Coming to US as a student is an opportunity to experience some of the best student life of your career. If you do not know how many opportunities are out there, how are you going to take advantage of them? Many of the students hardly realize the importance of these important student offices on University campus. To make your student life enriching you must be involved with student life offices, student leadership office, and student government offices. In fact, you pay extra tuition for these facilitate every semester and it is called student segregated fee. So, you better use these at least to get worth for your fee paid! This article will explain the importance of these and how they can benefit you…
Student Life Office:
Student Life office is also called Student activities office in some universities and similar names. Well, what does it do? As the name says, it focus on enhancing student life on campus. Student life office’s motto in US universities is to help students build organizations of their interest and train them to be leader in an organization. Let’s say you want to start an organization for Salsa Dancers or Indian Students, you would go to the Student life office, register your organization and then do the paperwork. In fact, you can get funds to run the organization. You can request funds to go to a conference or do an event. The student life office gives all the money. Student life office trains the student organization officers on various things like fundraising or marketing you organization. The amount of information you learn here is unbelievable. You will learn how to run an organization; you will know the total working mechanics of an organization. Many of the students do not take advantage of this office. Ideally, you should join an organization or start your own organization with friends and then get the training and be a leader on campus. What do you get out of this? Networking, leadership skills, how to create an organization or company and run it, recognition, you know how system works, on top of all this – FUN! Check the Student life office at Univ of Houston , Student Life office at MIT , Student Life at SUNY Buffalo
Student Leadership office or Student Leadership and Volunteerism office:
Student leadership office is called by many different names in different universities, some may call ‘Center for Volunteering and Student leadership’ overall, it will have student leadership or community in it. What does this office do ? As the name says, it is for building student leadership. Here the focus of programs are based on building leadership skills as an individual and then helping the community. Student leadership office offers many personality development and leadership workshops like Time Management, How to be an effective leader, What is your leadership style, How to network, etc. The goal is to build individual leadership skills and then use them for community. Student leadership office typically undertakes all the volunteering and community service. It gathers students and makes them part of the community and help them build the leadership skills. These are very important to be a successful individual. You learn lot of things about yourself and working with people. The fun thing is, they take you on leadership retreats if you are an active leader on campus. It is an awesome experience with ropes courses and other stuff challenging you to be a leader on a person level and on a team level. As a student we do not get to do all these in other countries, but in US you have these opportunities to grow as an individual and as a leader. Check the Univ of Houston Clearlake Student leadership Office website ,Student Activities and Leadership programs at Portland state Univ
Student Government Office :
Student government office is also called as Student association or Student Senate office. As the name says, it is Student’s Government. In US universities student Voice is given significant weightage. Every decision that university takes in terms of student welfare or development should be approved by Student Government. Who are part of it ? Students ! Student government represents the student voice. If you want your voice to be heard to campus, you better join Student government. The power of Student government office varies based on state and university. In some states like Wisconsin, the Student government is exactly like US Government system. There is a Student Senate and Student administration. Student Senate has student senators from different schools like School of Arts, School of Science, School of Business, Graduate school, etc. Anywhere from 30 to 50 based on size of school. The meetings are done in Parliamentarian procedure with Speaker and deputy speaker. What do these guys do? All the student money of segregated fee is allocated by the student government and approved. Anywhere from10 – 30 million dollars are approved and allocated by students. In some states like in Texas, Student government does not do all this fee allocation and other stuff, but the voice of student is heard in every committee. Overall, the point is, if you would like to know what’s going on around student affairs and know how it works, you should join Student Government. It will give you lot of networking and may help you with scholarships too if you are popular. It gives you lot of recognition and you learn a lot. Check out Student Government at Texas A& M , Virginia Tech Student Government
What are the benefits of doing all these ?
Education is not just about getting a grade and graduating. It is all about building your personality and growing as an individual and better social citizen. Some of the benefits are:
- You can put all of these great leadership skills on your Resume.
- It distinguishes you from others in interviews with leadership experience
- You learn about yourself and how to plan your life.
- Incredible networking with everyone on campus
- Helps you with getting to work with teams and work as a leader
- Makes you a better leader and helps you know how organizations work.
- Increases your communication skills
- Helps you find good friends
- Gets you involved with community service and exposes you to reality !
I strongly encourage everyone to be part of these…I have learnt a lot being part of all these leadership activities…
If you like the information on website, please subscribe ! Spread the word about website to your friends who need this kind of information !
I must thank you for posting such a helpful and suggestive article.
Thanks!
Welcome Nafees !