Last weekend, Portland State was home once again to the Northwest Student Leadership Conference, a three-day event designed by, and geared toward students who would like to get involved in activities on their school campuses.
Typically members of student government, fraternities and sororities, student advisers and students who would simply like to learn some new skills attend the NWSLC, which is sponsored by Portland State, the Associated Students of Portland State University, the Oregon Students Association and the Oregon Student Foundation.
This marks 19th year in a row that PSU has hosted the conference, and this year over 570 students attended, up from the 526 last year.
Attendees came from over 30 different colleges all over the Northwest, and the conference is truly an international affair, as students from Vancouver, B.C., joined those from California, Oregon, Washington, Montana and Alaska.
According to Michelle Fisher, event coordinator from the OSF, PSU’s central location and size, along with ASPSU’s sponsorship, make it an ideal location for the event.
“PSU’s sponsorship helps us keep costs down,” she said.
Fisher and Tamara Henderson, executive director of the OSA, worked closely with the steering committee to arrange workshop scheduling, meals, speakers and a multitude of other details for the conference.
Over the course of the weekend, students attended workshops, networked with other students and heard from noted speakers.
One of this year’s speakers was Portland Mayor-elect Sam Adams, who welcomed the crowd to Portland during lunch on Saturday and encouraged them to take to heart the lessons learned over the weekend.
“Take home what you learn here,” Adams told the conference-goers. “You can make similar changes in your communities that we’ve begun in Portland.”
Henderson said choosing the speakers for the event is an extremely long process.
“We always try to have an out-of-state speaker, we always have a political person, we always have a student, and we’re always trying to fill a particular niche with each speaker,” Henderson said.
The brainstorming process starts early, and choices normally hinge on that year’s particular theme. The theme for the 2008 conference was “Inspiring the Future,” a topic that led easily to Mayor-elect Adams, Fisher said.
Workshops over the weekend dealt with a variety of topics, including race and gender relations, team leadership, grassroots organizing skills and the emerging partnership between politics and new media such as Facebook and Twitter.
Workshop presenters range from interested student volunteers to visiting professionals such as Todd Halvorsen from The New York Times.
Fisher, Henderson and the OSA steering committee begin planning the conference months in advance-often as early as February or March.
“We have conference calls monthly,” said Fisher, who has been with the OSA for two years, and has coordinated the past two conferences, “and they get less sporadic as the conference gets closer.”
Rachel Cushman, co-chair of the Oregon Students of Color Coalition, was one of the workshop presenters. A student at the University of Oregon, Cushman was proud of the history of the conference.
“What we do here is looked upon and used as an example by other states,” Cushman said.
Cushman said her main goal as a presenter is to “pass on the knowledge of what I’ve learned and to make sure the legacy continues.”
Henderson echoed that sentiment.
“At the end of the day,” she said, “the idea is that we really are inspiring the future. We really are changing people’s lives at these conferences.”
Both Henderson and Fisher mentioned how they had each gone from conference attendees to OSA staff members and conference organizers, and they hoped that more students would follow in their footsteps.
Of course, it is impossible to plan for everything. The introductory speaker on Friday night was Lisa Groves, an influential pollster who has helped elect several key national figures, including Barack Obama.
Twenty minutes into Groves’ speech on Friday night, the fire alarm was tripped, leading to an orderly evacuation from the Smith Memorial Student Union Ballroom.
Despite a few glitches, however, both Fisher and Henderson expressed satisfaction with the conference, and are already looking toward next year.
“Next year is the 20th anniversary NWSLC,” Henderson said. “That’s going to be a lot of fun.”