A hole-in-one for leadership
Mackenzie Hurst | Staff Writer | @kenziehurst
Photo credit: Gabi Campbell | Art Director | @gabicampbellphotos
On June 8, the UVU Center for the Advancement of Leadership (CAL) joined with their corporate sponsor, Mercedes-Benz of Lindon, in hosting the second annual “Fore CAL” golf tournament at Sleepy Ridge Golf Course in Orem.
The golf tournament was well attended, with 135 participants on a course that has a 144-golfer capacity.
The event is projected to raise $20,000 this year, which is double the amount that was raised at last year’s golf tournament. Jeff Kahn, Chairman of the Advisory Board for the CAL program at UVU said, “All of the money that we will net today will go towards scholarships for the students in the CAL Program.”
The scholarships will help CAL members with tuition, room and board, or other fees.
In April of 2015 UVU’s LEAD program was awarded a spot in the top 10% of leadership development programs in the world at the Global Leadership Excellence Forum in Dallas, Texas. There are only 25 other programs in the world that have that honor.
CAL offers real-world experience by combining classroom theory and providing a mentor to help the students through it all. These mentors are board members and other volunteer mentors who are mainly leaders in the civic and business world. This combination allows students to learn theory in the classroom, learn from their mentor’s experience, and have opportunities to apply it in their own lives.
“We are giving them the perfect engaged learning experience. They have the theory, the hands on, and the mentor to put it all together,” Belinda Han, director of CAL said.
It is not easy to get into such a prestigious program.
“It is a process, but all the students who are involved took the initiative to apply,” Han said.
According to Kahn, the students involved in the elite CAL program are “the cream of the crop at UVU.”
The golf tournament provided the students in CAL with not only scholarship opportunities, but it also gave them the chance to network with people and establish relationships with local business people.
“The golfers here today are mostly business people in and around Utah County, Salt Lake City and Heber Valley. These students are mingling with the golfers and getting exposed to the top business leaders in the area,” said Kahn. Providing opportunities for students to forge relationships with the community is just one of the ways the CAL program is reaching beyond the classroom.