Excellence in Student Life & Leadership Recognition Ceremony Honoring student leaders involved with the 100 Service Hours Certificate, the Leadership Certificate, the SDSU Leadership Minor, and outstanding Recognized Student Organizations Spring 2020 Script Hello everyone and welcome to the Excellence in Student Life & Leadership Recognition Ceremony. My name is Caryl Montero-Adams and I am the Director of Student Life & Leadership. I have the pleasure of working with student leaders on campus, many of whom are being honored today. I want to welcome all of our honorees. We are thrilled to have arrived at this moment celebrating students like you who have committed to developing their capacity for leadership and for service to our community. At SDSU, we believe leadership begins first and foremost with our passionate students and grows through our SDSU leadership and service programs. Today we are celebrating: * The 100 Service Hour Certificate and Lapel Pin recipients * The SDSU Leadership Certificate recipients * The SDSU Leadership Minor graduates * Eric Rivera Leadership Minor Student Impact Award recipients, * And our Recognized Student Organization who earned the status of Achieving and Excelling. I would also like to thank those who have supported and contributed to the success of the outstanding students being recognized today. To the faculty, staff, family members and guests joining us virtually, we thank you. You can take pride in the accomplishments for which our students are being honored. As you know, leadership education has emerged as a cornerstone of the SDSU student experience, which focuses on diversity, community, transformational opportunities, and leadership. We have the premier leadership development programs on the West Coast and are building the capacity toward being one of the top in the nation. In recent years we have successfully: * Opened the Jeffrey W. Glazer Center for Leadership & Service, * Re-Established our Leadership Minor, * Maintained our Carnegie classification for completing over 60,000 service hours * And formed our Leadership Advisory Board made up of Alumni, Parents, Employers, administrators, faculty, and students leaders. As a graduate of our leadership and service programs, you honed your critical thinking, conflict mediation, and presentation skills. You’ve studied the relationship between ethics and leadership, and engaged in active citizenship, just to name a few. These competencies will give you a competitive edge in the workforce. We know from employers, graduate and professional schools, internship sites, and our alumni that these skills are what set apart the good applicants from the great. We offer our students every possible advantage so they can flourish while they are here as well as in life after college. We are proud of your accomplishment in leadership and service at San Diego State University! I am honored to recognize our students who have earned the 100 Service Hours Certificate and Lapel Pin, the SDSU Leadership Certificate, those who are graduating from the SDSU Leadership Minor, the Eric Rivera Leadership Minor Student Impact Award recipients, and our outstanding Recognized Student Organizations. First, we are going to recognize those students who earned the 100 Service Hours Certificate and Lapel Pin. In 2015, San Diego State University gained recognition from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching as a “Community Engagement Classified Institution.” SDSU students reported over 80,000 community service hours for the 2018 - 2019 academic year. SDSU is proud to issue a 100 Service Hours Certificate and Lapel Pin to students who have reported 100 or more service hours into our database. Congratulations on this achievement. We have a total of 73 students that are receiving the 100 Service Hours Certificate and Lapel Pin this semester. We will make sure that you receive your lapel pin and certificate when we return to campus. Our first recipient is: * Tia Abusham * Dustin Adkins * Lucia Alvarez-Malo * Madison Balagtas * Monique Bareno * Joshua Barfuss * Ilex Beltran Najera * Rayne Blakely-Lopez * Parnaz Boroon * Amanda Buck * Melissa Cagney * Michael Carrier * Shaye Conley * Alejandro Contreras * Gabriella Corralejo * Steven Deng * Jack Dentzman * Lorise Diamond * Julianne Dimassis * Vianca Diosdado * Madison Dow * Anita Duong * Nicholas Egger * Rozene Pieri Enloe * Stephanie Estrada * Melina Garay * Jeremy Garcia * Jasmine Gonzales * Grace Halleran * Inji Hankala * Heather Hewes * Katrina Celine Hizon * Christian Holt * Mariah Janelle Hugo * Michaela Hurlbut * Ashley Jackson * Talia Kieu * Sarah Kousba * Catherine Langer * Jenna Lencioni * Matthew Leong * Cassandra Lepore * Lauren Louie * Nirel Manalili * Chasejamison Manar-Spears * Naomi Marroquin * Courtney Martin * Gabriella Medina * Grace Meyers * Mackensie Miller * Julia Moluf * Hanna Moon * Naomi Moore * Ayzher Jubilee Ocsona * Juliana Ortiz-Pacheco * Jayzle-May Pacleb * Kalaya Paul * Patrick Perrine * Anneliese Petitt * Truc Pham * Marissa Regalo * Martha Rodriguez * Rebecca Rodriguez * Brianna Ruloma * Chloe Sabio * Melissa Sanchez * Chrystian Smith * Velina Velikova * Citlayi Villaseñor * Melany Vina * Lori Voong * Michael Wiafe Thank you all for your dedication and service to the local San Diego area and beyond. It is now time to recognize those that have earned the SDSU Leadership Certificate, a program that began in 2013. Today’s students have completed 6 components, which include: * Attending seven leadership-themed workshops, * Completing 2 experiential leadership programs such as the Aztec CORE Leadership retreat and the SDSU Leadership Summit, * Performing a minimum of 10 hours of community service, * Holding a leadership role on campus, * Participating in the Aztec Mentor program, * And successfully completing a reflective Capstone Project. There are currently over 200 students pursuing the Leadership Certificate. We are excited to honor the 16 students that are receiving the Leadership Certificate this semester. Once we return to campus, we will make sure you can receive your certificate and cord for graduation. This year’s recipients are: * Taylor Burgess * Melissa Cagney * Joshua Conway * Inyuva Flores * Alexandra Goldberg * Kate Lacina * Delcy Mansour * Liana Marin * Jayzle-May Pacleb * Serena Patel * Kalaya Paul * Patrick Perrine * Sarah Shamasha * Chrystian Smith * Leila Yasha * Vincent Young And thank you to Chelsea Winer, Student Life Advisor for leadership & service programs, for serving as the advisor for the Leadership Certificate students. Congratulations again to our 16 recipients on completing the SDSU Leadership Certificate program. We look forward to hearing about your continued leadership endeavors. I would now like to recognize those that are graduating from the Leadership Minor. In 2015, the Associated Students President, Jonathan Cole, ignited the spark for the return of the Leadership Minor and the SDSU President agreed. Since that time, more than 225 students have declared the Leadership Minor, a collaboration between the College of Education and the Division of Student Affairs, and we are proud to congratulate our fourth class of graduating students. We have 30 students graduating this year with the Leadership Minor, and we are happy to honor you today. When we are back on campus, we will make sure you receive your graduation cord. Our graduates are * Ryan Alexander * Daphne Joi Calaguas * Rachel Campbell * Joshua Conway * Shannon Dalton * Jack Dentzman * Joey Hafner * Theodore Hansen * Robert Harris * McKenna Hendrickson * Mariah Janelle Hugo * Claudia Kayda * Kelsey Kruse * Neever Kryakos * Katherine Lacina * Zhexu Li * Fernando Mandujano * Liana Marin * Francisco Martinez * Ryan Mina * Taylor Campbell-Mosley * Niloofar Noori * Alexis Pantoja * Chase-jamison Manar-Spears * Rosa Tejeda * Von Thompson * Andrew Tran * Angelica Uribe * Corinne Willard * Magdarline Winblad And thank you to Dr. Lisa Gates, the Director and Advisor for the SDSU Leadership Minor, for providing guidance to our students. And to all the SDSU Leadership Minor faculty, Discussion Leaders, and Teaching Assistants who support those students. Congratulations again to those who are graduating with the Leadership Minor. It has been an honor working with many of you throughout these past years. Next, I am excited to honor this year’s recipient of the Eric Rivera Leadership Minor Student Impact Award. This award, which is in its second year, honors retired Vice President for Student Affairs Eric Rivera. Vice President Rivera was an advocate and supporter of student success, including his support for the Leadership Minor. Therefore, this award is meant to honor the legacy of student success inspired by Vice President Rivera and goes to the Leadership Minor students whose projects are deemed to have the greatest positive impact on current or future SDSU students. SDSU leadership minor students from the 2019-2020 academic year were eligible. The committee, in an anonymous review process, received a description of the students’ projects and evaluated them based on the impact on prospective or current student success, student life, and/or strategic changes to the campus for the better. The recipients’ names will be engraved on a perpetual plaque that will hang in the Vice President for Student Affairs' office. This year the award goes to 2 students. The first is Joey Hafner. Joey’s project titled "Cultivating Confidence: First-Generation Student Success Series" is designed to serve current and prospective SDSU First-Generation College Students. The conference will provide panels, discussions, and presentations on graduate school, high impact practices, & identities. The goal? To display campus resources while calling attention to the similar experiences & empowered successes of the First Generation College Student population. Now please join me in congratulating the second Eric Rivera Leadership Minor Student Impact Award recipient, Liana Marin. After researching how people respond to collective trauma such as pandemics, Liana reached out to her peers to learn how they are coping and demonstrating resilience. Liana’s project title is: “Connection Amidst Isolation: Authentic Conversations in Quarantine,” where she captures stories in a series of blog posts to inspire connection amidst our current isolated circumstances. Her blog: Growing Through It is a space to explore, educate, and empower. Congratulations to our Eric Rivera Leadership Minor Student Impact Award winners for bettering our San Diego State University community and beyond. Next, I would like to speak about the Student Organization Leadership Development Program, called SOLD. SOLD, a three-tiered growth model inspired by the Greek accreditation program, focuses on individual student development and organizational growth of our Recognized Student Organizations. The three tiers include, “Recognized,” “Achieving” and “Excelling.” The SOLD program fosters valuable personal and professional skills for students as they progress through their college leadership journey. Professional and personal growth is accomplished through campus events, activities, and trainings. Student organizations move through the tiers when they accomplish outlined benchmarks. Some of these benchmark activities include “completing the recognized student organization application,” “reporting 50 or more service hours,” or “nominating an organization member to the Homecoming Royal Court.” With over 350 recognized student organizations, it is an honor to congratulate the following student organizations for receiving the “Achieving” Status: * Aztec Winter Guard, * Circle K, * Movimiento Estudiantil Chicanx De Aztlan (M.E.Ch.A), and * Womxn Owning the Woman (WOW) at SDSU And here are the student organizations that reached the highest recognition status of “Excelling:” * Active Minds at SDSU, * Student African American Sisterhood, and * Women's Rugby Thank you for participating in the Student Life & Leadership SOLD program. To our graduating student leaders -as you reflect on your time here, we hope you will take the relationships, experiences, knowledge, and even the challenges with you and continue to learn and grow from them. We hope you will stay connected to the university and to us because we will be very interested in seeing where you go from here and the ways in which you will lead and serve. Whether you view leadership as a set of behaviors, as relationships, as innovation, as a process, as service to others, or as changing institutional and social practices, we challenge you to lead well with all your mind, all of your heart - always with the greatest integrity - and to continue to commit deeply to your leadership development. Continue also to create the kind of world you envision and bring that into reality. We understand that this is a process that will never end. Before we conclude, I’d like to thank the members of the Leadership Minor Council, which includes our faculty and administrators who lead and support the minor. Thank you for your time, talent, commitment, and support of our students over this past year. And a special thank you to our subcommittee members: Dr. Robyn Adams, Chelsea Winer and Dr. Lisa Gates for working to make this year’s virtual ceremony possible. We acknowledge and appreciate the work you put into this year’s event to ensure our students are still recognized for their hard work. Thank you all for joining me in celebrating our outstanding students. We will work with you once we are back on campus to distribute the award items you’ve received, such as the pins, cords, and certificates. Please reach out to Chelsea Winer at cwiner@sdsu.edu if you have any questions. Once again, congratulations to you all.