Running head: FINAL EXAM

Final Exam
Jesus Romero
Western Michigan University

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Final Exam

In my position as the Graduate Assistant for Leadership and Volunteer programs in the
Student Activities & Leadership Programs office, I am responsible for a variety of programs.
One of our most successful programs is our Emerging Leaders program, which is for first year
and new transfer students. It is a weeklong program that allows them to continue their leadership
skill development and help them begin their leadership journey at Western Michigan University.
The program is fairly new and something that my supervisor started a few years ago. Now in its
fifth year, the Emerging Leaders program has more than doubled in size. This program is a great
example of how leadership, systems, and change are all interwoven to produce success.
The right leadership is critical to making something successful. When talking about
dispersed leadership Molly Wiener said the following: It allows members of the team to assume
responsibility and therefore take ownership of the project/department/task (Wiener, 2014). My
supervisor and I work as a team on the Emerging Leaders program rather than it being her
running the program with my help. We equally split up responsibilities for the program ranging
from logistics to marketing and even facilitating. I remember that we went through the entire
schedule together and she gave me the opportunity to choose which activities I wanted to
facilitate during the week. She gave me complete trust in being able to make decisions about
what I wanted to do for the specific topics I choose. I felt comfortable asking for her thoughts on
what I had planned and she would give me constructive feedback. However, the thing she did
best was encouraging me to think for myself by asking what I think we should do rather than
telling me what to do. This has given me more self-confidence and also allowed me to be more
autonomous. By using dispersed leadership, our team works effectively and we are able to
accomplish more too.

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One of the most exciting activities during the Emerging Leaders Program is the
Leadership Reaction Course at Fort Custer. Students work in teams to accomplish a mission and
they each get the opportunity to be the leader of the group. They are in a rotation of about ten
different missions and the ROTC officers evaluate the leader after the time is up. Because there
is a time limit, most groups only complete about one or two missions total. This can be very
discouraging to the students since they might not have had to face failure before in a leadership
role. In order to prepare students for the mental and physical challenge of the course, we planned
a number of low ropes initiatives for the previous day. Unfortunately, last year we were unable to
do the low ropes initiatives with the students before the leadership reaction course. The reason
being that we had to change our schedule because Fort Custer was closed on Fridays. Our
program was affected by Fort Custer being closed and thus forcing us to rearrange the schedule.
However, Fort Custer was closed on Fridays because of the government sequester last year. The
events are distant in time and space but each has an influence on the rest (Senge, 2013). This is
systems thinking in action because we never considered that the government sequester would
affect us at all.
During the last year, our office went through an external review process, which provided
some very valuable feedback. We have been taking what the reviewers said and using that to
guide our discussions in creating a vision for our office. Part of this has also been creating a
strategic plan that is broken down by functional areas and the department as well. For leadership
programs, our goal is to be seen as the place on campus to go for all things leadership. One way
to achieve this is to increase our partnerships with different departments on campus. In the past,
the Emerging Leaders Program has only been required of the Medallion Scholars from the Lee
Honors College. This year, though, the students that are participating in the leadership sections

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of the First Year Seminar program and the students that are a part of the College Assistance
Migrant Program (CAMP) will also be participating. This speaks to what Dr. Greene mentioned
in his lecture about how your mission, vision, and values are the foundation for change (Greene,
2014). We have just begun the process of changing the university culture from what we offer
being extra-curricular activities to becoming part of the college experience and I know there is a
long road ahead.
To create change, it is important to have effective leadership and understand the systems
that you are working within. Change is not an easy process and can be very slow because of
roadblocks or detours. Despite all of this, change is necessary for organizations to become
successful.

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References

Greene, T. J. (2014). Leadership in higher education Shared governance [PowerPoint slides]

Senge, P. M. (2013). Give me a lever long enoughand single-handed I can move the world. In
M. Grogan (ed.), Jossey-Bass Educational Leadership 2nd ed. (pp.169181). San
Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Wiley & Sons.
Wiener, M. (2014, July 2). Dispersed leadership [Msg 2]. Message posted to
https://elearning.wmich.edu/d2l/le/139276/discussions/threads/461380/View