CLSI Hires New Director

The Center for Leadership and Student Involvement (CLSI) promotes extracurricular activities both at Colgate and within the community in order to keep with its mission to “support, challenge, and inspire all Colgate students to become responsible and engaged citizens.”

Since January 10, 2008, CLSI has had a new director, Greg Victory, who has plans to further CLSI’s mission to his fullest potential.

As an undergraduate, Victory was always involved in leadership organizations on campus, and it was quite clear that he would eventually pursue leadership development as a career. He was a Resident Advisor, president of his school’s programming board – equivalent to Colgate’s Community Activities Board – as well as an active member of student government.

“Leadership is my passion,” Victory said. “This job is perfect for me.”

Victory worked at Syracuse University for five years as the Director of Career Services. He mentioned that as he moved up in his career at Syracuse, the amount of student contact he experienced decreased. Eventually, he learned of the position at Colgate in which he could work one-on-one with students as he desired, and immediately accepted the offer.

Victory mentioned many specific potential plans, as well as plans that are already underway, for CLSI under his directorship. For example, he is working on a project to renovate Donovan’s Pub, and also is working on plans to redevelop the Student Leaders Artists Motivators Conference held annually at Colgate.

On a broader scale, he hopes to revitalize CLSI as a whole. He hopes to branch out from the regular activities of the office. Instead of the office being a mere “middle man” between students and club organizations, he wants it to be a resource for these two entities. Members of clubs have typically used CLSI to find out about their club’s budget and to book rooms for meetings.

Although Victory asserts that students will still come to CLSI for this, he also wishes for students to come to CLSI in order to learn how to develop leadership skills for the betterment of their club, for example.

One aspect of Colgate that Victory noticed was the surprisingly considerable lack of knowledge of CLSI within the Colgate student body. In promoting personal student contact with the office and the availability of the office as a resource of learning to club members, he hopes that students will become more aware of the office’s presence on campus.