Academic Cultural Excellence (ACE) AHANA Student Leadership Program
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and famous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world...We were born to make manifest the Glory of God that is within us. It is not in some of us: It's in everyone!
--Nelson Mandela (1994), Inaugural Speech
Purpose:
The Academic Cultural Excellence (ACE) Student Leadership Program prepares African American, Hispanic, Asian and Native American (AHANA) students to assume leadership roles in providing diversity education and training for the purpose of promoting cross-cultural understanding and improving race relations within the Gonzaga University campus and the greater Spokane area.
ACE is a two-year program. Its purpose is to provide student leadership development in diversity education and create an opportunity for students to serve others in pursuit of multicultural competency.
Gonzaga University 's AHANA students are an untapped resource and have much to offer area schools, churches, businesses, and community-based agencies. This program provides an opportunity for students to obtain skills in diversity training and to share those skills and their life experiences with others.
Program Values:
Self Knowledge--a core foundation before knowing others.
Servant Leadership--to serve out of gratitude for the gift of life.
Life Long Learning--a holy, indispensable form of purification as well as ennoblement.
Respect--for the sacred nature of human relationships and the indigenous essence of the other's integrity.
Creativity--encouraged and acknowledged as a divine source for our effectiveness. It is actively sought as an act of grace to know the Creator when expressed within the arena of diversity and inclusivity.
Humor--"God Moisture" i.e., rain for parched imaginations. It lubricates our personhood in order to remind us that our inheritance is happiness and joy.
Program Objectives:
Leadership Development--to convey an understanding of servant leadership, its roles and responsibilities and to examine the tenets of effective leadership.
Skill Development--to develop facilitation skills in diversity training that will allow students to serve effectively in the Gonzaga and greater Spokane communities.
Information--to provide a comprehensive knowledge base on the Spokane community and the key issues surrounding diversity and race relations.
Vision--to examine and experience the process of creating vision and then building the knowledge, attitude, and skills necessary to pursue it.
Bookmark & Share
