Beyond the classroom, they learn leadership skills through student government, Alternative Spring Break trips, social organizations, Program Council, Student Foundation and the Board of Trustees. They volunteer in the community. They advance Mustang spirit through the Band, varsity athletics and traditions like Homecoming and Celebration of Lights. Nearly 200 student organizations, 400 cultural events annually and numerous high-profile visiting speakers – all are designed to help students encounter a diversity of ideas and interests, enrich their college years, but more importantly, empower their futures.

To ensure the vitality of campus life, The Second Century Campaign seeks in part to raise funds to enhance the campus experience. Goals include creating residential commons; expanding services in wellness and career placement; improving competitiveness in athletics; and broadening leadership opportunities.

SMU Magazine offers a glimpse of collegiate life today, perhaps rekindling a cherished memory of your own. As the class of 2009 graduates in May, its members will carry the lessons of their campus experience wherever they go.

Read about just a few of the people, programs and places that make the SMU campus experience like no other:

• Student Leaders
  
• Student Volunteers
  
• Hegi Career Center
  
• SMU-in-Taos
  
• SMU Memorial Health Center
  
• SMU-in-Plano
  
• Sustainable SMU

We hope you’ll share your favorite SMU memory in the comments section below.

In a house four miles east and south from SMU four students live fully immersed in their multicultural community. Like their SMU peers, they attend classes and juggle social lives, but they also participate in a learning environment that is making a lasting impression on their lives and changing the lives of others.

The students live in Academic-Community-Engagement (ACE) House and work year-round in the low-income East Dallas neighborhood, providing free tutoring sessions to neighborhood children and volunteering at local service organizations.

First-year student Melissa Perette tutors neighborhood children at the Academic-Community-Engagement (ACE) House in East Dallas.

“As much as we try to help kids in the community, we also are trying to help our own students who really are seekers,” says Bruce Levy, director of the Center for Academic-Community-Engagement (ACE), part of SMU’s General Education Program. “Many are looking for something substantial and meaningful in their lives. ACE coursework, work-study jobs, and the ACE House can provide that.”

A big draw for some students is the affordable rent at ACE House. With the help of community support, Levy’s goal is to establish rent scholarships to enable even more students to benefit from the experience.

“Our students are very driven, but some could not have afforded to come to SMU if not for the ACE House,” he says. “They pay moderate rent and the house provides a home away from home for them.”

Since the ACE Center (formerly known as the Inter-Community Experience) was founded 18 years ago, more than 2,500 students have taken various service-learning courses exploring aspects of the urban experience and civic responsibility while also volunteering in the community. ACE House residents tutor alongside other service-learning course participants and work-study students.

Senior Gina Argueta has lived in the ACE House for three years and has volunteered there for four. The accounting major says she has grown close with her neighbors, who once gladly shared their oven to let the ACE House residents bake a pan of muffins.

When the ACE House students are on break, the children ask their parents to check on when their tutoring sessions will resume.

“Our group of tutors is very close,” says Argueta, who lives in the house year-round. “It is our job, but it’s what we love to do more than anything. I’m a little sad it will be my last semester.”

Angelica “Angie” Parra ’95 was one of the first residents of ACE House (formerly known as ICE House), beginning in summer 1994 when she was a senior. She served on the neighborhood association and interacted with both children and their families. While there she befriended 11-year-old Elizabeth Torres, who now lives in Mesquite and works as a translator at Children’s Medical Center. Parra took Torres on trips to the library and downtown Dallas and later invited her to visit when she moved to New York City.

Torres said ICE House residents helped to keep the neighborhood kids out of trouble, particularly with organized summer activities. “They were a great influence on us and helped us get to where we are now as a adults,” says the mother of two. “If I had a problem or needed help with my homework, I could always run next door and ask. They almost always left the door open. I wouldn’t change my experience or my friendship with Angie for the world.”

Parra now works in the financial services industry and is enrolled in a Leadership Dallas class, offered by the Dallas Regional Chamber. “There is so much I can draw from that experience 14 years ago,” she says. “It still influences my learning and viewpoints.”

Ashley Bruckbauer, a senior majoring in art history and advertising, is a member of the University Honors Program and recipient of a Richter International Fellowship that funded a summer in Paris for independent, graduate-level research in art history. She calls the educational adventure “the first step on the path of a long journey as an art historian.”

Bruckbauer is wrapping up her third year with CORE, the Women’s Symposium student planning committee, and served as this year’s co-chair. “Being a leader doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a recognizable face on campus,” she says. “Leadership is about networking with others and hearing their ideas and coming together to not only support a tradition, but to make a difference.”

When students do not find a fit in an existing group on campus, they have the freedom and encouragement to become grassroots organizers, says senior Robert Perales. The religious studies major is a student assistant in the Office of the Chaplain and Religious Life and a resident college chaplain for SMU Service House and Moore Hall.

“Being a leader doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a recognizable face on campus. Leadership is about networking with others and hearing their ideas and coming together to not only support a tradition, but to make a difference.”

With guidance from department chair Mark Chancey and assistant professor Jill DeTemple in Dedman College’s Department of Religious Studies, Perales established the Religious Studies Club “to create better relationships between religious studies majors, minors and professors.” The club has sponsored programs exploring such diverse religious movements as Scientology and Messianic Judaism.He serves as president and has started the chartering process required for the group to become an official SMU student organization.

There is no central, unifying theme at the University, but there is a place for everyone if you’re willing to look for it,” Perales says. “You can create your own place. There’s room for growth here, and that’s one of the most positive aspects of SMU.”

“Everyone talks about leadership, but most people aren’t able to give a clear definition,” says Carol Clyde, director of SMU’s Office of Leadership and Community Involvement.

“We provide students with the tools and opportunities to investigate what leadership means to them.”

Clyde’s office sponsors several programs to meet the demand for basic leadership training across majors. Last fall, 30 students participated in the new Leadership Certificate Program. Free to all SMU students, the program involves nine hour-long workshops during a semester, as well as six community service hours and a reflection paper.

“We help students develop the soft skills that employers value: the ability to communicate effectively, manage their time and projects, and even how to handle failure,” she says.

A student-run program called Leadership Education, Activities and Development (LEAD) offers Emerging Leaders, a competitive development program for up to 50 first-year students.

Kevin Maher, 2008 chair, credits Emerging Leaders with motivating him to become more involved on campus. “You meet a broad spectrum of people who expose you to other opportunities – on campus, in Dallas and beyond,” he says. “It’s an excellent networking tool.”

Maher, a junior economics major with a minor in business, has served on the University Honors Program Advisory Council and is a member of The Union, a new student organization that promotes class giving as part of The Second Century Campaign.

LEAD board member and first-year student Saira Husain chairs the Crain Leadership Institute, a one-day campus event open to all Dallas-Fort Worth college student leaders. She’s also a President’s Scholar, a member of the Student Foundation, the Muslim Student Association and the Student Senate Scholarship Committee.

“I want to be a physician, and the skills that I’m developing now not only help me communicate with my peers, but also in organizing and influencing change where it’s needed,” she says. “Those skills apply to all facets of my life.”

“We help students develop the soft skills that employers value: the ability to communicate effectively, manage their time and projects, and even how to handle failure.”

Engineering graduate student Daniel Liu already has accepted a business technology analyst job with Deloitte and believes his myriad extracurricular activities aided him in landing the plum post. “The leadership skills I’ve cultivated here, especially effective communication skills, helped me stand out from other candidates,” he says.

In his five years of undergraduate and graduate studies at SMU, Liu has held an impressive array of titles: student moderator for the Tate Lecture Series, student representative to two Board of Trustees committees and Resident Assistant in Peyton Hall.

In March he led 13 students on an Alternative Spring Break trip to Taos, New Mexico. He participated in the joint project with Habitat for Humanity last year and stepped up to pilot the SMU effort this year.

“It’s a great opportunity to do something worthwhile and productive over spring break,” Liu says.

First-year student Melissa Perette tutors neighborhood children at the Academic-Community-Engagement (ACE) House in East Dallas.

Students Lead Their Way

One morning last February, the former leader of the free world spoke to future leaders in an SMU political science class – not your typical collegiate experience.

A relaxed George W. Bush discussed his presidency and the planned library and institute at SMU for about 10 minutes in the American Political System class taught by Harold Stanley, the Geurin-Pettus Professor of American politics and political economy in Dedman College. For the next 40 minutes, Bush took questions from 29 awestruck students.

“SMU offers so many interesting opportunities – like having George Bush drop by your class,” says sophomore Max Camp, a double major in pre-business and pre-political science and a student in the class.

A member of Christian social fraternity Beta Upsilon Chi and College Republicans, Camp chose SMU for its academic qualities, and “leadership is definitely a part of that. Whether it’s taking on an office in the groups I now belong to or possibly in other organizations, I feel I have so many opportunities to grow as a leader here; it’s up to me to take advantage of them.”

Like Camp, the majority of SMU students place a high value on campus experiences that prepare them for life’s challenges and responsibilities. The University participates in a large national survey by UCLA’s Higher Education Research Institute called the Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP) Freshman Survey. According to 2007 CIRP data, more than 50 percent of SMU’s incoming students believe that becoming a community leader is “essential” or “very important.” Almost 85 percent indicated that developing leadership ability in the coming year was either “essential” or “very important.”

For many students, their first lessons in leadership come through membership in a campus organization. Student Activities and Multicultural Student Affairs (SAMSA) supports 171 student clubs and groups, including Student Senate, student representatives to the Board of Trustees, Program Council and Student Foundation.

Student groups are integral to the planning and execution of big universitywide celebrations like Homecoming, Family Weekend and Celebration of Lights, notes Lori White, vice president for student affairs. “We believe strongly in the shared student governance of our institution,” she says. “Involving student leaders in the business of the University is a very important value to SMU.”

Exploring The Possibilities ... Click here to read more.

SMU Alumni Take The Lead ... Elena Holy ’90 and Rob Johnson ’96 share how their SMU leadership experiences shaped their future careers.

The Office of Leadership and Community Involvement helps student volunteers match their skills to organizations that need their help. Students can apply at the LCI office or online using a placement database with 10 search criteria that returns a list of agency options. LCI also hosts an annual volunteer expo for students to learn more about service opportunities.

Clyde notes that as many as 90 percent of students participated in service projects while in high school, while only 30 percent continue serving after high school. She hopes SMU service offerings will reignite students’ passion for volunteering.

Like many students, Ryan Moore was active in high school volunteer service in his hometown of McKinney, Texas, and wanted to stay involved once he arrived at SMU.

Moore, now the president of SPARC, says the growing number of students who want to volunteer is encouraging. SPARC has about 50 regular volunteers, but its biggest event, Community Service Day, attracted 500 students last year. Students also choose to work with groups such as Teach for America and the Volunteer Center of North Texas.

“We have something for everybody,” says Moore, a junior with a triple major in economics, public policy and cinema/TV. “No matter what you are interested in you will find a project. We just want students to take the first step.”

Junior Nicola Muchnikoff began volunteering with SPARC two years ago and now serves as director of youth tours on campus. Twice a week she and other volunteers introduce potential first-generation college-bound students to SMU, discuss scholarship options and answer their questions about campus life. SPARC hosts 20 to 30 middle schools each semester.

“We want to plant the seed and tell them that college is an option for them,” says Muchnikoff, a political science major with aspirations of joining the Peace Corps. College is so necessary to go anywhere in life.”

Muchnikoff, who attends SMU on a scholarship, says helping others puts her own life in perspective.

“I honestly see how lucky and blessed I am,” she says. “A lot of students think they’re too busy, but they don’t realize that maybe taking out one hour a week, they will get such joy from helping others. When I finish a tour, there is such a high. The kids are so happy. Who knows what these kids will do with their lives because of this experience?”