Spotlight on MSSU’s Global Leaders

There are so many ways to support the local community. Recently, we were able to open our office space to host a networking event for the students of Global Leaders at MSSU. Global Leaders is a program that focuses on helping students develop their leadership and finds ways to broaden their experiences. 

In the Q and A that follows, the program’s director, Ben Cooper, shares how it all began, the life-changing opportunities students experience, and the growth the program is seeing.

Q: Can you tell us about your mission and what inspired its founding?

A: Global Leaders is Missouri Southern’s signature student leadership program designed to cultivate globally minded leaders through experiential learning opportunities. Students are provided with integrative, interdisciplinary experiences to help them develop as leaders and global citizens. The Global Leaders program is funded entirely by private gifts. That funding was launched thanks to a generous gift of $1 million from the late Joel Newby, a Marine and graduate of Joplin Junior College.

Q: How do you measure success or impact in your programs, and what recent successes are you most proud of?

A: Our first order marker of success is the same as other university programs. How many of our students come back from year to year, and how many of our students graduate? To that end, Global Leaders is celebrating, between last spring and this fall, our first cohort of graduates. From there we look at what opportunities our students have gained either through the program itself or through connections made while in Global Leaders. The examples of this are plentiful, from the students who have gotten jobs based on internships they got through Global Leaders connections to the several students who have gotten the opportunity to study abroad through their Global Leaders stipends.

Q: What are the biggest challenges your organization currently faces, and how are you working to overcome them?

A: As the Global Leaders program continues to grow, we are challenged to adapt to the new demands of a larger program. Growing pains are good pains, but we need to adapt our programming and structures to meet the needs of an organization that has gone from 10 to 60 students in four years and plans to go beyond that in the years to come. We are addressing these challenges by increasing the number of opportunities that students have to engage with the program, as well as adjusting to models of service learning and community engagement that work better for larger groups.

Q: What new initiatives or projects are you most excited about, and how do they align with your organization’s long-term goals?

A: Our main initiatives right now focus around giving our students more direct opportunities for leadership within Global Leaders as well as empowering our students to recognize and communicate their achievements to the schools and employers they will work with in the future. To that end we have created a set of student committees to provide opportunities for our students to participate in organizational leadership. We are also creating a badging system, so students who graduate from Missouri Southern and have participated in the Global Leaders program can more easily and accurately communicate the experiences they have had and the skills they have gained to future schools and employers.

If you’d like to learn more, give or support Global Leaders at MSSU visit their website.