For close to 150 Sacramento State students, this weekend leadership truly did begin here. Student Activities hosted the “Learn Today, Lead Tomorrow” student leadership conference on Saturday. The event was free of charge for all students who registered in time. The day engaged students with a series of workshops to choose from and the conference began with a stirring address from speaker Consuelo Castillo Kickbusch.

Kickbusch, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, circulates around colleges and schools nationwide and is highly regarded as a knowledgeable and influential speaker. Her speech covered topics ranging from team building and diversity to, of course, leadership. Copies of her book, “Journey to the Future,” were given away to students as raffle prizes.

The laundry list of workshops allowed participants to pick and choose their schedule and attend the seminars they felt would benefit them the most. Conflict resolution, suggestions on how to recruit members and the basic 101 of running a club were just a few of the workshops available. The events of the day may have been geared toward those students who want to be in charge of a club on campus, but the conference was available to any student who registered before the deadline.

The conference was indeed successful. However, registration could have been filled faster if the event was widely promoted on Sac State’s homepage. Rather than having the conference listed on the main page underneath the campus calendar, it was buried under several categorized pages and users needed to navigate around the site to find the registration link. Despite the minor inconvenience, the day’s events were engaging and practical.

Director of Student Activities Louis Camera said that the reason the conference was held during the weekend was because the nature of the layout would cause it to overlap with scheduled classes during the week.

Student Activities and Associated Students Inc. hosted a well-organized and extremely useful conference on Saturday. Participants found the workshops helpful, stimulating and engaging. Chris Smith, president of the college campus Democrats, said that the workshops provided useful information that easily applies to life outside of campus.

Opinion editor can be reached at [email protected]