the department is, deeply committed to expanding the leadership capacity of our community. That’s what we do. And today is one step of many in that process,” Duncan said. “I love it.”