From Friday, February 7 to Saturday, February 8, the Office of the Vice President for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion hosted the Indiana University Student Leadership Conference in partnership with other campuses and offices across the university. Both students and faculty across all IU campuses were invited to attend lectures and interactive teach-ins surrounding leadership and personal development skills.
The conference opened on Friday at the Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center with optional campus tours and interactive sessions. This involved the “Keep it Real” game, in which attendees were prompted to share their own unique identities and cultures as well as inquire about the perspectives of others.
On Saturday morning, the conference began with an opening keynote speech from Eric Love, a DEI consultant and previous Director of the 
Office of Diversity Education at Indiana University. Students then attended a diverse set of talks and teach-ins they individually selected based off their own professional goals. Speakers ranged from Walter Career Center advisors to small business owners and financial advisors. A total of 234 students attended Friday and Saturday’s events.
“This occasion marks the first time this event is known as Indiana University’s Student Leadership Conference, similar to other conferences which have been hosted on IU’s campuses for years,” said Patrick Smith, Ph.D., Executive Director of Mentoring Services and Leadership Development and chair of the conference’s planning committee.
Around 2013, these events came to a pause. Noticing the lack of similar opportunities for students, Smith reintroduced the idea of a leadership conference to fellow colleagues and grantors while broadening its prospective audience. With the help of grants and private support, the new Student Leadership Conference was founded. “Everyone is welcome to attend,” Smith added. “We feel that the topics transcend individual identity.”
In one session, Tiffany Davis, Esq. and Heather Lindsay hosted a teach-in surrounding their nonprofit organization Butterfly Dreamz, a program that aims to help young girls gain leadership skills while improving their well-being. The session started with a conversation about the skills needed to be a leader, and ended with a discussion about the importance of self-care and personal identity within leadership. In a self-reflection activity, attendees were asked to identify individuals and ideas that formed their own identity and purpose.
Ultimately, the goal of the conference was to provide all attendees with the 
opportunity to both learn about themselves and use this knowledge to make an impact on their communities. “We want to impart knowledge, skills, and content that will give them the understanding of how to go and create – to be change makers,” Smith explained.
Not only did conference-goers get to think critically about their own identities, but they also got to connect with students and faculty from all over Indiana. “It's not just IU Bloomington, there's IU Kokomo, there's IU East, IU Northwest ... [we’re] all coming together,” said IUN student Anthony Hudson. “We're forming a network where we can all continue this legacy.”
“It’s not as hard to connect with people as I thought,” one student said in a post-conference survey. “There [are] a lot of unique experiences out there from all different kinds of people, we just need to go out and look for them,” said another.
