The John Marshall Emerging Leaders Institute has started a branch of The National Society of Leadership and Success, a nationally known organization and the largest leadership society in the nation.

The society creates a supportive leadership environment for undergraduate students through development of relationships with other student leaders, faculty, staff and community leaders.

The society is the largest club on campus with 250 new members, even though it just started meeting this semester.

Graduate advisor for the John Marshall Emerging Leaders Institute, Kelsea Ring said the group tried to recruit sophomores with good academic standing.

“Since it was our first semester, we wanted to target sophomores because there is already a freshman leadership program,” Ring said. “Juniors and seniors already have their niche and are in their societies, so sophomores who didn’t really join anything freshman tear, this is a good program for them to join.”

The National Society of Leadership and Success sent about 1,400 invitations.

“The 250 members is a good number for our school because the society says they usually expect about ten percent back, so for us, that would be about 140 people,” Ring said. “We got way over our ten percent which is really exciting and really great for our school.”

Students of all majors have the opportunity to be accepted into the society, but good class standing is a consistent requirement.

“We have an orientation, a leadership training day they must attend and they must attend three speakers during the semester out of the six we have a year,” Ring said. “We’ve only had one so far this semester, which was Al Roker.”

Students in societies across campus had the opportunity to watch Roker’s live broadcast and tweet, text, or send video questions in.

“We have a make up viewing next week,” Ring said. “It’s the live broadcast replayed, showed for the members who couldn’t make it. Al Roker is a celebrity and he is well known.”

The society does more than just events. They facilitate leadership-training day, recruit for the training day and have community service events.

Sophomore, exercise science major, Morgan Foos said she was excited to get involved in something else, especially an elite society.

“I initially saw the Greek letters that represent, I was thinking its going to be some kind of honor society, which made me pretty excited,” Foos said. “I think when I was in community college before I transferred here, I remember getting some kind of email or letter about something like this but people never took it seriously. I was hoping for the best out of this and it’s been great.”

Recruiting for the spring semester will begin at the end of the fall. Students invited to the society can expect their invitations via mail and email.

Desmond Groves can be contacted at [email protected]