On the weekend of Sept. 25-27, 2014, the Student Government Association (SGA) from the Hillsborough Community College, Ybor, Brandon and South Shore campuses attended the Florida College System Student Government Association (FCSSGA) leadership conference that was held in Orlando. The leadership conference consisted of renowned motivational speakers, individual leadership workshops and team building exercises.

  Unlike most leadership conferences, the September FCSSGA leadership conference was unique to many of the SGA representatives. Instead of the typical eye-rolling, boring workshops that most conferences entail, September’s FCSSGA was a conference filled with motivational speakers. One of the speakers was Nancy Hunter Denney, who is a nationally recognized keynote speaker, six time published author and inspirational educator. She has dedicated her profession to empowering others to capitalize on their influential abilities as leaders. FCSSGA workshops sessions were designed to challenge students’ to balance a personal life while maintaining a leadership role.

  FCSSGA’s September leadership conference was jam packed with effective education workshop sessions from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Students had between six and eight different workshop sessions to choose from every hour. The hourly session topics varied from leadership, public speaking and passion in one’s work, to love-related self-help seminars. Most workshop topics covered typical professionalism related subjects but some of the sessions focused on helping students develop different aspects of their personal life. Students had the freedom to customize their conference experience by choosing whichever session best fulfilled their needs.

  The final day of the conference was complete with hands-on team building exercises. The morning of the final day, each district was divided into subgroups according to their position within SGA. The members of each subgroup joined together to discuss and define their rolls as senators, historians, secretary, treasurer, vice president and president on their campus. Once the afternoon rolled around, the team building exercises became more intimate as people began opening up about their personal lives. During one exercise in particular, students stepped forward or backward to represent the hardship and struggles of live in the past or present. By the end of the exercise, one could look around and notice that there were people from all walks of life under the same roof. Regardless of color, gender, sexuality, religion or life experiences, all of the students were at the conference with a commonality, triumph.  

  SGA members who attended the 2014 September FCSSGA conference, further developed leadership skills to improve self and to benefit the overall student body. Workshop seminars helped students customize their experience to become well-round leaders for themselves and for the student body being represented. The conference hosted teambuilding exercises to provide students with a method to learn and understand about the challenges of diversity. Students who participated in the conference left inspired and motivated to take on the world’s challenges.