MAKING ‘NEW FRIENDS’

Inaugural Champion Miller Center leadership summit brings together College, high schools

Alexis Martin was in a bit of a rut when her junior year started at Farmington High School, roughly an hour southeast of Monmouth College. A program initiated by the College’s Champion Miller Center for Student Equity, Inclusion and Community helped bring her out of it.

In early May, Martin was on campus along with several other Farmington students who participated in the Champion Miller Center’s year-long inclusive leadership training. They attended the inaugural Champion Leadership Student Summit, joined by “new friends” from Galesburg and Monmouth-Roseville high schools, as well as by their respective advisers and teachers.

“Everything I hear, I try to apply to my daily life,” said Martin, who hopes to be a K-12 art teacher and, eventually, a college professor. “It gives me a scope and a path and a guideline to help me grow as a person and a leader.”

Martin was asked to explain to students her age the advantages of learning about inclusive leadership.

“Talking to the people from Monmouth, I learned that a lot of them had experienced stuff like me,” she said. “They heard me, and they understood me. Even though we come from different backgrounds and ethnicities, it wasn’t toxic at all. Everybody was nice and open.”

Martin’s testimony is essentially the idea behind the program, said Champion Miller Center Director Regina Johnson ’01. “For our first try, the summit was everything we could have hoped for it to be,” she said.

About 30 students attended the event, which included breakout sessions on topics such as the three pillars of leadership and growth mindset.

Other ideas from the summit, which Johnson reiterated when the group came together again at the end of the day, included “pull in people who are different from yourself” and “make people feel safe, make people feel included.” Johnson also told the students, “Do all of our role models have to be good ones? Absolutely not. Sometimes you have to learn from the bad ones.”

“When we dedicated the Champion Miller Center last spring, I had already selected my student interns,” said Johnson. “I knew then that with their maturity and leadership, we had the potential to do something special like this.”

Those interns include seniors Jonathan “JD” Diaz, Nyasaina Kwamboka and Gabriela Madu. Also part of the team at the summit was December graduate Jake Uryasz ’22, who also attended Farmington.

Last fall, in addition to working with the students at Farmington — where Zac Chatterton ’99 serves as superintendent — the Monmouth inclusive leadership group also made the short trip east of campus to work with students at United High School, where Chris Schwarz ’09 serves as principal.

“It doesn’t matter your identity, your race, your gender, your sexual orientation, we’re here for every single person,” said Kwamboka of one of the group’s primary messages. “It is necessary that we become socially and personally aware of the need to be inclusive in leadership and in teamwork.”

Ditza Montesinos ’23 said what the Monmouth students offer is a chance for the high schoolers to connect with people from their own generation.

“It was interesting to see how much guidance these kids can get from talking to people who aren’t too much different in age from them,” said Montesinos. “It’s reassuring to know other people go through the same patterns that you do.”

It’s also important to talk to others from a different background, said Diaz.

“This is the age when they’re the most moldable,” he said. “In a few more years, when they’re in their 20s, you’ve adopted a pretty firm idea of what your values are. So it’s good that they can meet other people now so that they can be the best version of themselves. Instead of only being around people that are exactly like them, they can hear different opinions. The world is a diverse place. You can’t be stuck in one mindset.”