The President’s Leadership Program at Northwestern State University is an emerging leaders program for first-year students. PLP encompasses coursework, campus engagement and community service. In the program, students learn about different leadership styles, how to work in groups, manage projects and be student leaders both at NSU and later in life.
Reatha Cox, vice president for the Student Experience Office and dean of students, currently heads the program. PLP students meet with Cox twice a week to develop their leadership skills. “When the program started nearly 50 years ago, it was limited to only 20 students. Somewhere along the lines, when I started working with this program, I changed the program from proven leadership, not just all the things that you did in high school, to proven leadership and potential leadership because I think everyone can be a leader,” Cox said.
Anyone can apply to be in the PLP program, but certain qualities are needed to get the most out of it. “You have to enjoy meeting people. You have to enjoy the interaction. The program can be for introverts or extroverts, but the bottom line is that it’s very hands-on, loud and action-oriented. It’s not a bystander program,” Cox said.
During the fall semester, students participate in various community service projects, including the faculty-staff Halloween Carnival, the Boys and Girls Club and the [1 of 7] Community Service Initiative. In the spring, students focus on building their community impact projects, which can be for anything, including senior citizens, literacy, campus beautification, at-risk youth, food insecurity, animal welfare, veterans, first responders and more. “The students get to decide what they want to be a part of and how they want to impact the community,” Cox said. “They’ll spend close to 25 hours or more in the spring working on their community impact projects.”
One of the most memorable classroom activities PLP students partake in is Understanding Others. This activity takes a deep dive into the role gender plays in leadership. Allison Chevalier, a freshman nursing major, found this activity to be one of the most insightful in the class. “It was a little bit more serious than what we normally do. It was just talking about our differences and stuff like that. I loved that lesson and I feel like we learned even more during it than we normally would have,” Chevalier said.
Andrew Dreher, a freshman biology major, describes PLP as a class designed to encourage campus involvement, peer-to-peer relationships and breaking out of your shell. “I genuinely look forward to coming to PLP every day because it’s so fun,” Dreher said. “We have a lot of service opportunities in PLP. We go and serve at the food bank and we have mandatory service hours. If you’re in PLP, you have to serve, but it’s not really seen as, ‘Oh, dang, community service.’ We want to help people, and we want to make a difference because that’s what PLP is.”
In the spring, PLP students work with and sponsor the Red River Games Special Olympics Louisiana. PLP brought back the Special Olympics after it had been gone for nearly six years, and is now in its ninth year of Special Olympics. Lauryn Vernon, a junior biology major with a minor in dance and a mentor for the PLP program, says her favorite memory from PLP was the Special Olympics. “It was such a fun process, and I can’t wait for this new class of PLP students to experience it. It’s so rewarding to put your hard work out there and just give back without getting anything in response,” Vernon said. “That’s what being a good human is.”
Vernon also credits PLP as the foundation for many of her successes today. “I’ve met so many people around this campus just from being in this program. Even just knowing Mrs. Reatha, if you see her and wave, she introduces you to every person in the building who’s there, so I know so many people just from that,” Vernon said.
“You never know how those people can affect your lives in the future. So it’s great having those connections just from this little program,” Vernon said. “I’m the co-captain of the dance team and I plan to keep progressing in my roles on the team, so it’s nice to take the skills that I’ve learned from the program and apply them to really anything that I decide to do on campus.”
PLP is a program that can benefit many students and is one that, if given the opportunity, students should partake in. “Everybody that’s going through this program says that PLP is something that has just changed their whole college experience. You get to do so many things and know so many people. You just get to become a better version of yourself that you didn’t even know was even possible. So rush PLP!” Vernon said.
