The Asbury Student Congress (ASC) Leadership Conference will be held in the Walt and Rowena Shaw Collaborative Learning Center (CLC) Luce Auditorium from Sept. 26 to the 27.
In the past, ASC leadership events were only for members of the student government. However, last year, Student Body President Zachary Fazio felt called to open the events up to all students around campus.
“Student government acts as a beacon to collaborate and partner with all sides of campus, and its real intent, to me, is being able to foster and invest in our students, not just specifically student government,” explains Fazio. “Student government is made up of, in my mind, more than just people that are student government related.”
With this new vision in mind, Fazio, with the help of administrators like Joe Bruner and Dr. Kevin Brown developed a conference that is modeled after the National Student Leadership Forum, which is one of the largest gatherings for Christian student leaders within the U.S. The goal for the event is to bring students and speakers together to interact and engage in meaningful dialogue. The ASC Conference is a time to invest in student leaders, and through this mutual engagement, students will be given the opportunity to grow and develop the necessary skills important for leadership roles they may inhabit in the future.
In addition, one of the central missions is to foster community and unity. During the event, student leaders are encouraged to ask challenging questions about their impact on campus, the purpose behind their on-campus involvement and how faith and professionalism can be present within the same environment.
“I think we want to set aside, like, this is my Christian belief over here in this box and this is my professional work life in this box, and it’s really about opening and conjoining those,” says Fazio.
Aside from ASC members, guest speakers Dr. Asa James Swan and Auditor Allison Ball will be discussing how students can go about integrating their faith into the workplace, among other areas in their lives. More specifically, they will discuss what it looks like to be a Christian in leadership and how to manage uncertainty in tumultuous times. Conversations similar to this will also be carried out in discussion-based questions for individual tables.
Through the conference, students are given the opportunity to connect with fellow peers who are involved in leadership roles themselves, and with guest speakers invited to the event.
“If students are asking, you know, ‘what am I doing here?’ What is my ‘why,’ or purpose? Well, great, come to our conference. That’s exactly what we’re asking as well, and we’re hoping to sit down and be able to explore that and to explore what it means to be united followers of Christ in a leadership context,” said Fazio.
While student leaders are required to attend the conference, all of campus is invited. The cost of attendance for students who are not student leaders will be $5 at the door. Besides lively discussion, free Chipotle will be provided for lunch along with gift card giveaways. Students are encouraged to RSVP prior to the event using a link that can be provided through one of the ASC members.
Photo courtesy of Sarah Goul.
