Running head: FINAL

Mark E. Campbell II
Final Paper
Western Michigan University

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2
Final Paper
In my current position, I work as the Graduate Assistant for the Office of Student

Involvement for Kalamazoo College, my functional areas include leadership programming,

working with the student organizations, coordinating the film series, Tuesdays With.. and
various duties as assigned. In my position there are my numerous functional areas, the area that
most applies to leadership, systems, and change is my work with our students in our leadership
programs. Last year, I had the privilege of organizing a three-day leadership retreat for fifteen
first-year students about being a leader in the K Community. The leadership retreat was built
upon the Social Change Model and how to affect change in our K Community. In this paper, I
will examine the affects of the retreat as it relates to leadership, systems, and change.
Leadership
As stated by Grogan leadership is defined as, leadership is the process of persuasion or
example by which an individual (or leadership team) induces a group to pursue objectives held
by the leader or shared by the leader and his or her followers (p.17). Leadership is an essential
part for students to create change in their college or university setting. Also, leadership is a
process which takes time and one student leader cannot come into their institution and change it
for the better; change at higher educational institutions takes time and student leaders must
realize how change is accomplished at their institution. As previously, mentioned the leadership
retreat was centered around the Social Change Model and its corresponding 7 Cs (Cilente 2008).
Leadership is a process and everyone has the capability of being a leader on their campus
(Cilente). Everyone has the capability of becoming a leader was the theme of the treat and we
reinforced it with the 7 Cs of the Social Change Model. We focused the retreat on congruence

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and conscious of self in which a leader must know thy self before they can enact change in the K
community.
Systems
As stated by Senghe(2008) systems thinking is defined as the following, Systems
thinking is a discipline for seeing wholes. It is a framework for seeing interrelationships rather
than things, for seeing patterns of change rather than static, snapshots. (p.68). In my position
as the graduate assistant, I have seen the power of systems thinking as it relates to the effects of
the leadership retreat. For example, out of the fifteen students who attended the retreat six of
them will have leadership positions in the Fall 2014 trimester of this academic year and in these
positions I have seen the retreat come full circle. To continue, it was only less than a year ago, I
was speaking with this students about leadership and now they are preparing to use those skills to
bring change to the K community. This shows the inter-connectedness of systems thinking
because when the students attended the goal was for them to enact change in the K community
and now that change will start to happen on our campus.
Change
The change aspect of the retreat will take time because the students have not start their
new leadership positions yet. For example, one of the student leaders achieved an executive
position on the student government called the Student Commission. In her position, she is the
chief financial officer for the Student Commission and she yields a vast amount of power for
funding student organizations for events that are open to the whole campus. She has commented
on changing the funding process to make it more efficient and transparent for students. This will
bring about a change in the student body and how student organizations requests funds for their
events. Although, I must add that change will take time and that any change that these leaders

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wish to enact may be meet with challenges from the instituition itself. Yet, I remain hopefully
that these leaders continue to pursue change and make K a better place than it was when they
were first years.
Conclusion
In conclusion, during one-year in my position as a graduate assistant I have been able to
see the interconnectedness of leadership, systems, and change. I know that I have been able to
see this relationship is due to this class where I learned the interconnectedness of the
aforementioned topics. In the future, I am excited to see the work of the students that attended
the leadership retreat less than a year ago. It shall be interesting to see how they grow with
trying to change the K community and how they handle the obstacles, joys, and laughter of
enacting change at a higher educational institution.

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References
Cilente, K. (2009). Chapter 2: An overview of the social change model of leadership
development, pp. 43-78. In Leadership for a Better World: Understanding the Social
Change Model of Leadership Development. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Gardner, J. W. (2013). The Nature of Leadership. In M. Grogan (Ed.). San Francisco, CA:
Jossey-Bass.
Senghe, P. (2008). The Fifth Discipline (2nd ed.). Boston, MA: DoubleDay