Tips to Keep Your Star Students from Reaching the Breaking Point

Madison, Wis.—August 5, 2009 — Student leaders who need to balance leadership duties with academic responsibilities are especially vulnerable to burnout, depression, and anxiety, say Drs. Lee Burdette Williams, Barry Schreier, and Christine Wilson. During their August 5 online seminar, Student Leaders Struggling: When the Best & Brightest Need Help, they offered the following tips to advisors to make sure the organizations they advise don’t encourage student leaders from taking on too much:

• Review the current constitution. Does it put most of the responsibility in one person’s lap, such as leaving most of the work and decision-making to a single president?

• Suggest having co-chairs or co-presidents. Students might be resistant to this idea because it’s an ego boost to be the president. But having co-chairs or co-presidents can help leaders balance their leadership commitments with academic responsibilities as well as protect the organization if one leader is unable to maintain his or her level of commitment to the organization.

• Rewrite language in the constitution so it doesn’t stigmatize leaders who need to adjust their level of commitment. For example, policies on what the organization should do when a leader “doesn’t meet expectations” can be rewritten to delineate what the organization can do if a leader “needs to reduce responsibilities.”

• Develop template constitutions that any student organization can review and adapt as needed.

During the seminar, the presenters also offered recommendations on how to:
• respond to student leaders in crisis
• help an organization recover after a leader leaves
• help re-introduce the leader to the organization if and when the leader is ready to do so

If you missed the seminar and would like to purchase it for your institution, you can order the program in CD or print transcript format, both of which include the presenters' handouts.

Magna Publications is a leading publisher of newsletters and other information products in the higher education segment. Magna also manages onsite and online conferences on topics of interest to higher education.

For more information please contact David Burns, Publisher, Magna Publications, Inc., at 608-227-8109, or dburns@magnapubs.com.