Student Leadership and Service (SLS)

Our Mission

With a focus on racial equity and social justice, Student Leadership and Service (SLS) connects students and community partners for service-learning and community engagement.

Land Acknowledgement

The Student Leadership and Service office recognizes that we work and learn on the traditional lands of the Kalapuya, the Northern Molala, the Multnomah, the Tualatin and the Cowlitz nations. We recognize their right ownership of these lands and that our presence on their lands keeps them from being fully who they are.

We also acknowledge that this land and its resources has, for the last two centuries, primarily been utilized by European colonizers to build wealth for European colonizers at the expense of communities of color. So, too, have the resources of the field of higher education, another community of which we are a member, been funneled primarily to wealthy, white cisgender men and their families. The resulting “achievement gap” between white students and students of color is but one current outcome of this unjust system. These acknowledgements move us to action.

Our Theoretical Foundations

SLS utilizes the Leadership Model for Social Change as a guide for our work. Through this model we understand leadership to be values-based, collaborative action toward positive social change. The primary themes of this model are shown below.

 

Diagram of various values, including group, individual, societal/community values.

In our work, we utilize asset-based and trauma-informed practices

SLS’ work is also informed by the scholarship of bell hooks and Tania Mitchell, as well as the Division of Student Life’s strategic direction and the college’s strategic plan (goals 1 & 4 are especially relevant).