A leadership conference was held at Sacramento State on Saturday in the University Union. The conference provided workshops for students interested in gaining and perfecting leadership skills.

The conference, hosted by Student Activities and Associated Students Inc., was geared toward students of all levels of study. Some of the notable workshops included time management, motivation, club fundraising, leadership style and interview technique.

The conference began at 8 a.m. with breakfast and a message from keynote speaker Consuelo Castillo Kickbusch. Her inspirational stories of trial and tribulation through a 20-year military career and what it has taken for her to become an effective leader set the stage for the event.

After a morning filled with workshops, students and presenters gathered in the Redwood Room. Lunch was served by campus catering. This gave students an opportunity to pause and reflect on what they had learned during the morning workshops.

Justin Brown, junior business major, said he found the time-management workshop to be particularly helpful. The workshop gave him insight into methods of prioritizing and organizing his schedule.

Cassy Hughes, senior social science major, said the resume workshop helped her to identify what a good resume should look like. “It was good advice to be able to present myself in the most effective way,” she said.

Laurence Pele, senior finance major, said he felt the workshops gave him direction to find a steady job after graduation.

The lunch break was also an opportunity for on-campus clubs to take the microphone and promote the activities that they planned.

Prizes, such as tickets to see Matt Costa on Monday, were given out in the first part of the raffle. Tickets were given out at the breakfast meeting. Students took advantage of the lunch break to discuss what they had learned and to meet with presenters from many of the campus groups presenting the workshops.

Deborah Marcus, of the Career Center, presented the workshop on resume building. She said she was very excited about students’ participation in the workshops.

“They are very engaged and have been asking some great questions,” Marcus said. Charlene Martinez, the new Multi-Cultural Center director, was also optimistic about student turnout.

Karlos Santos-Coy, program adviser for Student Activities and host for the leadership conference, said he felt that the student turnout was fantastic for the one-day event.

“Usually, we do this in the spring,” Santos-Coy said. “It is tough to get students here after the winter break. This is our first fall leadership conference in years.”

Santos-Coy was pleased with the diversity of students who attended the event.

“This event has multiple benefits to students. It is an opportunity to develop skills as leaders and to network with other students on campus,” he said. The opportunity to network is particularly valuable to many students involved in campus clubs. Sac State has approximately 250 student clubs comprised of about 7,000 students.

For many, the status of Sac State as a commuter campus has made it difficult to be involved in many of the clubs and activities. Several clubs found the event to be an excellent opportunity to recruit new members who may not have the opportunity during regular school hours.

Karla Brown, senior journalism major, said it is hard to get students involved in clubs and activities at Sac State.

“I would like to see an effort to tailor these events to students who don’t live on campus,” Brown said.

One method of getting students to be more involved was proposed by Paul Dickey, president of Toastmasters Leadership club. He said that it is time to organize a permanent leadership building on campus.

With a permanent program, students could join specialized workshops and continuously gain leadership skills. The idea has been pitched to both ASI and Student Activities. Student Activities is already in the process of making moves to see this happen.

“The first thing that needs to happen is to form a group,” Dickey said. “Next, a mission needs to be proposed and a long-term goal, including budgeting needs to be formed. We need to develop a commitment with a core group of students and make plans for where to spend money and make this a permanent program.”

Derek Fleming can be reached at [email protected]