Student leadership program takes on larger role at PSU

Students in the former student group Student Leaders for Service have spent years helping organize events at Portland State, volunteering for Portland community and nonprofit organizations, and learning how to be better leaders.

Recently, they’ve begun a process to help start after-school programs at ten “high need” schools in Northeast and Southeast Portland. And they’ve got $100,000 to do it.

Now, the group has grown so large that they’ve hired a full-time employee to help student coordinators run the program. Student Leaders for Service had previously been a student group under Student Activities and Leadership Programs, but became a “student service department” for the entire university last spring to match its growth.

SLS is a branch of the Portland State Center for Academic Excellence and is geared toward civic engagement and building strong relationships between the community and the university with an emphasis on student leadership.

SLS had been an official student group under Student Activities and Leadership since 2003, but because they had so many different students working with different nonprofits around the Portland community, they hired Kyle Bray, the current program coordinator for SLS, to work as a full-time professional for the group.

Groups such as the Women’s Resource Center and the Multicultural Center both went from student groups to student services departments, like SLS. Student services departments are funded by student fees, but are not considered student groups because students do not solely run them.

Because the group hired a professional, they could no longer be a student group. As a student service department, however, student fees could still fund them if they proved to the Student Fee Committee that their work serves students.

The Student Fee Committee will allocate close to $12 million in student fee money this year to more than 100 student organizations, including The Vanguard and athletics. SALP is the organization that oversees and advises all student groups.

Bray said the move to make SLS a student service was 100 percent positive and a mutual decision.

“In a nutshell, moving out of SALP really allowed us to streamline our processes and find a more appropriate home at PSU,” Bray said, “ensuring that we are serving a wider section of the PSU community while meeting all university guidelines.”

The decision to make SLS a student group was finalized when Shannon Timm, the then SALP advisor for SLS, contacted Bray last spring to discuss the next logical step in the growth of the SLS program. Together with SLS’ faculty adviser and then SALP Director Tonantzin Oceguera, the decision was made to step out of SALP and declare the SLS a student service department.

“Portland State is supposed to be so committed to community volunteer involvement, but there is no volunteer resource center,” Bray said, about the shift of the group’s status. “Eventually, we want to step into that role as the college’s volunteer service center.”

Most of the funding for the SLS comes from outside grants, Bray said, such as the $100,000 grant that will help start the after-school programs. SLS will work with Portland Public Schools on the grant, which is from the Multnomah County Department of Human Services.