LEAD at IMSA

Leadership Education and Development (LEAD) is a significant part of sophomore year at IMSA. It is a student-facilitated course that takes place from 8:30 to 9:30 PM on Wednesdays. We wanted to learn more about LEAD, electives, and SLX. In an interview with Mrs. Emma Wilson Parker, Coordinator of Student Leadership and Service, details about LEAD and the event were revealed.

CORE

CORE is the first semester course all sophomores take as a graduation requirement. This is where they learn about leadership, its definition, theories, models, and applications. With a peer-to-peer teaching style, students utilize their critical thinking skills and are encouraged to understand their leadership identities.

Electives

In the interview, Mrs. Emma summarized that in the spring, sophomores get a choice in an elective to cater to their interests and passions. All of the electives, focused on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) in order to foster future leaders of the world.

IMPACT:

Information Motivating Public Activism focuses on leadership from the perspective of data journalism, media bias, and misleading statistics. This year was the first year where sophomores were further divided into qualitative and quantitative. The qualitative groups focused more on the visual aspects of data journalism and creating a convincing argument in that fashion. The quantitative groups focused on data analysis using Google Sheets, Infogram, Python, and more. According to the IMSA LEAD schedule, “The goal of the IMPACT program is to provide students a stronger understanding of how to find trends and meaning in mass amounts of information.” This year, IMPACT students had the unique opportunity to watch a Professional Panel and network with people working outside of the IMSA bubble.

EnACT:

Enabling Activism is the elective that focuses on public policy, government, justice, and the environment. Debating and government understanding was a large focus and this year, EnACT students had to opportunity to go on a field trip to Springfield, getting a tour of the capital and watching active bills being passed. In this course, students learn about politics through creation of a policy portfolio and proposing policies to solve a multitude of severe world issues.

SoCent:

Entrepreneurial Activism foster entrepreneurial skills through the teaching of topics such as theory, applicability, and creativity. Students in this elective learned about how to ask for financing and how to network through several modules. Most importantly, sophomores in SoCent identify problems and develop solutions, some of which being actual prototypes of things that can change the world. To model these ideas, students got to build boats and sail them in a pool.

In these divided electives, sophomores chose groups of 3-4 and worked to develop projects in response to numerous global issues to later present at the SLX event.

SLX

Student Leadership Exchange was an event held on campus on April 24, 2024. It is a graduation requirement where the groups of 3-4 were broken into smaller classrooms and presented their projects and research to experts and VIPs such has politicians and professionals in elected positions. Mrs. Emma described the event to be similar to an “academic conference” to raise awareness of these global issues and potential solutions. To evaluate these presentations, there were educators such as college professors as well as alumni in several fields that had experienced LEAD during their time on campus.

After presentations, sophomores went to lunch at Lexington and networked with these professionals, learning about what they do for a living.

Subsequently, the Hollister Lecture took place. This is a memorial lecture to honor Bernard Hollister, a member of the charter faculty of IMSA in 1986 in the social science and history team. His family attends the event each year and the lecture continues to honor a man who helped get IMSA on its feet and into the academic powerhouse it is today.

At the Hollister Lecture, Dr. Joshua Fredenburg gave an incredibly inspiring speech to the sophomores about developing legacy and leaving a positive impact on the world by serving others.

Awards

After the Hollister Lecture, certificates were awarded to one group from each classroom based on the evaluators’ scores. The rubric, provided by Mrs. Emma, was based on two categories: delivery and research and content. Based on the scores that the evaluators gave to the presentations they saw, winners were picked and celebrated at the SLX event.

Congratulations to all of the sophomores for your hard work this year and we look forward to what these future leaders do to change the world.