Marshall University is launching a new mentoring and leadership development experience for female students thanks to a grant from the Helen Gurley Brown Foundation.
University First Lady Alys Smith, the founder of the Women’s Bold Leadership Experience, will be guiding the leadership team and overseeing the program.
The goal of the Women’s Bold Leadership Experience is to develop female students into successful leaders and help them gain necessary skills for their futures, said Alissa Rookard, the director of the program.
“The Women’s Bold Leadership Experience is a program that is designed to provide female undergraduate students with the skills and clarity that they need to lead into the next chapter of their life with purpose,” Rookard said.
The program will offer a number of professional opportunities to help support students and prepare them for their career fields.
“Through a series of opportunities, through mentorship, professional development and financial support, we’re building a pathway for them to transition from college to their professional careers and hopefully into leadership roles within that career,” Rookard said.
Participants in the two-year program will be paired with a mentor who will guide them until they complete the program.
“Incoming juniors will apply, and once accepted into the program, they will be paired up with a mentor for the duration of their program,” Rookard said. “They will be with one specific mentor through completion of the program, which means they are going to get one-on-one advice from different people that will meet with me individually, and I will be guiding them.”
Rookard said students in the program will receive guidance from their mentors on a variety of different skills and situations they will encounter in the professional workforce.
“Things like how to set a goal, how to gain clarity on your next steps, how to build a strategic plan for your career, how to implement different strategies for resume or CV applications,” Rookard said. “They get to practice that in the real world and get advice from people who are doing their dream jobs or maybe participating in civic engagement outside of their professional career and they want to learn how to engage with the community in that way.”
Rookard said participants in the program will learn how to plan, develop and execute a community engagement project, working on their project throughout the entire time they are in the program.
“The first year of the program is really preparing them for that community engagement project,” Rookard said. “That’s where we’re learning the durable skills and the design thinking model. Looking at the world and saying, ‘What is a problem that I might be able to solve and how might I be able to solve that?’ That’s going to give them the ground and build that foundation to move into their senior year, starting to pitch their ideas on what that project looks like.”
Rookard said the program will help serve individuals from marginalized and underrepresented communities by focusing on serving women with financial needs.
“We’re specifically serving women, so that’s number one. We’re also looking for those with financial needs, so we’re looking for those who come from a low-income background,” Rookard said. “We also are looking for different identities to include in the cohorts coming forward without tokenizing or anything like that.”
Students interested in participating in the Women’s Bold Leadership Experience can inquire further by emailing [email protected]. Applications will open in the fall.
Ashton Pack can be contacted at [email protected].
