UD takes first in Collegiate Leadership Competition

2017 Jul 11

An inaugural team comprised of six University of Dayton students took first place in the Collegiate Leadership Competition on April 29. UD's team won the award for overall Southern Ohio Champion and tied with a team from The Ohio State University for the highest "results" score for the day.

Ashley Brown, Liz Diller, Thomas Kornish, Jordyn Mitchell, Paola Ortiz and Brett Slaughenhaupt competed against teams from OSU and Miami University in what Slaughenhaupt '18 described as a "leadership Olympics." The goal of the competition is to allow student leaders to sharpen their skills with activities that assist in building their resumes and expanding their professional networks.

Keri Good, graduate assistant for student leadership programs, served as a coach for the team and helped them prepare for the competition.

"Coaching the students was like teaching a fun class without the end result being a grade they receive, but a direct application of what they learned through competing," Good, who is getting her master's in science education, said.

The UD team prepared with two-hour training sessions that occurred every two weeks.

"No one really knew what to expect," Slaughenhaupt said. "We all went into it not expecting to lose, but not knowing we were going to win either. It was really cool to just go in and start off with a bang."

The competition consisted of six activities, including a Pringles stack ring challenge, a riddle challenge, an activity where participants spelled out a list of leadership terms with pre-cut letters, a reading and critical analysis challenge, an activity where participants drew shapes using only one line and another where participants made shapes out of wooden boards.

"The competition was a great opportunity to showcase our capabilities as individual leaders, but also how leadership can be coalesced into group settings," Slaughenhaupt said. "Our win as UD's inaugural group was incredible and we all felt very proud to represent our university for something so important as building leadership."