Sunny Zhang, the Wayne Deans Investment Analysis Centre Co-ordinator participated in UBC Community Leadership Program (CLP) this year. CLP is UBC’s leadership development opportunity for aspiring staff leaders. By participating in CLP, UBC employees have the opportunity to explore leadership concepts by leading a group of UBC undergraduate students through a three-day community-service learning project in a school or non-profit organization. Project leaders also help UBC students cultivate their own leadership potential.
As part of the program, there is an initial four-day training workshop where project leaders have the opportunity to realize their leadership style and explore leadership improvement capacities. Then, they select the project they would like to work on. The project takes place during Reading Week in February and is followed by Wrap-Up Activities.
Sunny was one of two project leaders at Mount Pleasant Elementary School. She was in charge of supervising 5 UBC student leaders who were working with elementary school students. There were 8 divisions at the school, and each division had a different project. Projects ranged from machines, money and banking, or medicine wheels. Sunny’s team worked with First Nations animals.
Sunny has had a very positive experience with the CLP. She appreciated the opportunity to manage UBC student volunteers and really enjoyed working with elementary school children. She was eager to explore her project management skills and apply everything she learned about leadership and conflict resolution to a real-life situation. In addition to being an excellent professional development opportunity for Sunny, this project also contributed to David Lam Library’s strategic goal of engaging with communities.
If you are interested in learning more about CLP please see the program outline.