Student Leadership

Mission

Guided by the vision of Santa Clara University to educate leaders of competence, conscience, and compassion, we create opportunities for students to experience, reflect, and grow in their leadership identity and competencies with the goal of creating inclusive communities that affect positive change within our world.

Core Assumptions

At the Center for Student Involvement, we believe:

• Everyone has the ability to be successful in practicing leadership
• Our personal values and experiences shape who we are as leaders
• Reflection is crucial to the process of leadership identity development
• Leaders serve with a vision to create positive social change
• Leaders are most effective when they recognize the interdependence of groups, valuing diverse group members and listening to dissenting voices
• Responsible leaders seek continual growth through developing competencies

Guiding Values

We utilize our competence -- the skills we have learned -- using our conscience -- or our personal abilities, reasoning, and values -- to practice leadership with compassion -- remembering human dignity and our strive to create positive social change.

• Competence includes personal skills, our knowledge and understanding of leadership theories and histories, and technical abilities
• Conscience includes contextual awareness and savvy, critical application, personal values, cognitive problem solving, and personal awareness
• Compassion includes the enactment of competence and conscience, while focusing on the dignity of others, self-care, love, and respect in how we practice leadership